When it was suggested in the U.S., xenophobia quickly accompanied it.
Do the rich lock down? Nope. Look at how the athletes, people in power, and other celebrities do things when no one is watching. Rules for the little people.
Edit: on accountability, the rich were also stopped. I can't recall the gentleman but a billionaire on his private yacht back during the biggest part of lock down bounced between states on the east coast last year.
When Queensland Police found out, they went to his yacht and forced him into hotel quarantine for the duration that everyone else is expected to.
There are exceptions. Some other billionaires and wealthy members of society have sought exceptions to quarantine at home. But even then it was with the caveat that they are willing to pay for 24/7 surveillance from security/police to ensure compliance.
I see that [1] 6.7 M people visited Australia in 2020. And 80 M [2] visited the US in 2019. 18 M [3] came from Mexico in 2019.
Perhaps Australia being an island isn't important. Perhaps it is because so few people visited you and you have such low population density.
[1] https://camperchamp.com.au/statistics/australia/#:~:text=How....
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/214686/number-of-interna....
[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/214765/number-of-mexican...
There's a reason why the Melbourne/Victorian outbreak which was the worst we've seen in Australia was kept to that city. Noting that exceptions were managed, we still allowed domestic travel for freight and similar so food and goods were still received and sent albeit with delays.
I'm not suggesting the US, Europe and other countries would been as successful as we have been. It's too difficult to say. But what I am saying, is the US and Europe didn't even fucking try.
One thing Australia does have in its favour, is every single state has its own separate state ran government. And each state held others accountable, there's been a lot of political mud slinging but our states enforced those borders and enforced them well. Where the Federal government did the same for international borders (with less success than state borders, e.g New South Wales and Federal Government made a mess of the Ruby Princess: https://theconversation.com/ruby-princess-inquiry-blames-nsw...).
As I mentioned in my grand fathered comment. An anecdote for sure, but I know of people who literally went to Europe from the US for a holiday over the 2020/2021 Christmas. Little to no controls were used. This is why Covid was and is spreading. There's absolutely no desire for either Europe or the US to stop international travellers and Covid spreading events.
I was galled to find the UK didn't make international travel even difficult until the more/highly infectious UK Covid variant came to be and that was only in the last few months. What the fuck was happening prior to then?
I am sympathetic. Countries like Spain have been economically destroyed by Covid because they're so reliant on tourism.
Australia's regions where tourism is the largest part of the local GDP (Far North Queensland, Cairns as an example) are really struggling and even with the Federal Government printing money like there's no tomorrow. That relief is being wound down and it's now starting to bite. But even here we provided more support to business and local people more than what I've seen from other countries internationally.
It's appalling really. There just seems so little appetite from people on the ground or the countries ruling parties to commit to lock down and providing financial support to their workers so they can afford to not go to work.
But, I abhore the 'what you did wouldn't work here' rhetoric. It's bullshit. No one fucking tried.
Just last week Brisbane Australia had a small outbreak of 3-4 people. We locked down the whole city/region for 3 days to allow contact tracing to occur.
We've now relaxed those controls again but are preventing groups of 20+ people from gathering.
You also must wear masks in all venues where possible, including public transport.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-01/covid-updates-brisban...
It fucking works. The fact that other western countries haven't been successful is nothing to do with the method but the implementation.
It also helps we force interstate and international travellers to enter quarantine for 14 days. But when I'm hearing friends families in Texas going to Prague for Christmas, and didn't have to quarantine when they arrived OR when they went home. Is it that much of a surprise the US and Europe is in such a fucking state?
Edit: just to add another reference to larger lock downs. Brisbane or the state of Queensland has previously had lock downs that went for months previously while we sought to prevent community transmission. Now for the last 4 months we've literally gone back to normal besides international holidays. Pubs reopened. Cafes opened. No restrictions. Dancing in night clubs. No masks.
Lock downs. Work.