The BFD | Thanks a Billion, Leftist Covidiots

Thanks a billion, “Black Lives Matter” morons. That’s the estimated cost of your weekend of copy-cat protests by Australian leftist rent-a-crowds jumping on the latest leftist fad imported from America.

Black Lives Matter protests are expected to delay the easing of COVID-19 restrictions by at least a week, potentially costing the economy more than $1bn and preventing tens of thousands of people getting back to work.

The Australian can reveal the national cabinet, which will meet on Friday, is likely to ditch plans to adopt a more rapid scaling back of social restrictions, pending an evaluation of whether the rallies triggered coronavirus outbreaks.

Despite mounting evidence that they are mostly useless, and their mounting devastation to the economy, authorities were beginning to prise their claws loose from that sweet, sweet absolute, arbitrary power they’d become hooked on for the past couple of months.

Now they’ve got the excuse they needed to keep up their power-trip.

The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, which had flagged last month that two weeks of low infection rates would be a trigger for unlocking restrictions, believes it will take up to 14 days to assess the impact of the demonstrations on new COVID-19 cases.

With only two new infections recorded across the country on Tuesday, both imported from overseas, and low infection rates in recent weeks, the national cabinet had been expected to update the three-stage COVID-19 road map at its Friday meeting.

Treasury estimates have indicated the ongoing cost to the economy of stage two and three restrictions remaining in place could be up to $6.3bn a month. Lifting stage two restrictions was expected to get 275,000 Australians back into work, and an additional 323,000 jobs would be restored after stage three restrictions were removed.

Even the unions are beginning to ark up at the economic damage – and break ranks with their “socially-progressive” chief.

The Health Services Union and Maritime Union of Australia on Tuesday pushed for an end to most social restrictions, in contrast with calls from ACTU secretary Sally McManus that the premature easing of restrictions could have catastrophic consequences[…]

HSU NSW/Queensland secretary Gerard Hayes said: “We can’t rely on the Reserve Bank printing money forever to stimulate the economy. Public health workers have done a tremendous job of containing coronavirus. That’s why we can now contemplate lifting the shutters a little earlier to get the economy humming. At some point real economic activity must resume.”

Unlike Labor politicians or a white-collar career unionist like Sally McManus, rank-and-file union members actually have to work for a living – and it’s their jobs and income which have been affected. If thousands of nosey-nannas and unemployables can have their little marches and shake their little fists, workers can’t see why they should be locked out of actually working.