MP Dunkley: ‘Quarantine Policy Needs To Go’
“The One Bermuda Alliance does not support people breaking the law, yet recent events expose why Premier Burt’s mandatory quarantine policy needs to go – now,” Shadow Minister of National Security & Health Michael Dunkley said.
Mr Dunkley said, “The Premier and Government’s insistence on mandatory quarantine risks making our law-abiding citizens into criminals.
“This is wrong. The One Bermuda Alliance does not support people breaking the law, yet recent events expose why Premier Burt’s mandatory quarantine policy needs to go – now!
“Bermudians must be allowed to isolate in their homes and only to the extent medically required to meet the actual risks.
“The Government’s Covid policies are haphazard and increasingly out of touch with reality. The PLP must not dictate in a democracy. The people need to be with you, and that means policies need to be clear, consistent and, above all, and fair.
“The One Bermuda Alliance did not support this bad law. It must be changed.”
You can find more information on the links below and also on our dedicated website BermudaCovid.com, which is the most comprehensive resource and historic record available of Bermuda’s handling of the pandemic.
- All: Our coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic here
- Bermuda Stats: Chart of testing stats here
- Vaccinations: Data covering vaccinations here
Thank You Mr. Dunkley for taking the stand that you have and not to mention the amount of money being wasted by this government in trying to police the whole issue.
Too bad the numpty OBA Leader is following the PLP line.
Are you referring to Kim or Wayne?
Dunkley is wrong.
We need quarantine for unvaccinated travellers (as do many countries) because they have statistically more chance of contracting and spreading COIVD-19. By a considerable margin.
We need government mandated quarantine in Bermuda, because Bermudians think their sh*t don’t stink , they cannot stay at home and think rules don’t apply to them.
It’s really that simple.
I could care less what whacko holistic eating berries cure the Cannoniers think they have for coronavirus. But they need to be isolated until they have had their day 14 tests.
Yes they should quarantine. AT HOME!!
A$$h^%le. You need to be band from commenting on here. You racists foreigner!
Well, the problem is, Bermudians can’t be trusted to behave…you see Bermudians believe their own press about being “spashal” and that rules don’t apply.
Dunkley would be correct if people could be trusted, but they can’t, so here we are.
banned not band. I know you’re upset, but you need to try harder.
racist? LOL….that the best you can do?
Have you seen Americans and the UK March against crazy Covid rules.
Did you not see Trump’s supporters raid the capitol!
Did you see the Haitian prime minister say not vaccines’ only to get assassinated, and the first thing America said they would send was ‘vaccines’ to a country of a few million that had less than 500 deaths in a year.
“Well, the problem is, Bermudians can’t be trusted to behave…you see Bermudians believe their own press about being “spashal” and that rules don’t apply.”
Please do not brand all of us with the same brand. Most Bermudians obey the rules. There will always be a minority who do not. That is true for most of the civilised world.
Sadly the minority is closer to 50% than you’d like to admit.
I wonder how many public and vocal anti-vaxers have secretly had the vaccine while continuing to spout conspiracy theory nonsense?
To bad it’s true prove them wrong you are a racist hope your real name never comes out for your sake.
Race has nothing, zero, to do with my comments. Think back to the spike in March and the mini-lockdown through April and into May. Why did that happen? Bad behaviour and an inability to listen to the evidence.
How many people died needlessly during that period as a result? Who is missing a much loved grandparent right now because of that stupidity?
And to point out even more stupidity, apparently there”s a video circulating on an “anti-masker” looking for mischief in Lindos.
What on earth is going on?
As if being called a racist is the end of the world .. LOL
Agreed.
Why don’t you just stay home? It will keep you safe and sound while the rest of us get on with out lives.
Why should I? I follow the rules, and have done the socially responsible thing by getting vaccinated.
It’s the unvaccinated increasing the risk for everyone else.
