How long can a democracy maintain emergency limits and still call itself free?
I live in Victoria. My wife and I are both fully vaccinated (AZ &amp; Pfizer, respectively). Yet we are not allowed to sit at a park. We live in a small rural town, which for some reason is classified as &quot;metro&quot; for the purposes of lockdowns (never had a case here, mind you). When we go for a walk in the morning, with no people as far as the eye can see, we are by law required to wear masks. And the police are actively enforcing this and fining people for not wearing a mask in similar situations.<p>My entire family (mum, dad, sister, in-laws) is also fully vaccinated, but we&#x27;re not allowed to visit them either.<p>I&#x27;m not sure why, but there is a fairly large (though diminishing at this point) group of people who will back to the hilt every single abrogation of freedoms perpetrated by this Government. You can find them at reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;australia. They will dismiss and trivialise your concerns. &quot;Get over it, it&#x27;s just a mask lol! It&#x27;s not too much to ask!&quot; I suspect most of them live in the inner-city, where there&#x27;s plenty to see within their 5km radius, and they have had steady work throughout the pandemic.<p>For some people, it all adds up, and it is too much to ask. My brother-in-law has been out of work for most of this pandemic. We found out a year into the pandemic that while my sister-in-law has been going to work, he&#x27;s been drinking bottles of gin every day. He took up bike riding and got _seriously_ into it. Then they announced the 5km limit, and his nice peaceful ride between this town &amp; the next turned into boring loops. He relapsed on drinking shortly after.<p>Recently, the state Government closed playgrounds, based on the erroneous belief that they were a source of transmission. To date they have produced zero evidence of a single case transmitted at a playground. Once again, concerns about this were trivialised. I saw on Reddit a bunch of people saying stuff like &quot;I bought a little playground online and set it up in the backyard and my kids love it!&quot; or &quot;I gave them chalk and they&#x27;re having a blast!&quot;, just trivialising any concerns people had about the closures.<p>My wife is a teacher at a fairly rough school. It&#x27;s all remote. A lot of her students come from troubled homes, and their behaviour reflects that. She works with a few of the boys to come up with &quot;plans&quot;, stuff as simple as &quot;when I feel really angry, I&#x27;ll go for a BMX ride&quot;. Sounds silly but it really helps them blow off steam. Well all the bike parks are closed now. Should we blame these boys when they start smashing things instead? Many of her students are completely disconnecting from school. She rings their parents, and the parents either don&#x27;t give a shit, or say stuff like &quot;my child won&#x27;t even get out of bed, I don&#x27;t know what to do.&quot;<p>There is a legitimate mental health crisis going on right now. My sister-in-law is a psychologist specialising in troubled kids. She says the self-harm and suicide is through the roof. And by the way, it doesn&#x27;t help that she has to treat these kids remotely (&quot;telehealth&quot;. She works from the clinic, but all the appointments are remote). Of all things needing face-to-face contact, you think this would be it!<p>There&#x27;s going to be a reckoning. I can feel it in the wind. A lot of the hardcore lockdown supporters are very loud, very vocal, and it can be intimidating to voice contrary opinions around them. But I see it when I walk the streets. I see it in family and friends. Public opinion has shifted, and people are very, very, fed up. We are quiet. But come election day, we will be heard.