Australia’s biggest success was controlling the virus at the border, also. They spent large parts of the pandemic without ever locking down, and when there were

Australia’s biggest success was controlling the virus at the border, also. They spent large parts of the pandemic without ever locking down, and when there were lock downs after early 2020, it was localized to a specific city or state where the virus had escaped containment rather than the whole country (sometimes people seem to not realize this). There was never really an analogous situation in the USA since we maintained open borders to the virus (US citizens were allowed to come back from Europe even after the travel ban in March 2020, seeding the virus across the country.)