Caleb Bond: Coronavirus restrictions have gone too far when you can’t visit dying family
Banning a daughter from coming to SA to see her terminally ill mother is sick, writes Caleb Bond. Everyone gets the need for border controls – but this lack of humanity is going too far.
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Stopping a daughter from visiting her terminally ill mother, not knowing how much longer she has left to live, would have to be one of the sickest things you could do.
But that’s what the State Government is doing to Domenique Szantyr, who is stuck in Victoria and wants to see her dying mother, Mardi, who is in Adelaide suffering from Stage 4 breast cancer.
Domenique has twice applied to be allowed into the state to visit her mother – and she has twice been knocked back with no explanation. Just a nice note from SA Health to say she’s not wanted.
Your mother be damned – we won’t let you in for any reason on the tiny chance you might be carrying coronavirus.
She has, by the way, said she would do two weeks of hotel quarantine to be able to see her mother. Still not good enough, apparently.
There is a very real possibility that she won’t see Mardi before she dies. And that will be because the Government wouldn’t let her.
Imagine how awful it must feel to not be able to see your own mother at a time when you want to see her more than ever.
It’s been hard enough on people who haven’t been able to see healthy family members for months. It must be so much worse when you know time is running out.
All this is because we have banned anyone coming from Victoria unless they are deemed an “essential traveller” – even South Australian residents who have been effectively rendered stateless by their own Government.
According to the Government’s criteria, you’re only likely to be allowed in to see your dying relative if their life expectancy is two weeks or less.
You can’t even come over for the funeral of your husband or wife unless there are “very exceptional circumstances” – and they are assessed on a case-by-case basis.
Have we completely lost our compassion and humanity?
We have locked out anyone with the slightest chance of carrying coronavirus in the pursuit of ultimate physical health.
But, in doing so, we have completely ignored the importance of mental health and the basics of the human condition – like connection and grief.
It is, frankly, disgusting that our Government and health officials would have such a lack of humanity and compassion as to deny a daughter the opportunity to visit her terminally ill mother. It is sick. And I am sure Domenique is not the only person who has been put in this reprehensible position.
Meanwhile, these people have to watch plane loads of international students and people from Mumbai be brought into Adelaide and put up in hotels.
Even when they offer to be subjected to the same conditions, they are denied entry. And they're in the same country.
Money, it would seem, is more important than basic humanity.
Doctors and other people who would, to any normal person, be considered essential have been denied the ability to cross the border for work, too.
We’ve become so wedded to the idea of border closures that we’ve lost sight of what we’re actually trying to achieve – saving people’s lives.
It has become an indiscriminate denial of entry to anyone, no matter how just their reason – unless they have money and come from overseas, of course.
Is preventing a woman – who is happy to go through strict isolation – from visiting her dying mother going to save a life? Unlikely.
But it is almost guaranteed to make hers much harder.
Yes, border restrictions are necessary to stop the spread of coronavirus. But they have gone beyond being rightfully difficult to downright cruel.
Now, more than ever, people want and need to feel connected. I am ashamed to live in a state that is, without any explanation, standing between people and their terminally ill parents.
These border restrictions were meant to help us – not hurt us. If coronavirus doesn’t do damage, the mental hurt will.
This kind of cruelty will not be forgotten.