I’m curious as to what your position is on vaccinated guests? I have been fully vaccinated with Moderna vaccine. To visit Bermuda, I have to get tested 3 days before travel and bring proof that I am negative. Pay $75 for Bermuda’s travel authorization and get fined $1,000 God forbid I make a mistake filling it out, test again at the airport and quarantine for up to 24 hrs until I get those negative results, re-test again on day 4, 8, and 14 and it’s not specified where? AND told by my Bermudian friends that even though the mask mandate for outdoors has been lifted, I will most likely get dirty looks and snares if I walk around without the mask outdoors. All that on top of the high expense of lodging and food there, which we’ve never minded on our 13 years of visiting every summer. From a vaccinated visitor point of view it is very sadly not worth it. I feel as if I’m almost being discouraged to come back.
Getting a test 3 days before travel is standard everywhere. The 75 dollar authorization form does suck and is a pain, I’ll give you that one however they say the airport arrival test can take 24 hours but from experience and having friends visit the turn around is much faster. Usually by the time you’ve gotten to the hotel or your accommodation and had your first few beverages the result is in. As the for the follow up tests it is very easy to find one as no where in Bermuda is more than a half hour drive. Despite what you may hear it is totally acceptable to not wear a mask outdoors. Maybe 1 or 2 out of 10 will be wearing a mask outdoors. We hope to see you back here soon.
Pre and post travel testing is pretty much standard everywhere, as is quarantine for unvaccinated travellers. NOt sure the point you are trying to make, but if you go anywhere you’ll probably need to follow some sort of testing protocol.
That’s the one thing I don’t really understand, there seems to be a view that Bermuda is doing something different than everywhere else. It isn’t.
And people are dying of this globally, thousands of people, and Bermudians are strutting around like it’s over.
Ummm Sand,
1. Note that Bermudians mostly go to school and travel to the US. We need only a negative test to go there.
We are NOT required to quarantine.
2. The 2nd place our family, friends and student travel to is England.
We are on their green list, and we need only to have a negative Pre- Test. We Do Not have quarantine there.
We test negative on day 2.
3. The only place that our students travel to would be Canada who have kept its borders closed to the world.
There you need a negative Pre- arrival test. 3 days of mandatory hotel and the other 11 days at home or a place of choice. But not that many Bermudians travel there so it’s no big deal.
Have you read about infection rates amongst the unvaccinated in the UK and US?
The US is seeing an explosion due to the delta variant.
Canada is not the only place. Australia and New Zealand still require a 2 week quarantine (if you can get in at all) and most of the Channel Islands did as well until 2 weeks ago
The reason quarantine is not required from Bermuda for travel to the US is Bermuda is not on their high risk list. Different states have different requirements. They may have restrictions on people coming from other countries that present a higher risk. Why don’t we follow the guidelines and help keep Bermuda a place from which we can travel. If you choose not to vaccinate but want to travel then you pay the price for putting others potentially at risk. There are people who can be trusted to quarantine at home but others have proven themselves to be untrustworthy. It is they who have driven the authorities to put this hotel quarantine in place. Remember the earlier fiascos that drove up covid numbers? Come on, if you really care about community health, stay home or get vaccinated.
The reality is that while pre-test is standard, many, if not most, places do not require a PCR Nasal test like Bermuda does, accepting instead many of the alternatives which are easier to obtain (primarily because they are more widely offered and provide the results in a far quicker timeframe) and far cheaper.
In the US many PCR tests are now 2-5 business days returning, and many places simply don’t offer them without a doctor’s recommendation any longer. There are places you can get rapid ones where the results are anywhere from 30mins to a day, but they are also more expensive and often entail a fairly significant wait time, given their lack of frequency.
The Bermuda government’s agreement with Costco is a joke, just read the horrid reviews to note that it seems results being late is a very common occurrence (as in, 5 days return time, which puts it outside the realm of Bermuda’s requirements), which would be disastrous for obvious reasons, and the whole process of receiving and sending it back is often a headache.
Post-test isn’t required in many countries, especially for vaccinated persons. Those that do primarily do a singular test on arrival for vaccinated persons and that is it. I have yet to hear of anywhere else that is doing the insane regiment of pre, arrival, as well as day 4,8,14 for people who are vaccinated.
