It's all political rhetoric prepping people for the worst case at a time when few things were known.

Things change. The situation is extremely dynamic not static. And response will change too.

Germany is already thinking of scaling back its lockdown. So will Australia.

better question: do you really think that all these digital nomad/consultant types (most of them > 30) will just go out merrily, when the first 2,3 healthy people in their big number of acquaintances are dying?

Probably not right that second, but I expect within months they'll be ready again. People really enjoy international travel.

Nobody wants to shut down their country, they just want thousands of deaths even less. And there ain't no way for people travelling by plane to follow social distancing.

I heard the mayor of Byron Bay literally say on this evening's news to potential holiday makers this Easter "We don't want you here". Clearly things are serious when a region that thrives on tourism income pretty much forgoes it for the foreseeable future.

Same thing is happening all over the US, Especially in places with large numbers of second homes owned by rich people from suburbs and cities. The official reasons are the limited number of local hospital beds as well as grocery supply lines not set up for off-season surges, but there is also a lot of latent resentment toward rich “summer people” that can now be freely exercised.

The big fear with these smaller remote-ish places is that their tiny hospitals will be swamped - Byron Bay hospital is pretty small, the next large hospital would be an hour's drive to Gold Coast. Other local holiday destinations in Australia have larger distances (Perth - Busselton 2 1/2 hours).

Holidaying sick people will quickly swamp the local small infrastructure as they can't easily be moved away!

but people traveling by plane can certainly be sent to concentrated quarantine facilities upon arrival and monitored on an hourly basis for two or three weeks.

China tried this in March and it failed rather spectacularly. Border officials were quickly overwhelmed and had to play it fast and loose; nobody knows who was responsible for what. In many cases, people showing symptoms who were supposed to be placed under medical observation were prematurely discharged, this plus some other oversight have resulted in at least one active disease cluster in Guangzhou. By the end of March the government had to massively reduce the number of arriving flights to make the passenger numbers more manageable.

As it always turns out, providing food and accomondation for tens of thousands of people is always easier said than done.

Australia has already been doing mandatory quarantine for about a week now and it seems to be working fairly well. Obviously it could have capacity issues if the number of travelers increased.

You’d be amazed how fast people’s ideology changes when reality punches them in in the face repeatedly. Small costs borne by others people you don’t care about don’t matter. Large costs borne by you? People will adjust their actions very quickly and then explain how their ideology has always supported what they’re currently doing.

Right now only Australian citizens and permanent residents are allowed to enter Australia. As soon as they land they are driven to a local hotel where they are forced into quarantine for two weeks.

The government is not messing around because many previous arrivals who were told to self isolate at home turned out not be self isolating, and most of the infections to date have been traced to overseas arrivals vs local "community transmissions".

Most states have also shut their borders, the only exceptions being NSW and Victoria. E.g., anyone entering South Australia or Tasmania from interstate has to spend the first two weeks in self isolation.

I can see the domestic travel restrictions being eased in a few months, but think the Australian government will be very reluctant to relax international travel restrictions until there is a vaccine.