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People around the world are growing increasingly frustrated with government pandemic powers, limited economic support and ongoing restrictions. Protests over COVID-19 are nothing new — and as recent cases in Melbourne and Europe show, they have not slowed with the ease of lockdowns. In fact, quite the contrary.
Crikey has collated some of the most-attended protests throughout the pandemic to show how spurts of dissent have erupted at different times across the globe. Of course, many occurred in countries where citizens have the right to protest — or where a free press means data on protests are publicly available.
Back to the start: Protests erupt as governments struggle to respond
To say the world wasn’t prepared for COVID-19 — and didn’t understand it — in early 2020 is a massive understatement.
A global shutdown began around March last year. In some regions like NSW, it lasted weeks; others experienced months of lockdowns. Some countries avoided harsh restrictions altogether — much to their detriment, like Sweden — while some bounced in and out of lockdown, like Melbourne.
Almost immediately, dissent began. Many governments hadn’t prepared or didn’t have the resources to help citizens survive once the economy ground to a standstill. Tensions had been high across Latin America due to high inflation and food shortages, with major protests taking place in Chile and Brazil in March, as well as the Philippines.
The US led many of the protests. In April, an estimated 20,000 people protested in Michigan by parking their cars on major roads around the State Capitol building, causing an eight-hour gridlock and causing staffing issues at the nearby hospital.
In Brasilia, Brazil, protesters camped in front of army headquarters demanding a military intervention into the government’s pandemic response, while in Paris riots took place, with many in poorer neighbourhoods arguing their cramped living conditions meant they couldn’t live safely.
Global leaders began discussing how long economies could survive lockdown. In May, officials in the UK and Italy warned the world shouldn’t wait for a vaccine to reopen. Italy, which at the start of the pandemic had been one of the worst-affected countries, allowed restaurants, bars, shops and churches to open.
Australia soon followed suit, with restrictions wound back. As much of the northern hemisphere entered spring and summer, COVID-19 cases around the world started to drop.
It was short-lived.
Outbreaks continued to bubble along across mid-2020 and into early 2021. Residents in Thailand, the Philippines, Belarus, Argentina and Germany protested against new policies across June and July that gave governments too many powers, lockdown and face mask mandates, political corruption and the economic fallout.
In Africa, a food crisis impacted millions. Protests erupted in Kariobangi, Kenya after the government destroyed 7000 homes and a market to curb the spread of the virus, with others told they would have to pay what was essentially a ransom to leave hotel quarantine.
After 112 days in lockdown, Melburnians took to the streets in September. National coordination saw protests erupt across Germany and other parts of Europe and again in Melbourne in November, ramping up at the start of 2021 as new restrictions were implemented after Christmas travel saw a surge of COVID-19 cases. By February, nationwide protests erupted across Australia, with many protesting against Australia’s vaccination rollout.
Hope was in the air — the UK approved Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine and businesses started discussing mandates. But things weren’t moving fast enough.
May 2021: Delta digs in
By May, the Delta variant had dug its tentacles in, with the World Health Organization listing it as a variant of concern by the World Health Organization on May 11.
Many world leaders conceded that Delta was different — while some regions, such as the US and UK were well into their vaccination rollouts, coverage wasn’t high enough to stop a surge of cases.
In July 2021, a wave of protests once again emerged, with residents taking to the streets in Malaysia, Australia, the UK, US and Canada. In France, many of the protests were against vaccine mandates and COVID-19 certificates with up to 250,000 people protesting across over 200 locations in August.
These protests have continued through to November: fatigued with curfews, lockdowns and restrictions, and the promise vaccines would end the pandemic, high case numbers in the Netherlands, UK, France and Germany have seen riots erupt.
Australians too have voiced concerns about state pandemic bills. Victoria is debating a new pandemic bill that would replace the current state of emergency powers. This has seen a wave of protests in Melbourne and violent threats to government officials. But the protesters don’t have a unified motive: some are against vaccines altogether, others are members of violent, extremist groups and others are simply fighting for “freedom”.
While the pandemic appears to be dissipating in some regions, without a global booster program — or even adequate first and second doses in many nations — protests are likely to continue.
Some countries avoided harsh restrictions altogether — much to their detriment, like Sweden — while some bounced in and out of lockdown, like Melbourne.
The idea of Melbourne being a country in its own right is quite appealing.
The idea of Australia being a country is equally appealing.
It would have to be like Singapore and import most of its resources, because the joint is full of oversized houses and lard-a*s*d Suburban AssaUlt Vehicles.
Cleary many humans have no idea how nature works. This, and any other virus, is completely oblivious to how humans respond to it. In fact the virus will thrive and flourish amongst those who refuse to accept the reality of it and take appropriate action to counter it.
Nature throws up challenges to humans from time-to-time. It is up to us to respond to those challenges in a sensible and appropriate manner. The way many humans have responded to this virus threat has been lamentable.
Bullseye, we are either smart enough to accept the “real world (nature won’t indulge our delusions, philosophy, rights …..)” , really pay attention and adapt, or not. It’s just a dumb virus and it won’t negotiate with us, we need to use our brains, co-operate and beat it. It’s mindboggling how childish some of us have been.
Remember or Deputy PM and leader of the coalition in his own mind decided the Gardasil vaccine would create a risk of promiscuity to young girls the age of his own daughter Thanks to the vaccine and the ignoring of Barnabys opinion the cancer rate has been reduced by 90%
Easy to see why we have our current deniers when some of our leaders do not believe in science.