Bermuda is doing something different, but for the vaccinated rather than for the non-vaccinated. Many countries aren’t permitting non-vaccinated travelers beyond citizens (who will have to quarantine) or if they are, the quarantine requirements are fairly similar (although admittedly 14 day mandatory in a hotel is also something I have yet to see. I believe Canada is doing 4 days in specific hotels before you depart and then have to quarantine at the residence you will be staying at for 14 days, and vaccinated citizens are now/soon will be exempt from nearly all of that, varying by province).
Being vaccinated currently still has all travelers, whether residents or visitors, jumping through hoops. Long wait times are the norm (especially in the mornings) at the Perot Post location, which is where they send you, and 5 tests in total for something you are exceptionally unlikely to catch, and then if you do, exceptionally unlikely to be capable of spreading, is just frankly absurd. Not to mention the ridiculous aspects surrounding the travel authorization nonsense, or the complete over staffing to implement all of the Covid things due to sheer incompetency from a procedural and system design standpoint.
I don’t believe anyone should be forced to be vaccinated, I do believe the science behind it is sound and have gotten vaccinated myself, and I think the Government is doing a horrible job incentivizing people to become vaccinated. Instead of maintaining, or even tightening restrictions on those who are vaccinated (used to be 5 days for pretest if vaccinated, now it is 4? Why?) and making the non-vaccinated feel even more persecuted, perhaps they could have lifted restrictions for those who are vaccinated (like everywhere else did) and kept them in place for those who aren’t.
If they actually punished people who broke the mandatory quarantine, rather than blabbering on about how it wouldn’t be anything more ‘than a traffic ticket’, they’d have seen less issue in that realm, as the risks of doing so would have been real and tangible.
Instead we have everyone being persecuted because of the actions of a few, many of whom are dumb enough to consistently snitch on themselves on social media yet get off scot free.
The reality is the Pfizer vaccine (the primary one we have vaccinated people with, since we gave away most of the AstroZ) continues to perform exceptionally well against all variants, when you look at the objective data. Unfortunately our government claims to use evidence and data, yet refuses to share that with anyone and then gets upset when people say that it is no longer good enough to be told what to do, but not be given the data supporting the reasoning that led them to these decisions.
Let’s be brutally honest here – it isn’t a huge jump to make the assumption that the many other aspects all end up bringing $ to select persons within the current friends and family group.
All of the the above is then exasperated by Burt and other Minister’s blatantly breaking or stretching their own rules, right back to Zane and Caines, but also including Burt at St. Regis, 90 person parties with DJs, etc.
Plus, any large exemption always seems to end up being able to be traced back to one of the profiteering businesses being owned directly by someone in that friends and family group.
Please ppl , learn that the word is ‘exacerbate/exacerbated’.
Currently true, but post Cup match, watch Bermuda slide back on the UK amber list and they require vaccines or quarantine. Because Bermudians know best.
I think you’ll find some of your facts are anecdotal around test result return times in the US.
I too agree the Government have done a good job, with a few miss steps and inconsistencies here and there.
But the reality is this – get vaccinated.
While that is a definitely a turn off, can you imagine how negative Unvaccinated people feel being locked up.
They should get vaccinated and fell positive. Sorry, that sound you hear is the world’s smallest violin.
Mr Sand,
Why doesn’t the US and the CDC discriminate?
Why is the US wide open?
Why doesn’t the UK discriminate?
Why are they wide open.
Why does the rest of the world deem us as safe?
What harm are the unvaccinated to you?
You do realize that vaccinated people protect themselves, so what is your concern?
You do realize that our kids in Bermuda are not at risk?
You do realize that the vulnerable seniors are vaccinated?
You do realize that around the time of the spike we had more untested variables besides the non-vaccinated and new variants… during the spike we had started more vaccinating and we also started testing all our school kids.
Did you hear any reports on the viral loads, because just like the vaccinated, most of our cases were asymptomatic!
And despite some of our youth testing positive, they were not sick. Our kids live with Covid. Not 1 has died.
And in schools, we have NOT seen sickness.
If almost 65% of our population is vaccinated be it by choice or coercion, the other 35% is made mostly of naturally recovered non-vaccinated persons whom have natural immunity, our youth who quite frankly ARE NOT at risk and the smallest percentage are those who cannot or wish not to get vaccinated whether it is medically or choice.
