I'm actually astonished people still believe "fast and strict" lockdowns work, or that they actually happened anywhere.
Edit because rate limiting:
In any "lockdown" situation, a large percentage of the population must, by definition, exist in the world to enforce the lockdown, deliver food, keep critical services running, tend to the sick, etc.
The desirability and feasibility of a "fast and strict" lockdown is a fantasy of the laptop class and/or authoritarian propaganda.
Closing borders before there is community spread, a la Australia and NZ, is a separate issue. Those were not "fast". The borders to those countries have been closed since early 2020. In the case of Australia, their citizens cannot even leave without a special permit that is almost never approved.
There is currently no end in sight to their "fast and strict" lockdown. In fact, they have increased restrictions in the last several months in an attempt to prevent interstate spread within the country.
> I'm actually astonished people still believe "fast and strict" lockdowns work, or that they actually happened anywhere.
I live in Adelaide, a city of over a million people that has done two strict lockdowns (at 17 and 6 cases respectively), and neither of them lasted more than a week. Both of them completely eradicated the virus from the state, and we've had 0 COVID-related deaths in over a year. Looking at the absolute disasters happening everywhere else that doesn't react as quickly (even just over in Sydney) shows exactly how well those have worked.
> Closing borders before there is community spread, a la Australia and NZ, is a separate issue.
For the record, we actually didn't do this - borders we only unilaterally closed after community spread had occurred. It was only after eradicating the virus from the community in early 2020 that it became a primary line of defence against further spread.
> Those were not "fast". The borders to those countries have been closed since early 2020.
By "fast" I meant reacting quickly, not that the lockdown was over quickly. However usually those are the same thing - it's a hell of a lot easier to eradicate the virus when you start at 10 cases instead of 10,000.
Conflating closed international borders with a lockdown is somewhat confusing. Australia and New Zealand closing their borders to countries that couldn't successfully restrict COVID spread has had virtually no impact on anyone's day-to-day life.
> There is currently no end in sight to their "fast and strict" lockdown.
Only 2 Australian states are currently locked down (Victoria and New South Wales), and describing NSW's as "fast" or "strict" would be downright laughable.
What is the exit strategy going forward for Adelaide or NZ? Is there any, or are you going to keep the borders closed or quarantine every incoming traveler forever throughout the rest of human society?
When does this end? "Until Covid goes away" isn't an answer if Covid never goes away.
> What is the exit strategy going forward for Adelaide or NZ?
Right now the magic number for Australia is getting 80% of the population vaccinated, at which point the current COVID-zero approach will be abandoned.
I believe New Zealand has a similar approach, although I'm not sure on the exact number they're targeting.
My source shows them at 64.4%, where are you seeing 80%?
> Had the world's highest daily infection rate last week.
And the world's ~50th highest death rate.
The point of the vaccine isn't simply to prevent you from getting the virus, it's to prevent you from getting sick or dying. Ideally it makes transmission harder too (a less severe infection means less viral load to spread), but that's just a secondary benefit. The primary thing is to stop people from being hospitalised.
Israel has among the world’s highest levels of vaccination for COVID-19, with 78% of those 12 and older fully vaccinated, the vast majority with the Pfizer vaccine. Yet the country is now logging one of the world’s highest infection rates, with nearly 650 new cases daily per million people.
More than half are in fully vaccinated people, underscoring the extraordinary transmissibility of the Delta variant and stoking concerns that the benefits of vaccination ebb over time.
It's sort of fascinating that Australians believe that we didn't take measures to stop community spread in the U.S similar to what was done in their home country.
For months we were confined to our homes. The lockdowns began in March, just like they did in Australia.
We wore masks (after our health agencies recommended them in late March/early April), we didn't go outside, we didn't go to work. At least those that were lucky enough to not be in one of the essential groups I mentioned above.
