No. Like in many western nations, it came down to politics.

State governments and the Federal government hold different powers. In Australia the exercise of health care is a state-level responsibility, hence state-wide health orders leading to successful COVID management. The management of prescription medicines and their costs is borne by the Federal government.

The states that "beat" COVID are currently led by progressive parties, while the Federal government is conservative and, allegedly, incredibly corrupt.

The Federal government is to blame for the vaccination rate. The states that "beat" COVID have generally done so by going against the Federal government's advice to 'open up and live with it'.

The state with the highest death rate is led by a progressive party. The death rate is so high because the state government hired untrained security guards who, among other things, had sex with people in quarantine and let them out into the city for food.

When investigated, the government was evasive and engaged in cover up (including the hiding of text messages, emails among other things). Multiple government officials resigned or were pushed out in disgrace for lying about their involvement.

Just so we're clear.

Also they went from 700 cases a day to 0. Just, as you say, so we're clear.

The cover up, the incompetence and the substantially higher death count is fine because cases are now low? Interesting argument, have you considered telling the families who had loved ones slain because of government incompetence that they later lied about?

> The cover up, the incompetence and the substantially higher death count is fine because cases are now low?

The cover-up that resulted in the government forcing one Minister and her Departmental Secretary to resign? That cover up? The one where the Premier of Victoria wrote several times informing the Secretary to pursue COVID mitigation and was ignored without comment by the secretary? That cover up? The one they had a full and independent inquiry about within a couple of months of the "cover up" beginning? That cover up? Wow, it's a pretty shitty cover up when so many of the players ended up either fired or out of work.

> Interesting argument, have you considered telling the families who had loved ones slain because of government incompetence that they later lied about?

Slain? Oh spare me the "won't someone think of the victims" when you jump directly into another thread to lie about the effectiveness of lockdowns in reducing COVID in the community, heap praise Trump's COVID approach (who is largely responsible for the huge numbers of dead in the US either through refusing to lock down and then whipping his followers into an anti-vaccine fury), and then regurgitate the lies about Hunter Biden and his apparent corruption.

> The states that "beat" COVID are currently led by progressive parties

No. The states that dropped the ball on COVID were the progressive states. They only "beat" COVID in the sense they let it run rampant in the first place. Australia's red state equivalents have all handled COVID near flawlessly.

That's a little confusing. The red (Labor) states are the more progressive ones (both are very centrist and tend to steal each others policies). In Australia the conservative party is "blue".

NSW is a conservative-leaning state and has had a few missteps (Ruby Princess and now). Victoria (Labor) had a bad period last year because their contact tracing was not good enough, and they left lock-down to long rather than going hard (NZ style).

QLD and WA are both Labor and have both done well and got lucky with their missteps. Queensland* has ~5 million people mostly living in the SouthEast metro areas and 7 deaths from about 1,800 cases.

*About to go into lockdown again in 3 hours, but these short sharp ones are fine and then we go back to living like there is no Covid.

What?

The Liberal party is generally considered conservative, and Labor progressive. The federal government is currently formed by the Liberal Party (that is actually conservative). Their colour is blue.

The states that have handled covid spread well have Labor governments in power, Labor is progressive, and their colour is red.

This is a confusing take. Which states dropped the ball on Covid and let it run rampant? Which ones have handled it near-flawlessly? By 'red-state equivalents' do you mean the ones with Liberal Premiers? If so that would seem like an inaccurate oversimplification.

It seems many governments did this, though.

"We've bought some time, what should we do now? Maybe shore up our healthcare system in case a wave hits us?"

"No. We... wait.".

Pretty much this. I have friends in Singapore and they kept case numbers very low and didn’t feel a lot of pressure to secure vaccine supplies ASAP. Then subsequent waves hit and they realized “were going to stay locked down for 5 years if we don’t vaccinate”.