The biggest names from Fox News and other right-wing media have mocked how COVID-19 has been handled in Australia, a country that has suffered just 0.1% of the number of confirmed cases recorded in the United States.
Debate continues to rage over Australia’s strict public health restrictions as daily case numbers creep up in the 300s and much of the country is in lockdown.
With political leaders increasingly publicly acknowledging that an elimination strategy is untenable even in the short term, discussion is moving to how Australians can live with the virus while keeping deaths (which remain in the single digits nationally each day) and hospitalisations down.
In the US — where cases are peaking again with 120,000 cases and 500 deaths reported daily (taken from a seven-day average) — the biggest right-wing voices have recently latched on to Australia’s new lockdowns as proof of public health overreach. Last night Tucker Carlson took aim on his prime-time Fox News show at the severity of Sydney’s lockdown and the use of police and army to enforce “martial law”. He played a clip of NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant advising people to limit talking to each other in public.
“It’s humiliating in its cowardice and its lack of proportion,” he said, broadcasting from his Maine studio. (The state of Maine has had 64 deaths for every 100,000, compared with Australia’s 3.7.) The previous week he made similar comments in an interview with News Corp’s Sharri Markson: “Australia, and I’m sorry to say this, has become a sort of COVID dictatorship.”
The Fox News host said this as he broadcast from Hungary, a country that has lost its status as a democracy under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s rule and has suffered more COVID-19 deaths per capita than any other European nation.
Dan Bongino is a Fox News host and right-wing commentator who often has the most popular content on Facebook each day. He broadcasts from Florida, which has recorded 185 COVID-19 deaths for every 100,000.
Last month a clip from him commenting on Chant’s comments went viral, racking up more than 1.4 million views:
Watch the liberal totalitarians explain this away. Why? Because they’re totalitarians.
He said that in the video which was posted on the day that Florida became the state with the highest level of cases and death rates on a seven-day average.
Popular podcaster Joe Rogan — who has used his exceedingly large platform to question the science of vaccines and give credence to other conspiracy theories — weighed in from Texas on Australia’s lockdowns. As state officials announced on August 4 that COVID-19 cases, hospitalisations and deaths were rising faster in Texas than ever before, Rogan spoke in disbelief about the restrictions from a state that’s had 50 times more deaths per capita than Australia:
There’s some crazy shit going on right now where the army is trying to keep people inside in Australia.
Across the pond, GB News, the new right-wing news channel featuring former Sky News Australia’s Angelos Frangopoulos, invited Institute of Public Affairs research fellow James Bolt to talk about the “draconian” measures. Speaking to an audience from a country that’s recorded 6.1 million cases and 130,000 deaths compared with Australia’s 36,000 cases and 947 deaths, Bolt argued that Australia was in a much worse state than the UK:
We’re told to look to Britain as this post-apocalyptic hellscape of what COVID has done.
I don’t always have the time to write a post to every Crikey article that I would like to respond to but this one have got me fired right-up.
How dare these right-wing ratbags from America or elsewhere try to tell us how to handle the COVID crisis? With their record of chaos, death and destruction from COVID that has resulted because of their gross incompetence, inaction and free-market and bible-bashing ideological zealotry, do they really expect that we will take them seriously?
I have been a subscriber to The Washington Post for a few years now. I also do a quick check of the main news items from The New York Times. It has been clear to me for quite a while that America is in the grip of some kind of collective form of insanity. The country appears to be imploding from within. A former friend of mine who was a history teacher claimed some 15 or so year ago that America is going the same way as the Roman Empire. So, is it really any surprise that we have (let’s not pull any punches here) nutjobs like Tucker Carlson (and yes I know, we have our own home-grown analogues here) making the kind of absurd,risible and outlandish claims that we read about in the above article,
Sure, our Federal Governments and some State Governments have, and continue to make mistakes (are you listening Glady?) here but god almighty, I would rather be here than in that lunatic asylum that calls itself “The Land of the Free and The Home of the Brave”, any day.
In short, we should treat Tucker and his cronies with absolute contempt and derision that they so rightly deserve. I am not normally very big on nationalism but on this occasion I am willing to make an exception. Overall, the Australian response to COVID has beaten the America response, hands-down.
Readers would do well to remember that the right-wing gun crazies also attack us for our gun control laws. America is a country that has ‘lost the plot’.
Groucho Marx got it right 80 years ago. The land of the spree and the home of the knave.
You had better tell Australia’s media operators and producers that maybe more local and regional analysis/content is relevant versus piping in media ‘muzak’ or noise from the US and UK; transnational amplification of radical right libertarian talking points.
Excellent burst Robert. Totally agree.
Many thanks for your support ConeDog. I appreciate that.
Yeah Robert, me and lots of others are with you. Comparing our situation with failed States I hardly a worthwhile exercise. It’s nutter heaven.
When I was reading this, I had to keep reminding myself, this is not the USA speaking, this is Tucker Carlson and friends who represent a chunk of the US, but not the majority.
And he is a frothing at the mouth nutter, so what else would he say?
What’s funny is when he’s talking about the use of the ADF – a decision of the Feds and NSW govts, both of whom are on the right side of the political divide!
Scotty and Gladys are loony lefties?!? According to Tucker they are, whose knowledge of Australia probably goes as far as how to spell the word.
He’s a joke.
Still we have Jones and Bolt and Kenny and Hadley (a relative moderate!!!) and Christensen and Joyce and Kelly and Dean et al
The big difference between US and Australia is universal health care. Usually in America if you can’t pay you can rot at home.
Australian health authorities have been very concerned about covid over running our hospitals. In 2020 Melbourne Exhibition and Conference Centre (jeff’s shed) was ready to be turned into a field hospital
Australians are appalled that people in Sydney are dying at home
The UK is suffering under the twin evils of mismanaged Brexit and mismanaged Covid test and trace. Covid is now endemic in places like Leeds with high Indian population by a government that governs for London and surrounding affluent counties
The big fear is that Murdoch is stoking resentment of lockdowns here
People with mental health issues have an absolute right to be heard. Equally we have the right to dismiss or ignore their ignorant drivel!
And we should take notice of these right wing self important idiots? In what universe would that be?