Your international border was completely shut to non-citizens (correct?). You live in one of the most remote places on Earth, surrounded by the South Pacific and Indian oceans. You control your entire continent.
In the U.S., we are unable to prevent millions of people from entering the country via our southern border, that stretches many thousands of miles, in any year. Many who are otherwise very serious about the pandemic are indifferent to this issue. Even if we had been able to eradicate the virus in the lower 48 states, it would have been instantly reintroduced into the country.
I'm only discussing closed borders because, from what I can gather, that's the only meaningful, discernable policy difference.
I'm curious which restrictions you believe were implemented in Australia, aimed at reducing community spread, that were not in the U.S.? What did you do that "eradicated" the virus that we were unable or unwilling to do? This is an honest question.
I've never been to Adelaide but judging by the map, and your response, it's a more remote area of the country. Those that lived in mega-cities like Sydney had much more community spread, before the seriousness of the issue was known, due to their global interconnectedness. Those of us who live in such places might wish they had the type of advanced warning that others did. But we didn't. Once the virus was widespread within the community, it was not possible to stop it. I say this as someone who spent the pandemic in New York City.
So maybe you are right that "fast and strict" is the way to go (if you define fast by meaning, before uncontrollable community spread). But if that's the case, can't you understand how that was never an option for many places? While Adelaide/Australia as a whole was dealing with its 10 cases, NYC alone likely had many more than 10,000. This is why many Americans were furious at the endless, largely pointless restrictions that occurred after the initial 2-3 month lockdown.
This is a genuinely good comment that touches on a lot of issues I could write whole essays on, but I've tried to keep each point relatively brief here. I will note that most of these points are in the context of March 2020. With vaccinations edging closer to herd immunity and case counts in most of the world at absolutely uncontrollable levels, none of this advice is really helpful without a time machine. Maybe next pandemic we'll get it right?
> It's sort of fascinating that Australians believe that we didn't take measures to stop community spread in the U.S similar to what was done in their home country. [...] I'm curious which restrictions you believe were implemented in Australia, aimed at reducing community spread, that were not in the U.S.? What did you do that "eradicated" the virus that we were unable or unwilling to do? This is an honest question.
Last year my state enacted a lockdown after the discovery of 17 cases over a period of two days. During that lockdown you were not allowed to leave your house unless you were an essential worker. The only exception to this was one person per household being allowed to go directly to the nearest grocery store and directly back once per day.
This lockdown was meant to last for a week, it ended up only lasting for three days as that was all that was necessary to eradicate the virus.
I'm unaware of any state or even city in the United States that has done anything even remotely comparable to that at any case count, let alone having done it at the onset of an outbreak. Yes, not even allowing exercise is extreme, but it then gave us six months of having absolutely no cases or restrictions whatsoever. Very much worth it as far as I'm concerned.
I will also note that compliance seems much better in Australia (or at least, my corner of it). I don't think I've seen a single person in a public building without a mask since our mask mandates were first introduced. Based on what I've heard from my American friends, this is extraordinarily far from the case in even the most pandemic-conscious communities in the States.
> Claiming that you only shut your borders to "countries that could not control spread" is incorrect, no? Your international border was completely shut to non-citizens.
Australia's border had been open to New Zealand (and vice versa) for significant chunks of the last year. It no longer is due to ongoing outbreaks in Sydney and Auckland, but generally speaking free travel between countries that had eradicated COVID-19 did exist.
> Even if we had been able to eradicate the virus in the lower 48 states, it would have been instantly reintroduced into the country.
Yep, reintroduction is a major issue and every time it happens carries a major risk (just look at Sydney right now). However, exponential growth having to start from the ground floor buys you so much time to get vaccinations up to an acceptable level. And while expecting everywhere to successfully eradicate the virus is optimistic at best, if the US actually set a good example rather than being an absolute dumpster fire in its pandemic response, I believe that the rest of the world would have followed suit and made things at least slightly manageable. I really can't understate how much of the anti-lockdown and "COVID is a hoax" conspiracy sentiment in Australia is very clearly directly copied from the talking points of the previous US President. There's thankfully not much of it, but almost all of it comes from people who can't even name the leader of the main left-wing party in Australia but spend 3 hours a day posting about Joe Biden on Facebook.
