Sharing a post authored by Jeremy on Facebook:
A bit more on Australia’s approach to COVID…A few days ago, the state of South Australia – where we now reside – announced that we have a COVID outbreak. The state recorded 5 (yeah, you heard me right, five) cases of COVID. The response was immediate, the whole state would go into lockdown for seven days. The lockdown rules are relatively simple for non-essential workers: stay in your house unless you’re getting critical care or supplies (e.g., groceries) or exercising (you’re supposed to limit this to 90 minutes a day). If you’re in a public space, you should be masked. It is important here to understand that South Australia is physically nearly half again as large as Texas, with only about 1.8 million people (about a sixth of Ohio’s population)—and the entire state is in lockdown. I suspect that to most Americans this sounds like…well, crazy overkill. But this strategy has worked well for them. The idea is to PREVENT COVID transmission, not attempt to slow it through voluntary measures, as we’ve done in the US. In effect, what this means is that when there’s no COVID, Aussies go about their normal lives: no masks, no social-distancing, do as you please. But when there’s an outbreak… well, they shut everything down until the outbreak is eliminated (i.e., new cases = 0). This approach may sound harsh, but it means they have near perfect knowledge of cases, their origins, and even the genetic strain in each case—and they really haven’t had to lockdown that frequently. But as an American what is really remarkable is how the whole thing plays out in the news media. I’ve watched left and right-leaning politicians consistently deliver the same simple message: we can only beat this together; comply with the rules, and things will be back to normal soon. And the media’s treatment is—amazingly—mostly a summary of facts (e.g., new cases, changes to policies, etc.). What’s missing (from the American perspective)? The blathering ideologues that spout conspiracy theories, and attempt to undermine long-lived and widely-appreciated political institutions. People ask if I’m sad that I’m locked up again. Yeah, sure – of course. But frankly, the whole experience makes me more sad about conditions in the US.