3 ms·
In Melbourne, we have been basically running at increasingly normal pace for about 5 or 6 months now, but most of the rest of the country has been "normal" for
by doctor_eval 6y ago
In Melbourne, we have been basically running at increasingly normal pace for about 5 or 6 months now, but most of the rest of the country has been "normal" for much longer.
In Melbourne we have had three lockdowns, the first was a couple of weeks, the second was extremely long (several months; I think it was one of the longest hard lockdowns in the world), and the third was 5 days (2 of which were over a weekend).
Importantly, the second lockdown was due to what seems to have been preventable problems, including a significant delay before enacting the lockdown itself; by the time we did it, the virus had taken a firm hold across the whole city (Melbourne's population is a bit over 5 million). If we had locked down a few weeks earlier, the duration of lockdown would have been much lower (easy to say in hindsight).
That said, the rest of the county didn't suffer the same fate as Melbourne, and they only had to endure a few weeks of lockdowns at worst. I don't know the specifics from other states because I live in Melbourne.
I think this parallels most of the rest of the world: had everyone agreed to one or two really good, solid, early lockdowns, much of the pandemic could have been avoided. The countries that did this - NZ, most of Australia and I think some of SE Asia - have not suffered nearly as much as the rest of the world.
The second Melbourne lockdown was super hard on everyone, and of course we had government support in many (but not all) cases, but I still say it was totally worth it.
- doctor_eval 6y agoI just thought it was probably worth adding that Victoria (2nd biggest state in Australia) has recorded a total of 820 deaths from Covid. That's the total. Not per day or per week. 820 people died from CV in Victoria, ever. And we were the worst state by far. People seem to be OK discussing hundreds of daily deaths from Covid as if that's something that can't be prevented, but it could have been. Our lockdowns have literally saved tens of thousands of lives here. https://www.dhhs.vic.gov.au/victorian-coronavirus-covid-19-data https://www.dhhs.vic.gov.au/victorian-coronavirus-covid-19-d...
- dahfizz 6y agoWhile the lockdowns surely helped, you can't discount the advantage of being a non-densely populated island. Iceland and Japan, for example, also have very low death counts compared to mainland Europe or America.
- doctor_eval 6y agoVietnam and Thailand would disagree.
- tinyhouse 6y agoWell, clearly if you have a very long and strict lockdown, you would have a low death count. If you optimize for that then nothing beats a lockdown. But everything has a tradeoff. If we optimized for low death counts then we would've banned cars long time ago. But instead we allow cars but try to prevent accidents as much as we can. And just to be clear, I'm not against short lockdowns when really needed.
- tinyhouse 6y agoThree months lockdown... is it worth it? Depends who you ask. If I had to go through such a lockdown in the US I would most likely move back to my home country or somewhere else. As for the rest of Australia (Sydney especially) and NZ - super impressive and totally worth it.