> America has poor control of its international borders and would be unconstitutional, not just unpopular, to lock down with a right of freedom of movement from state to state.

It was also arguably “unconstitutional” [1] for Australian states to close their borders with one another over the pandemic. Business magnate Clive Palmer sued Western Australia over its border closures, in fact, and even received backing from the Australian federal government [2].

Particularly in light of the patchwork framework surrounding state-mandated church closures in the US, the difference between Australia and the United States as it pertains to interstate border closures seems to be more a matter of cultural expectation, than legal impossibility. But IANAL.

US airports are highly controllable ports of entry. I think a lot more could’ve been done there had the population willed hard border closures into existence.

[1]: https://auspublaw.org/2020/08/border-closures-and-s-92-clive...

[2]: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/aug/02/feder...

For starters there’s how Israel does things, however, border closures were championed as xenophobic. Then there were those saying the US letting people (US citizens) in from China was problematic. The airports aren’t the major concern for points of entry, just take a look at the drug trade. Speaking of the church closures, those are unconstitutional as well as there’s rights to freedom of religion and the right to gather peaceably, except when there’s a virus apparently. The governmental powers are constrained and enumerated, and that doesn’t stop things since power is what power craves, and is really more of a speed bump now and seems like half the states support it at this point. Plus states choosing which Federal laws to uphold (Pot, immigration for example) is pretty fascinating.

As time passes so does the understanding of civics in the US. People think the President is like a king and just decree things willy nilly not appreciating the federal and state jurisdictions and that there aren’t departments which run things without direct intervention. Cheers!

I haven’t seen anyone talk about this, but I honestly believe that the fact that voting is mandatory in Australia contributed significantly to the legitimacy of government management of the virus.

More than half of the eligible voters in each state voted (either directly or indirectly through preference based instant runoff voting) for their government. This is significantly higher political participation than almost any other country in the world, and I’m sure it contributed to the outcome.

100% true. America does not have the luxury of Japan or Australia or New Zealand. Our border is very porous — just look at the whole “build the Wall” movement, and how laughably ineffective it was. The pandemic could never have been kept to 0 in America with its porous southern border.

The US has pretty much only two borders, as big oceans make for really good natural barriers.

If you want to see "porous borders" you only need to look at Africa, Asia or Europe, all of which can be walked in-between. Walking from the ME to America? Not gonna happen.

Crossing the Mediterranean is very doable with limited resources while crossing the Atlantic/Pacific with the same resources would be impossible.