I think there is a lot of fundamental attribution error going around when trying to explain relative success at controlling COVID. There are states with little of the infrastructure for public health management you've touted in Australia that have also controlled the disease. There are states with the same infrastructure (e.g. UK) which haven't. Australia is also incomparable to the United States with 1/10th the population, comparably little cross border travel, etc.

My guess is it will be years before we correctly understand exactly what worked or didn't and why.

A lot of the science is already in on this. The most effective interventions are hygiene (washing hands), masks, social distancing and contact tracing (and quarantining close contacts). This is low tech stuff, which is one of the reasons many poor countries have been able to do very well at controlling the pandemic.

Apparently the #1 predictive factor for a country to have good health outcomes is trust between the citizens and their government. Small countries have done better than big countries, but that may be a side effect of public trust generally being better in smaller countries.

Source: this podcast (based on a study) https://overcast.fm/+YQ31Gx6tw

> Since covid, talking to my friends in the USA about Australia feels like punching down.

Please do not take offense to this. This will be infuriating, but I want you to understand the American mindset that causes this behavior.

Please know that I am found of Australians: In primary school, 2 of my neighbors were Australian, and I played with them every day. They were wonderful, very kind, loyal friends, and their family was amazing. In high school, one of my best friends at the high school was Australian, along with her sister. They were always kind to me and talked to me about thoughtful things. I have serious health problems, and one time I had a medical emergency (severe low blood glucose reaction) at school after hours, and her older sister took care of me for a what really was a long time, before adults could take over. I will be forever thankful to her and her family.

Everybody knows that Australia can be very cliquish, which really sets Americans off. While Australia does quite a phenomenal job of taking care of and looking after its citizens, if you are not a citizen then there is outright hypocrisy on that standard. This is awful to say, but it is true.

Just an example: you must be very healthy to become either a permanent resident or an Australia citizen (naturalizing via work--not marriage or descent), as there are medical inadmissability clauses in the immigration laws. Basically, if you cost more than $8,000 AUD/year total for both health care and other related social services, then you are medically inadmissable to Australia. If one of your immediate non-citizen family members in Australia exceeds this cutoff, then all of you cannot live permanently in Australia. It is brutal.

You also pay a lot for housing in Australia, and things are just not as well built or insulated there. It is an engineering problem, and Americans find it appalling. I posted this link in an r/IWantOut post, and prior to doing so, I said, "Australia truly is a great country, and its people take care of its own citizens, but there is going to be a serious housing crisis that is going to occur in the future. You need to be aware of this issue." Anyways, I got a TON of flak for it, by Australians, and rightfully so, as Australia is a great country:

Expert warns Australia could turn into slums in 20 years | 60 Minutes Australia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRSdiq3sOTc

Americans tend to find the "happy-go-lucky attitude" of some Australians to be appalling. In that sense, many Americans find Australians to be jarring and they get under Americans' skin.

As for American hypocrisy: Americans think that they are the center of the world. Many Americans think that we are the best country in the world, which is laughable at best. Those people are in for a rude awakening in the future. But, my point is, that in the past 4 years of Trump, American Empire has declined in reality about 40 years, due to Trump's "work".

Also, Americans are big on their BS "freedoms", in totally hypocritical ways. One could write books about it. It would actually be great satire.

We always had the strategic capacity, at least in theory, with our institutions and infrastructure (if Trump was not our president) to at least attempt the elimination strategy, although places like Australia and New Zealand have natural geographical advantages.

The problem is that very few Americans are willing to take pain in solidarity with others, for a short period of time, to potentially eliminate such a terrible infectious illness that will cause everyone even more pain long term.

In America, there is always a baseline level of fear and anxiety too, present all the time even pre-pandemic, which a president like Trump knows how to appropriate in "hits" of pain onto the right groups of people. Americans expect a lot of pain, just in general.

So, when Americans see failure (which is a very mild failure) in Australia from coronavirus leaks into the community, the Americans are doling out a "hit" of pain to you (Australians), in an "in your face way".

They are trying to say, "see social democracy and social solidarity don't work: you failed" and "see, look, we are better than you and for so many reasons" and "The pain you had to go through for those lockdowns never worked and never will work: you might as well give up--we have it better than you no matter what!"

