News Corp Says Victoria’s Lockdown Is ‘More Extreme’ Than Wuhan, Where They Welded Doors Shut

It’s a gold rush of shit takes at the moment. There’s grift in them thar hills. And for News Corp’s Melbourne-based Herald Sun, a vein of riches has been unearthed as far as idiotic opinions on the current lockdowns go. The latest – a barnburner even by their own standards – screams black and blue that the Melbourne lockdowns are, somehow, even “more extreme” than the ones imposed in Wuhan.

In an opinion piece published by the Herald Sun late yesterday, columnist Patrick Clayton took aim at the punitive powers Victoria Police have been handed throughout these lockdowns – powers that, quite rightfully, demand scrutiny.

Immediately though, the piece veers into baffling territory by claiming that “These days, $5000 is measured as 50 overpriced jumpers or 100 non-stick frying pans,” in reference to the increased on-the-spot COVID fines that were introduced at the start of the month.

However the argument that really has people bent quite significantly out of shape is the insinuation that Melbourne has somehow imposed a “more extreme” lockdown on its people than that of the Chinese Government on Wuhan.

“We live in a police state. A punitive state,” the take goes. “When penalties get raised, no one bothers to ask why anymore, even though Melbourne’s lockdown is now longer and more extreme than that in Wuhan, where authorities took to welding shut doors.” Wuhan, per reports from February, welded doors to buildings shut in order to forcibly quarantine coronavirus patients in their homes. State officials also reportedly cut trenches or built walls across roads leading into or out of town, and set nets in rivers to catch people desperate enough to try and swim their way out.

That line was parroted this morning by Chris Uhlmann, the current political editor of Nine News (Nine, full disclosure, also owns this publication).

https://twitter.com/CUhlmann/status/1306756000603488257

Uhlmann gleefully revelling in the words of a News Corp publication is curious, to say the very least. Though not particularly out of character as far as lockdown discourse goes. The Canberra-based news chief made his own personal distaste for Melbourne’s restrictions abundantly clear in a column published in the Sydney Morning Herald on Wednesday.

https://twitter.com/CUhlmann/status/1305978583320420353?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1305978583320420353%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmedia%2Fcommentisfree%2F2020%2Fsep%2F18%2Fchris-uhlmanns-damnation-of-daniel-andrews-delayed-at-the-age%3Futm_term%3DAutofeedCMP%3Dtwt_guutm_mediumutm_source%3DTwitterEchobox%3D1600388237

It’s interesting to note that, despite also having access to print space in The Age, editors in Melbourne reportedly declined to print that column in Victoria (due to their belief that readers wouldn’t necessarily like it).

Nonetheless, the original Herald Sun article has been run in Victoria, and through Uhlmann has received a significant signal boost beyond News Corp’s enclave of bickering sycophantic scribes.

So hard as it may be to believe, the counterpoint now has to be made:

If you’re comparing the lockdown measures imposed in two different cities, and state police were welding doors shut in one of them? That’s the more extreme one.

Like, that’s not even close.

We’re not forcibly boarding up houses in bloody Thomastown, you clowns. Take a fucken lap.

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