Some measures become targets, sometimes. Sometimes those become less useful; other times they are both useful and not useful in different ways.
Determining when something is useful is too nuanced and multi-dimensional to reduce it to a catchy phrase.
If you are simply critical of my brevity and not my message, I agree with you but am surprised that you would be less critical of the message to which I replied.
If you believe there is no evidence of society conforming itself in drastic ways to attempt to control infection rates, we may be operating with different facts, but I unfortunately remain unaware of which facts yours are, and apparently you of mine.
Edit: It is my position that the actions of authorities should be aligned with the preferred outcomes of the governed, and any relevant information made transparently available to the governed to be fairly evaluated. My assumption is that in the case of Australia and others, a mandate to fight a virus has become an outsized metric in the role of governing and some other leading institutions, and other issues are not being addressed that should be.
Often repeated on this forum: positive assertions require the support. In this case, something like, "here is how the current situation resembles this abstraction and thus we can conclude XYZ". You seem to feel the work is done just by making a passing comment that superficially resembles the situation. Some dots that would be worth connecting:
1. What is the a priori difference between measure and target?
2. How can we tell when we have passed between the two?
3. Can a measure be a target and still be useful?
4. What if a measure is sometimes a target to some people, but sometimes purely a measure to others? Or at different times, or different locales?
5. Is there any context to expand the problem dimensionality to beyond an artificial difference of Measure/Target?
There are plenty of other explanations that could be offered, and would fit the available facts. If alternative explanations could fit the same facts, it requires additional work to disprove other explanations before deciding on "the right answer" (which doesn't really exist). Or one could, ya know, acknowledge that any particular interpretation is just an opinion and not particularly insightful.
Looking for alternatives and seriously considering them is a critical step for reducing bias. I will leave it as an exercise for you to work through your own biases - anything I suggest at this point would be dismissed. However, if you find yourself seeing this as either this-way, or that-way, you are probably experiencing tunnel vision and not seeing the complexity and messiness of real life situations.
Regardless, a glib phrase that might apply in some ways, and doesn't apply in others, is not a particularly useful or insightful approach.
NSW (a state of 8.1 Million) had just over 1000 new cases today, and 12 deaths - and that is the worst day of the whole pandemic.
That's... not like other countries.
France is 60% fully vaccinated, Australia less than 30%. There's the real problem. At that disastrously low vaccination rate it's only lockdown keeping the death rate that low.
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
We are also vaccinating like mad right now. The vaccination numbers for the UK were about 160K, and for NSW about 140K, but that's for a pop of 67mil vs 8.1mil.
Our first doses for some age groups are also hitting 90%, so I'm taking that to mean there's less vaccine hesitancy here too.
NSW did have it's worst day, but I reckon overall we'll be fine.
Micheal Tam's modelling is probably the best widely available a frequently updated[1]. The new daily infections is still increasing, but the rate of increase of new daily infections is finally beginning to decrease. This is probably an effect of the lockdown, and shows how unlikely it is to be free of this before the end of the year.
The increased vaccination rate is fantastic. Once we are above 60% or 70% we should be more worried about hospitalisation rates and deaths than infections.