Perth man jailed for 7 months after breaching self-quarantine instructions

https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/coronavirus/covid19-perth-man-jailed-for-seven-months-after-having-tradies-over/news-story/0ae395b3a971e3734bc93711b610dd26

by mrfusion • 5 years ago

32 52 5 years ago

skynews.com.au

throwaway0a5e• 5 years ago

I clicked the article expecting some floridaman type story full of shenanigans and aggravating circumstances but nope, he just had some contractors over to do work and had some people over to buy stuff via classifieds. The latter doesn't even require them to come into your house or get within any appreciable distance of you. I get that a former penal colony probably has inherited expansive judicial discretion enabling the judge to dish out this kind of sentence (and judges tend not to take thumbing one's nose at state authority very well) but it's not like he threw a party or invited his buddies over for dinner or something, heck, there's not even a mention of this guy having a prior record. Any aggravating factor I could see leading to this kind of sentence (like getting in a fight with the arresting officers and the majority of the time being for that violation) is simply absent.

smt88• 5 years ago

Having contractors over to do work is a great way to spread a disease. The classifieds buyers are less of a big deal, but having shades of gray is probably unenforceable for any law like this.

Like how do you decide what is an acceptable violation of quarantine? Who decides? Who pays them to spend a lot of time deciding?

ericbarrett3• 5 years ago

I was wondering around a Sydney suburb (somewhere across the bay from city center) and came across a dresser somebody had dumped on the sidewalk—something you’d see a dozen times a day in any American city, rich or poor neighborhood. An enforcement agency had slapped a sticker on it warning about jail time if the perpetrator was caught. Harsh, perhaps, but it was the only junk furniture I saw in two weeks.

goodcanadian4• 5 years ago

There are periodic bulk waste collection times where you can put out large furniture like that. People (both individuals and junk dealers) will go around collecting anything good. At the end of the week, the council collects what is left free of charge. Outside of those times, it is illegal dumping. You don't see much of it because there is legal and free pick up available.

giarc3• 5 years ago

Imagine you are a tradesperson and get hired for some job. You go to the house, complete the work, only to later find out the owner of the house (who was there the whole time) was legally required to self-isolate due to risk of having COVID. How would you feel? What if the tradesperson lived with elderly parents or had kids or someone they were in touch with that was high risk?

readflaggedcomm6• 5 years ago

What if they found out before, not later? The story doesn't say he failed to inform. In fact, it was someone whom he informed who informed on him.

throwaway8943455• 5 years ago

7 months in prison is an insane punishment for "you could possibly have COVID and your contractor could possibly not be able to get a vaccine or wear a mask or etc and he could also have immunocompromised family members". Note that Western Australia has a 7 day average of 1 covid case and not a single death since May 2020 (9 total COVID deaths) [0].

The maximum term for drunk driving in Perth is 18 months[1] and that's for a repeat offense with a BAC in excess of 0.15. Is our contractor scenario really ~5 times more dangerous than multiple driving-while-absolutely-hammered offenses?

[0] https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=covid+c...

[1] https://www.gotocourt.com.au/drink-driving/wa/dui-penalties/

underseacables• 5 years ago

I couldn’t agree more, this is some serious judicial overreach bordering bordering on cruelty. Based on the recent discussion here about vaccination discrimination, I worry we are headed in a direction for much of the rest where you will be arrested if you leave the house unvaccinated.

mickotron2• 5 years ago

These are emergency powers assumed under a pandemic, settle down now.

goodcanadian4• 5 years ago

I never found Australia to have particularly strict law enforcement in general. However, they have been taking covid very seriously and have had correspondingly low infection rates.

throwaway8943455• 5 years ago

However, they have been taking covid very seriously and have had correspondingly low infection rates.

I think geography is doing the bulk of the lifting. Being on a sparsely populated island helps a whole lot.

senectus12• 5 years ago

oh Australians really like rules.

so when lockdowns come out we (especially in the west) just loved going into lockdown and dishing shit on those that flouted the rules. its a weird dichotomy that we're very easy going and freedom loving yet also love rules and enforcing them.

pjc50• 5 years ago

Australia took quarantine really seriously. The plus side: less than a thousand deaths, hospitality mostly open, very few short lockdowns.

The downside is that the lockdowns that do happen are very heavy, and anyone breaching them is treated like a smoker in a fireworks factory.

psychedelican2• 5 years ago

The deaths and despair from lockdowns far surpass those created from COVID alone.

I bet missed cancer screenings alone have caused more than a thousand deaths in Australia.

bmsleight_• 5 years ago

If I invited a contractor into my home and I knew there was say exposed live electricity wires. Even if the contractors was not damaged - I should be prosecuted.

