I spent ~10 months--pretty much the entire pandemic--in Australia. They locked down early, banned international travel, effectively quarantined incoming travele

I spent ~10 months--pretty much the entire pandemic--in Australia. They locked down early, banned international travel, effectively quarantined incoming travelers, rationed repatriation, locked down, social-distanced, and supported business owners and those affected with direct cash payments. There are still flare-ups that come from international travel not being quarantined well, but because of all of these early efforts, life started to get back to normal. The virus is effectively eradicated there. I don't know where their vaccine program is now, but they actually have a shot at completely beating COVID--forever. I feel like the US and Europe never really had very effective lockdowns, and far too many infections were already going before they could have been very effective anyway. So I don't think that we even speak the same language when we talk about lockdowns.