>There are 45,000 people in Australia who are alive right now who would not be if Australia had the same death rate as the USA. So they're doing pretty well.

the idea that the difference in death rate is due to some intrinsic policy or mandated behavior rather than something more simple like population density/metropolis commonality/average temperature/humidity, etc seems like a pretty big leap -- and that seems to be your point , no?

is there already some big comprehensive list of social policies that provably worked to reduce death rate during the covid-19 pandemic across the board with environmental factors normalized out?

I thought we were still in the middle of this experiment, but i'd love to see some data if it exists.

Yes. Things like closing borders and instituting quarantine for returning travelers, using high testing numbers, contact tracing, and short lockdowns, to ensure covid-zero.

Also, Australia is ridiculously dense. Most of our pop is in capital cities. it's big and empty.