> I've never been to Adelaide but judging by the map, and your response, it's a more remote area of the country.
I wouldn't really describe it like that, but I suppose it depends on your definition of "remote". It's definitely heavily urban, and travel between different major cities is still high despite the large distances involved.
>Those that lived in mega-cities like Sydney had much more community spread, before the seriousness of the issue was known, due to their global interconnectedness.
This is correct, but given that all of Australia - Sydney included - successfully eradicated the virus the first go around, it doesn't seem to have been a major sticking point.
> Once the virus was widespread within the community, it was not possible to stop it.
This is possibly true in some environments now with the Delta strain (although we may never know for sure - increased vaccination rates mean that eradication is no longer the only strategy), but it certainly wasn't a year ago. In mid-2020 Melbourne (a city of over 5 million people) had uncontrolled community spread during its second wave, with up to 700 cases a day and about 20,000 cases through the course of that outbreak. They managed to completely eradicate the virus. It took a long time because of how slowly they reacted to the outbreak (initially attempting postcode restrictions instead of a full-city lockdown, something that turned out to be woefully ineffective), but they did get down to zero again.
Now perhaps you're using a definition of "widespread" that is far greater than was the case for Melbourne. That would be reasonable - even that major outbreak pales in comparison to almost anything overseas - but I would make the argument that almost every city in the world knew that COVID was a serious problem well before they got to that point.
> But if that's the case, can't you understand how that was never an option for many places?
If China managed to eradicate the virus in Wuhan, then it should have been possible for any developed country. Sure, Western nations can't exactly go to the same extremes that China did (thankfully), but we also had the advantage of 2 months to prepare before things got really bad.
> This lockdown was meant to last for a week, it ended up only lasting for three days as that was all that was necessary to eradicate the virus.
It's really hard to buy this notion. 3 days is not long enough for symptoms to manifest after infection. There seems to have been a great deal of luck that this was all that was required. And like you said, it started from an extremely low basepoint. One that's basically impossible for more densely populated countries or cities given the situation.
A 3 day lockdown would have done nothing for NYC. Monitoring and enforcing the goings on of the 9 million people in the city itself (20.3 mil in the metro), given the size of the police force, would not have been possible.
When I speak of "the situation", I mean that it would have been nice if China had been more forthcoming about the pneumonia that developed late in 2019, rather than censoring and imprisoning their own public health professionals and front line workers, but that didn't happen. So here we are. It's easy to forget that conservatives were the ones sounding the alarm about a "Chinese virus" in January 2020. Trump wanted to end travel from that nation. He was told in no uncertain terms that he was a hysterical racist and that sensible policy never materialized.
> I wouldn't really describe it like that, but I suppose it depends on your definition of "remote". It's definitely heavily urban, and travel between different major cities is still high despite the large distances involved.
I looked at the aerial photographs. Chinese, Europeans, coastal Americans, would have a hard time thinking of such a place as "dense" or "urban". Certainly it's one of the most remote metros over 1 mil on the globe.
> "COVID is a hoax"
Covid isn't a hoax but it certainly was cynically exploited for political gain by Democrats who sensed this as their opening for the 2020 election. After the March lockdowns (the ones Trump agreed with at the time and helped implement), Democrats then encouraged the most destructive riots in American history (measured in dollars) for more cynical political gain. "White supremacy is the real virus", mass demonstrations all over the country during a pandemic. After we had all been locked in our homes. Insanity. Totally irresponsible.
This absolute nonsense, and the subsequent finger wagging and blame pointing at Trump, despite how widespread the virus had already become in March before we were able to react to it, was the breaking point for most conservative Americans, myself included. The hypocrisy was too much.
