As the world attempts to figure out what life will be like as efforts to curb the pandemic intensify with no end date in sight, an Australian health leader revealed plans to re-implement contact tracing measures as part of a “New World Order.”
When a reporter asked New South Wales Public Health Chief Dr. Kerry Chant during a press conference on Thursday about what measures will look like when the country reopens in October, Dr. Chant replied “We will be looking at what contact tracing looks like in the ‘New World Order,'” she said.
“And yes, it would be [include] pubs and clubs and other things if we have a positive case there. Our response may be different if we know people are fully vaccinated, so we’re working through a number of those issues,” Chant continued.
Dr. Chant’s “New World Order” statement unsurprisingly rendered it a trending topic on Twitter in the U.S., U.K., and Australia. It even caused Twitter officials to go into an immediate frenzy to share a disclaimer for the viral video, saying: “Unfounded claims about the ‘New World Order’ conspiracy theory are shared after an Australian government official used the expression during a press conference on Thursday.”
Australia will not lift restrictions until late October when 70 percent of the population is expected to be vaccinated, according to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Even then, Covid-19 restrictions may remain, which gives Aussies little assurance that life will be going “back to normal” after the pandemic dissipates.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time a public health official has used this phrase to describe the post-pandemic world. Minister of Health Brad Hazzard has previously been criticized for calling the pandemic a “New World Order” in July 2020.
“This is a world pandemic, it’s a one in a 100-year event, so you can expect that we will have transmission from time to time, and that’s just the way it is. We’ve got to accept that this is the new world order,” Hazzard said during a conference, following an outbreak of cases.
Australia has experienced some of the strictest lockdown measures to mitigate the coronavirus, including daily curfews and quarantine camps. As a result, tens of thousands of citizens have lashed out against the government and taken the streets to protest, oftentimes violently clashing with Australian police.
Although Australians have been subjected to considerable lockdowns since June despite that more than 13 million are vaccinated, infections have more than doubled.
As the Australian government continues to mislead the public and push back end dates for strict lockdown measures, it appears as though restrictions will be far from “temporary.” However, officials could face significant pushback with millions of people pushing back against the government’s tyranny.