So at this juncture, who are we protecting????
Add to this the fact that we have less than 11 cases as expected not merely because we are immune but also because summer just is not our flu season.
The numbers were the same as last year. The only difference was that there were no vaccinations.
So Mr. Dunkley,
Please tell us what you would have done if the OBA was in power through this whole pandemic. Why don’t you/party members come up with a plan/suggestions and present them to the PLP Government.
I’m just saying….
I bet he wouldn’t have called a snap election spending $1M to save $30K.
Because the dictator PLP won’t listen anyway! Every legislation lately has been via negative resolution..it means that PLP don’t won’t a debate.its do as I say! They don’t want to hear from or care what the people think!
Well, the problem for Dunkley is that had the OBA been in power, they would have done exactly the same things, based on the data, (apart form the snap election) but htere would be one notable difference.
The “combined opposition”, the people’s campaign, PLP, unions etc., would be marching and striking.
The PLP has made it crystal clear many times to the OBA. ” WE DON’T CARE WHAT YOU THINK”.
Exactly I see no recommendations from the OBA as to what they would put in place….
OBA is just a waste of space ….. hopefully before the next election a new group of candidates will emerge with all Bermudians and residents at heart along with social and economic values …. maybe just a dream but still possible !
Where is the people’s money, Dunkley? $300 million.
What are you talking about?
Give Bermudians back that money your party floundered to America Cup Bermuda, Morgan’s Point, The airport deal.
Quietness will not help. Nor distraction the Bermudian public.
Come on even Burt and Furbert know not to mention AC 35 now it is the gift that keeps giving just like being premier or union boss.
Pamela Richardson is clearly the old Betty Trump, now reincarnated as concernedbermudian on another site. Banned many times and outed.. All she does is try to disrupt threads as she hates Michael Dunkley.
Same old tired, discredited and frankly stupid talking points.
I can’t wait until the world realizes that we are all victim to the now weaponized “Seasonal Flu”!!!
After all our former to be PLP Government got rid of the Flu a couple months ago so….
Worlds a stage.
If Un vaccinated want to be sick of COVID-19 die or survive, let’s give them the choice! Liberty or Death! Premier Burt should asked the majority Bermudians what they want ? You can’t save them all! If someone want it why not! Die or pre existing conditions or whatever the outcome. Bermuda will have its survival population and they will be replaced by other human beings from other countries!
Peace!
Do you all realize that we only lost seniors most of whom had underlining conditions.
26/33 were well over aged and perhaps we would
have been blessed to keep our loved ones around a little longer
if they had been treated!
Hey Pamela Richardson. Your as dumb as. with your comment. How about your PLP parties handling of Heritage Wharf, Port Royal Golf Course, Dame Louis Brown Evans Bldg, Barkley Institute and all the cost over runs that ran well over $300 million? Your friends and family stuffing their pockets with tax payers money? They were taking food off your plate right under your nose but you were to dumb and blind to see that now weren’t you?
Take a hike back to the rock to crawled from under.
Sad but true. People cannot be trusted to stay home.
Being unvaxed has it’s consequences. You want to travel? Well, you had better budget in your quarantine on your return. Quite simple.
As for the vaxed, travel & life should return to normal. Do away with the TAF and the unnecessary testing.
Maybe if Mr. Politician didn’t spend all our money our government wouldn’t be quite as desperate to get some back !
Lord forbid if any of you get the COVID-19 and infect/kill others.
Michael, sit down. I know you think you think you are doing good, but you are an embarrassment
If people cant be trusted then why do we bother to vote people in to have power over anyone. They can’t be trusted right, dude even the police can’t be trusted and I am not even gonna consider trusting people on here they only have as much information as I do. However I do have the benefit of the top dr. on island to ask my questions to after all they are family. Got to say though the authoritarians on here are just as bad as the virus being later down the road they be talkin like ____ the plague rats…… oh wait they have already done that…..
LOL
“The One Bermuda Alliance does not support people breaking the law”
Right, just like Boris Johnson doesn’t support racism!
They don’t and he doesn’t.