When American conservatives say "covid is a hoax", they largely mean the cynical response to it that I just described, and the effect it had on the American election, not that it literally doesn't exist. There are some absolute crazies on the far right who post nonsense about "5G", and unfortunately that spread to Australia, I'm sure. But I've never met such a person, and I have many connections to conservative states.
> If China managed to eradicate the virus in Wuhan, then it should have been possible for any developed country.
They're lying. The West used to not be so quick to take the word of authoritarian regimes, especially those so obsessed with the concept of "saving face". Covid still kills people to this day in China despite their unwillingness to be honest about cases and deaths.
> It's really hard to buy this notion. 3 days is not long enough for symptoms to manifest after infection.
So in your previous comment you alluded to the idea that infections can creep in to a community where it has been previously eradicated. The virus wouldn't really be dangerous at all if we knew that this was happening in real-time, because we could just isolate every case. The reason the virus is dangerous is because it rapidly spreads undetected, and by the time we find out things could already be pretty bad.
The point of the immediate lockdown isn't that it will inherently prevent spread for long enough the virus dies off - it's just to give the contact tracing teams enough time to find every single person who has interacted with any single person that has interacted with any known case. Then all of those people have to do a proper quarantine (usually 14 days) and get tested regularly. Once you've done that, you wait a couple of days to see if any other seemingly random cases appear out of nowhere, and if they don't, everyone else can be assumed safe to go out as they'd please.
> I looked at the aerial photographs. Chinese, Europeans, coastal Americans, would have a hard time thinking of such a place as "dense" or "urban".
The trick here is that no-one lives in the areas that no-one lives in, so they're not really relevant. Yes, the desert 100km away from Adelaide is empty. But people travel by plane to Melbourne or Sydney, not by wandering around the desert - Australia has one of the most urban populations of any country on the planet.
You wouldn't say that Malé isn't dense or urban just because it's surrounded by water, and indeed that characteristic has not helped the Maldives at all when it comes to COVID-19.
> They're lying.
About having (previously) eradicated COVID in Wuhan? Definitely not. Just ask anyone who actually lives there - life returned to complete normal after a couple of months. If COVID was still present in a megacity with absolutely no restrictions, everyone in the city would have stories of friends and relatives dying. That was happening in February. It wasn't happening in May.
New Zealand is currently around the 10-20/day cases mark contained to their largest city which remains in hard lockdown. The rest of the country has eased restrictions.
The delta variant has proven very difficult, the state of Victoria in Australia which really pushed the lockdown strtategy has given up. They're now pushing for vaccination in hopes of easing restrictions further. They remain in lockdown as a larger outbreak would overwhelm the healthcare system.
Similar case for New Zealand - they have a capacity of less than 250 ICU beds for COVID for 5 million people. The risks are much, much worse if the outbreak spreads.
> Similar case for New Zealand - they have a capacity of less than 250 ICU beds for COVID for 5 million people. The risks are much, much worse if the outbreak spreads.
NZ has had sustained mass immigration for years, and the population grows incredibly fast. All the infrastructure is designed for a country with 80% of the population level we have now, and I don't see it getting better.
Edit because rate limiting:
In any "lockdown" situation, a large percentage of the population must, by definition, exist in the world to enforce the lockdown, deliver food, keep critical services running, tend to the sick, etc.
The desirability and feasibility of a "fast and strict" lockdown is a fantasy of the laptop class and/or authoritarian propaganda.
Closing borders before there is community spread, a la Australia and NZ, is a separate issue. Those were not "fast". The borders to those countries have been closed since early 2020. In the case of Australia, their citizens cannot even leave without a special permit that is almost never approved.
There is currently no end in sight to their "fast and strict" lockdown. In fact, they have increased restrictions in the last several months in an attempt to prevent interstate spread within the country.