Numerous videos of police actions from protests went viral in social media groups dedicated to anti-vaxxer, anti-lockdown and COVID scepticism conversations.įootage of an older woman being pepper-sprayed, a man being body slammed in a train station, and a woman being pinned down by police for not wearing a face mask clocked up hundreds of thousands of views, as clips were snipped from live-streams or copied from one social media platform and reposted on another. Much of America’s recent obsession with Australia came after violent protests in Melbourne, and authorities’ responses to them. His state, with a smaller population than Australia, has suffered 55,000 COVID deaths and 3.6 million infections. However, in the background, a months-long smear campaign against COVID restrictions in Australia had been brewing on social media and among right-wing news outlets in the US.įlorida governor Ron DeSantis compared Australia to “communist China” in a recent speech. The impetus for this vicarious frustration was a mandate by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio for teachers in the city to be vaccinated by last Monday. Tweet from in New York, an early global hotspot for the virus, the strange protest raged against Australia’s vaccine mandates. In contrast, many Australians look at America’s COVID-19 tolls – 725,000 deaths, hospitals overwhelmed, millions infected – and shake their heads. In America, where restrictions were largely modest and quickly wound back in many states, Australia’s system of lockdowns and travel restrictions is slammed by some as draconian. The strange protest’s roots can be traced to a recent fixation among right-wing pundits, anti-lockdown activists and conservative commentators on social media, who see Australia’s COVID-19 restrictions as some kind of warning sign of tyranny and oppression. The Americans chanted “end medical apartheid” and “we support Australia”, as if those same sentiments were commonplace here. New York City, with a population of 8.5 million people, has recorded more than 34,000 COVID-related deaths.
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