Hi John,
I believe when I looked that my country had initial cases from China around similar times to the US. Certainly we have large Chinese tertiary student populations and movements between our countries. Our population is essentially clustered in a handful of coastal cities. The governments, state and Federal acted relatively quickly and testing and contact tracing were a major early focus. We had similar issues to the US with resources (PPE and ventilators etc). There was some panic buying at various times that lasted for a week or so.
There were a few important mistakes, one involving a cruise ship, some quarantine problems that resulted in aged care fatalities and high levels of infections amongst various workers eg meat processing. But from what I could tell nothing like the size of the problem in US.
The citizens were essentially compliant with the government restrictions although now after the recent spike in Melbourne we had some crazies talking of hoax and protesting loss of "rights".
There is now relaxing of most state borders and a travel bubble is likely with NZ and other low risk countries. Also overseas students are likely to be arriving in the new year again.
I think we did better than most because we went hard and early. Early testing, hard restrictions and a generally compliant population to a consistent government message.
Thank you, Mr Crow.
Very informative, as always.
As to your government, looks like meeting the problem head on, instead of denying it for several months, as in US, was the most important element.
As to your citizenry, I have seen video of a few Aussie crazies; the police were quite professional, and patient, and seemed slightly amused, as they eventually arrested the idiots spouting antimask/hoax nonsense. Now imagine that sort of idiocy among 25%?,35%?, of the population, and you have a picture of United States' citizens.
As an aside, NY state cases are above 1000 per day, for the first time in more than a month. Not good, obviously. Schools are reopening, Your thoughts?
Also, the vaccine news seems to be nothing but hype?
( Having lived through the 1976 swine flu fiasco - can we all say Guillain-Barre together? - the effects of rushing out a vaccine are horrific; first, for those severely injured, and second, for a total loss of trust in science and government.)