All Hat No Cattle Joyce…
who opposed Gardasil on the grounds that it would be a cause for sexual licence in the young…
who opposed SSM on the grounds that it would ruin the chances of his daughters having a decent marriage…
all while he carried on an affair with an inamorata who was a work colleague…
when discovered had his inamorata shifted around to other National Party members offices into non existent positions…
went into hiding rent free in a mate’s place…
complained about how hard it was to exist on a backbenchers salary of only $200,000…
when a Minister made dodgy decisions, the most egregious concerning shifting APVMA to his electorate and the Eastern Australia Agriculture water buyback…
and we still await his report , at cost AUD675,000, as the so-called “Drought Envoy…
all this by someone who claims to be a Roman Catholic.
The demonisation of Dan has been built up for some years by the LNP and the Murdoch lot. So it’s a very easy click from there to get the yobbos and LNP voters out on the street to protest the proposed legislation to protect people and go some way to equating with Tas and NSW offer!!!! Nothing to do at all with the legislation wihich the protesters would not have read. It is all to do with pushing the Murdoch / LNP barrow. I sometimes wish we had Dan up here in NSW. He’s doing nothing other than his best for his state.
Dan must go. Yes he did “something” but he is trigger happy, non consultative and focused on political outcomes primarily. If you had Dan you would also have the most deaths and the most number of lockdowns. Add in more protests and social disruption and you’ve got the trifecta of failure that Dan is.
Dear Tony .A pandemic is a war with a virus.It’s not a conventional war but some of the same rules must apply
Rule 1 Controlling the virus must be a non-party politics free all in effort..
Rule 2 News media should not promote division .
Your comments support the continuous undermining of the Andrews government by a rabid right win media who had a political agenda as their platform, not the pandemic.
You appear to have overlooked the fact that the majority of deaths in Victoria occurred in facilities under federal control and the majority of outbreaks in Victoria originated In NSW . All states made mistakes the enemy was the virus and should not have been an opportunity for right-wing media to incite riots .
No variant of Covid originated in Australia. Every variant entered Australia through international borders, which are the responsibility of the Federal Government not Dan Andrews.
Back in October 2020, both Dan Andrews and Annastacia Palaszczuk called for the Federal Government to build nationwide, fit-for-purpose quarantine facilities similar to Howard Springs. But, true to form, the Federal Government failed to act, so we ended up with another variant – Delta – which caused further lockdowns, deaths and misery, plus a $3billion per week cost hit to the Australian economy.
Had the Morrison government been half-competent in rolling out a vaccine and preventing Covid entering Australia, we would have spent 2021 recovering rather than jumping in and out of lockdowns.
It really could not be put more clearly, simply & correctly – none of which are exactly fortes of this ‘government’.
As Homer drilled into Bart, ‘never do anything, then you can’t fail‘.
Back in the real world, there is a single common factor to the rapid spread of this plague since late 2019 – not passengers but aircrew are the vector for initial infections and any given location.
The industry cannot afford to have aircraft & pilots languishing in quarantine so get them both in & out of this (and other countries) asap, as deadheads so that they can quickly resume duty.
Almost as if there were an aim rather than chance fault.
The pandemic has been a battle against a virus . Some elements of the press have decided to use the pandemic as a political opportunity to undermine the government.All state goverments have made mistakes and this is not the time for political point scoring .Strange how mistakes that have been ignored in some states are according to the mainstream press sacking offences in others.
Could it be that some rightwing press barrons have gone to far?
Maybe it’s a manifestation of frustration with “the system” in general – unfortunately it’s not focused and being directed at those actually responsible – when government’s neither govern transparently nor for the majority : but rather for those that will pay best/most?
It’s not that simple. The rabble rousers in Melbourne aren’t arguing that Dan Andrews is applying the law unfairly, they’re arguing that they have no intention of being community minded – and ok instead want to push their first-world rights.
This possibly stems from the protesters’ inability to think of the community as a whole, and the lack of resilience to deal with issues (with a desire to blame someone else). Government leaders being more considerate was never going to stop the protesters; in fact, you could argue they protest because their leaders are considering the community, not despite.
I’m not referring to the hard-core alt-right foci (they’re beyond reason); more the venting periphery of the mob – in their frustration (most of whom are probably vaxed?) – that give the mob that “impressive” volume.
Community is a luxury only the wealthy can afford.
Sorry, lost me ‘People around the world are growing increasingly frustrated with government pandemic powers, limited economic support and ongoing restrictions.‘; there are many different reasons and not easily compared, while too many protests are barely authentic but simply extremism under the guise of cliched radical right libertarian ‘freedom’.
This treats similar confected street based actions, like the Koch’s ‘Tea Party’ and the Capitol HIll, as authentic grass roots driven organic protests. However, in the Anglosphere and parts of Europe I’d suggest that is simply not true and these protests are about as organic as any (nativist conservative libertarian) CPAC tour, Q&A or Parliamentary Question Time; while several UK Tory MPs are directly linked to both Kochs and Covid denialism.
In Germany, and elsewhere investigative media have highlighted the global logistics and PR work of ‘World Wide Demonstration’, coincidentally, also promoting Koch’ian like freedom of speech, movement, choice, assembly and health (their website, in English only, has a suspicious lack of information about themselves and supporters but lots of stuff about ‘freedom’; very Orwellian.
In the early days of both strains, triage was undertaken in tents in driveways and refrigerated semitrailers were used as body storage facilities. We were all in the same boat there was no vaccine.I suppose the non-believers would call that freedom .
We the rational decided to trust science and took the jab . Because of our choices, we now find 90% of the hospital cases are unvaccianted some “by Choice” The gene pool will be the winner.
Late news, Australian ‘science presenter’ Jo Nova has promoted World Wide Demonstration protests in all cities last week via her website (inc. links to usual suspects in Oz); this was promoted by another IPA linked think tank’s blog, On Line Opinion from the AIP (Koch Atlas Network):
https://joannenova.com.au/2021/11/worldwide-rally-for-freedom-5-0-protest-this-saturday/