How do you apply the “islands do better” logic to the UK or Hawaii? Hawaii might have done well by US standards, but it has performed badly compared to other islands. The UK has not done well.

Yes. Also Australia is an island, but Victoria (my state) peaked over 700 cases/day and other states during the same period managed to keep their case numbers controlled at the same time (~10 cases / day in NSW iirc). It wasn't magic. We closed the state borders, making each state basically its own island. Victoria imposed strict lockdowns to get the case numbers down and the rest of the country went about business as usual.

I don't see why the same strategy wasn't used in Europe or the US. Its hard to control a virus when there's a constant stream of new cases coming over the border. I suppose its way too late for that now.

The UK is a remarkably un-island-like island in terms of the frequency and ease of travel between it and the mainland.

In particular, the UK and France are connected by a high-speed train tunnel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel

The travel times quoted by that article: "London to Paris taking 2 hours 15 minutes, to Brussels 1 hour 51 minutes."

That's faster than some people's daily commutes into NYC.