Comments by "annoyed aussie" (@annoyedaussie3942) on "Cases down in UK and US" video.

In Brisbane it was funny with the short lockdown recently, first time have mask mandate and 0 cases actually.
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@klonowskierklartrohrleitun4241 In 3 cases Perth and Melbourne Australia and Auckland New Zealand, at certain points in time those cities surrounded by checkpoints to stop any unauthorized travel out and China does similar things of course. So saying it can't be done isn't true if checkpoints everywhere noting that the ratio of military personnel and police to overall population in wealthy Western countries will be similar , the resources required in a relative sense are the same. In reality very few people get turned around because people just comply , why bother waiting for arguments in a 1 or 2 hour queue at a checkpoint knowing you will be turned around and you know you don't need to travel.
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In relation to comments in this thread, the Australian stimulus isn't particularly large by international standards, probably somewhere in the middle. A budget deficit of 7.5% or so is certainly large and it would be great to do as good as South Korea at about 4.5% however it's probably comparable because Australia "exports" of tourism and education have obviously been hit really hard and South Korea I suspect that this is a smaller proportion of their economy. However if we compare to the countries that took least actions to stop the virus such as UK , US and southern European countries they all have deficits over 10% with UK and US around 15%. I'll take virus free and half the budget deficit over doubling our current deficit and killing 0.15% of our population. Only business going through great upturns is big end of town retailers and the funeral business for US and UK. Of course Australia is spending billions on vaccines for our own country and to help surrounding countries as are all wealthy nations to differing degrees , so definitely nothing wrong with that.
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@Gajafar while Australia is less dense than most European countries, not all. Consider the island of Ireland a population similar to Victoria and far more rural Consider all but the largest 4 states in the US which has a lower urbanisation rate than Australia. On paper there is no difference in most areas. But they have kept the borders open with no restrictions, if Australian states did the same between each state and internationally with no hotel quarantine we would be the same. They have one plan and one plan only don't overflow hospitals ( mitigation lockdowns not designed to contain the virus but to keep cases below hospital capacity) and hope vaccines do the job. South Korea seems to not have internal travel restrictions so while they do everything else right they can't get rid of it.
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Forget about water Australia still has states and a decent population. The irony of your statement is you are suggesting as a country you are more afraid to close/strong restrictions an international border than Australia states between each other. Over the last year there have been more internal border disputes in Australia than in the EU. How is it Prime Ministers or Presidents so scared to do anything?
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@Gajafar Population density is the people living in cities overall population density is meaningless. Melbourne if you do quick search shows as 4.9 million and Dublin 1.3 million, Belfast about 600,000 now maybe it's calculated slightly different however it's not going to be out by 400% . Victoria is in a worse situation. Policy is what matters South Dakota has less than 1,000,000 people total and like Ireland about 40% rural population yet 0.2% of population dead from covid 19. Bad policy can overrule natural advantages, don't sell your own state short , nowhere else with 500 cases per day and a population over 2,000,000 outside of China has had such a tough lockdown and come out of it with 0 cases.
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@klonowskierklartrohrleitun4241 I agree with your last point that most European countries including UK seem hellbent on proving how free they are with freedom of movement, overcompensating I think for what they know should be done. The UK has however recently moved towards the Australian way but it's possibly counterproductive, giving people 2 weeks warning that a new restriction is going to be imposed means there is probably a rush back to the UK from countries like South Africa, no direct flights but that's meaningless, yesterday I checked where South Africa international flights go and one was Doha and plenty of flights from Doha to London. I just hope these vaccines work because it's actually the only real plan for many countries. On vaccine rollout I think the UK has the best strategy and that's one thing they do seem to have got right, in the US in many states it's a dog eat dog situation to get a vaccine, calling hours and days on end to get an appointment or with other states join a queue for 5 hours and hope the vaccines don't run out before reaching the front, the most vulnerable can't get the vaccine in the second case unless they are in a nursing home because queuing up like that would be too much. The best way to have a compliant population is to show success, if the government keeps failing people reduce their compliance and start protesting including in Melbourne but they did manage to deal with them and actually even they protested mostly they wore masks and socially distanced because they didn't want fines.
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