Mostly, Americans are projecting this onto Australians: We (Americans) are better than you, because we never had to give up ANY of our freedoms: we can choose to live life on our own terms. Do not (you: Australians) tell us what to do with our country, which is the "best in the world".

I agree with your criticisms of Australia. And I have some more. I found it extremely enlightening moving to the Bay Area for a couple years then moving back to Aus. When I moved home I saw my home country in a new light. Australia feels insular, small minded and chronically unambitious.

And that anxiety you mentioned that’s strangely ever present in the US disappeared when I came home. I was on a bus and had the revelation that nobody was going to try to talk to me. It was bliss.

The lockdowns we had in Melbourne to keep covid down were utterly harrowing and I think a lot of us are still processing that experience. We gave up some freedoms temporarily to save lives. It was a temporary sacrifice of personal freedoms, because not making that sacrifice would have been worse. Letting covid out would have risked the lives of my parents, and I would have risked long covid - and who knows how many complications down the road. And it’s proof we as a nation can take collective action when we need to. I worry that the US might not have been able to do what we did to contain the virus, even if the fatality rate was 20x higher than it is. And that’s a tragedy from the country that invented the internet and landed people on the moon.

> The lockdowns we had in Melbourne to keep covid down were utterly harrowing and I think a lot of us are still processing that experience. We gave up some freedoms temporarily to save lives. It was a temporary sacrifice of personal freedoms, because not making that sacrifice would have been worse. Letting covid out would have risked the lives of my parents, and I would have risked long covid - and who knows how many complications down the road. And it’s proof we as a nation can take collective action when we need to. I worry that the US might not have been able to do what we did to contain the virus, even if the fatality rate was 20x higher than it is. And that’s a tragedy from the country that invented the internet and landed people on the moon.

I definitely agree with all of this.

Yeah, sorry my fellow peers in America are being pricks, and are being so mean that they are not just inflicting pain—-but are retraumatizing Australians (usually strangers) on the internet.

In the US, sadly, if somebody dies of coronavirus, then they are really nothing more than a statistic. It is sad but true. A lot of this existed before big tech, but big tech brought it to a totally different level.

I agree that America probably would not come together in solidarity to stop a virus 20 times more fatal. I have been so worried about where America has been going for the past 6 years especially.

Even if we do somehow get our act together, we will need profound structural change. We will need to flood our politics with ambitious positive plans in general in the future to stop this kind of stuff.

Also, the first 5 years of life determines many outcomes in life. It can set up a child to have an authoritarian personality for life, for example. To stop this, our government needs to put extreme emphasis on young children’s development so this kind of stuff can never happen again. I mean like hardcore investments, projects, and human rights towards the best development of young children.

The depths of how far low it can go are profoundly deep.

> Since covid, talking to my friends in the USA about Australia feels like punching down.

Funny, talking to my friends in Asia (to which I consider Australia/NZ to be a part of) it feels the exact same way!

I can tell them how I go anywhere without wearing a mask, some people make snide remarks but that's it - while they have to declare their address in restaurants, and face all kind of restrictions like not being able to return to their country without a quarantine.

> I’d much rather make a bit less money and live in a country with a functioning healthcare system

With money, in the US you'll get the best healthcare money can buy (or you can travel to Asia to get it cheaper)

For the rest (welfare etc), I really prefer the US way - it feels better to me to have people strongly incentivized to behave, yet free. I guess we are different.

> face all kind of restrictions

I’m not going to lie, it’s been tough sometimes. Masks are no big deal. It’s the occasional city wide lockdowns have been the worst. But the USA has just shy of 500 000 deaths. (There are 440k men/430k women in SF, if that gives you a sense of the scale of the tragedy). We only had 909 deaths in Australia.

Maybe to you those deaths were worth it so you didn’t have to wear masks? That’s horrific, and I don’t know how to respond to that. I suppose we are different.

> Maybe to you those deaths were worth it so you didn’t have to wear masks? That’s horrific, and I don’t know how to respond to that. I suppose we are different

Yes, we are different, because they are fully acceptable to me. Even 2x, 3x or 10x more. Even if I was at risk myself. Freedom is not negotiable.

Americans do need to quarantine upon return to the US, although I'm not sure how much enforcement there is:

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/535344-biden-req...