So he exposed someone to a risk that was avoidable. Any other Health and Safety risk, would have been prosecuted in the same way (in the UK not Australia). [CDM regulations]

readflaggedcomm6• 5 years ago

Or he informed them ahead of time and they took the risk on their own.

tgsovlerkhgsel• 5 years ago

A country that has single-digit cases and is desperately trying to get it back to zero will necessarily and justifiedly have much stricter quarantine rules.

Safety wise, this is comparable to randomly firing a bullet at an occupied building. Most likely the bullet will miss (the guy won't be infected/won't infect), but if you get really unlucky (someone gets infected and spreads it before that connection can be discovered), the results are disastrous (and deadly - COVID still has a 1% IFR as far as I know).

lostlogin• 5 years ago

The case numbers were 99 yesterday, so yes, double digit, but it’s not good.

Australia locked down, but from a New Zealand perspective their lockdowns have been rather less harsh than ours. Supermarkets and medical practices (for humans and animals) were all we had open.

It has seemed that their way got the results while having more shops open, though they are in a tight spot right now.

readflaggedcomm6• 5 years ago

This story isn't enough to gauge safety. We don't know who wasn't vaccinated or when he informed visitors of his quarantine status.

ipspam• 5 years ago

The IFR, depending on whom you believe, was always in the 0.23-0.7% range. The CFR is a worthless junk statistic for estimating risk to the individual and is only of use for managing services.

Whether it is lower now or not is more a philosophical question as empirical, the IFR has been demolished by vaccinating the elderly.

This can be taken two ways.... Either that Covid was never a risk to most people to begin with and only appeared deadly because of those close to death, OR Vaccines have saved us.

Either way, the CFR in Briton of the Delta Variant is 0.13%, for the unvaccinated that number is 0.08%

A reasonable IFR rate would be close to half those rates (in my opinion, as that is unknowable)

https://archive.is/Um0V9

Derek_Mudaxe2• 5 years ago

I get that a former penal colony probably has inherited expansive judicial discretion

This made me double take. The Thirteen colonies was used as a penal colony too, so maybe the USA has expansive judicial discretion too, or maybe it's not really relevant.

jjk166• 5 years ago

Well it does have both the highest incarceration rate and highest absolute number of people incarcerated in the world.

liminal• 5 years ago

You seem to think that not following a quarantine order isn't a big deal. Others think otherwise.

LatteLazy• 5 years ago

On the other hand Aus is basically covid free and has been for nearly a year.

Meanwhile us Liberal brits let everyone flout the rules and we're headed into a third wave despite being over 60% vaccinated. Oh and we created at least 1 new variant. Oh and we've had a lot more disruption, lockdowns, curfews etc.

Sometimes giving up some freedom now gets you a lot more freedom (and fewer dead people) in the very near future.

jhanschoo• 5 years ago

He was sentenced to seven months in prison, but can walk free after serving just two months behind bars.

I don't know if you read the part where it says that he actually needs to spend only 2 months behind bars, but if you didn't, does that change your opinion?

wrycoder• 5 years ago

In North Korea, they just shoot them.

amackera• 5 years ago

Buddy they do that in America too

rfd4sgmk8u• 5 years ago

Australians, please, vote out your leadership. The Morrison administration is the worst thing to happen to Australia in years. Absolutely incompetence, misinformation, pandering to fossil fuel industry, environmental destruction and lies.

Media Watch, the ABC news program captures some of the absolute stupidity occurring down under: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssBtV3J7BBLZ...

This all could have been resolved by now if Australia had decent leadership. They were offered the solution, but were so pig headed they refused it. Now they are in an even worse situation.

"Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise." Donald Horne, 1964

yawaworht1978• 5 years ago

Well, now he will get a government provided "quarantine".

AlexCoventry• 5 years ago

I'm looking forward to Australia relaxing entry requirements on vaccinated international travelers.

anotherevan• 5 years ago

This article[1] has a little more detail.

[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9783343/WA-man-sent...

Some things to note:

* There were fifteen separate incidents of quarantine breach. He also, "regularly left his house for hours at a time" during that period.

* The magistrate as much as said the harshness was in-part a warning to other would-be offenders (sending a "powerful message").

Yeah, we do take quarantine pretty seriously here. Having gone through the extended lockdowns in Victoria, while our geography was advantageous, it also required a huge effort of societal and political will and cooperation to get back to zero community transmission. It relied on following the advice of our health experts and scientists in the face of large economic and political pressures.

In Melbourne now we are enjoying reasonably normal conditions compared to B.C. (Before COVID) times. So we have a pretty low tolerance for any "dick-head" that may put that at risk. That said, I'm surprised at jail time instead of a steep monetary fine.

It is a shame we pretty much squandered our gains with a very poorly handled vaccination roll-out (but that's a discussion for another time).

Perth man jailed for 7 months after breaching self-quarantine instructions

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