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Watching Australia (which I'm assuming you're talking about here) from afar just screw up over and over again... Was just sad to watch. Those cruise ship issue

Watching Australia (which I'm assuming you're talking about here) from afar just screw up over and over again... Was just sad to watch. Those cruise ship issues were totally predictable and could have been prevented. But sadly NSW was run by corrupt idiots. The only state to take it very seriously was also the state with the premiere that got the most abuse because of it. (VIC and Andrews) I'm an Aussie living in Norway and we did a mostly fantastic job here. Up until the election, the government changed, and the new gov decided to just do the opposite of everything the previous one did, and open up. The cases spiked and for the first time since the start we had real problems. Vaccine rollouts changed, everything went backwards.. Interesting Sweden, who had one of the worst COVID responses, had a change of government too... They decided to start taking it seriously and we had this situation where prior to this, Sweden always had surging numbers, and Norway didn't.. to trading places.

defrost 3y ago
> The only state to take it very seriously was .. Western Australia surely - full state border lockdown from the get go up until near 80% of the state population had two vaccinations. W.Australia had near zero cases "in the wild" - the 'outbreaks' such as they were centred about border quarantine issues, ships, quarantine hotels etc and caused relatively (wrt the rest of the world) few hospitalisations and limited mask wearing curfews. For the bulk of the two year period W.Australia was maskless and COVID free.
- intothemild 3y ago
  I always forget WA exists.
  - defrost 3y ago
    S'okay, we like it that way :)
- ggm 3y ago
  The aboriginal communities across australia also went hard, and avoided a lot of problems with older, weaker and immunocompromised people.
isolli 3y ago
> Interesting Sweden, who had one of the worst COVID responses That is simply not true. Sweden has one of the lowest excess mortality of the pandemic of all developed countries. Only New Zealand and Denmark appear to have done better. Norway performed similarly, and Finland somewhat worse. Excess mortality estimates are model-dependent, but almost all models tell the same story.
- obscurette 3y ago
  Initial response in Sweden was disaster for elder people. But they learned fast and in the end they did much better, seems. It's unclear however whether other countries could behave in same way. For example vaccination share in Sweden is relatively high (72%) and rather flexible health system. Could for example Bulgaria (vaccination share 30%) with their even normally overwhelmed health system behave the same way?
ggm 3y ago
Yes. Australia, well spotted. Maniac freedom fighters massing at the borders at Tweed heads, hiding in car boots out beyond Goondiwindi, storming the barricades. Oh dear.

defrost 3y ago

> The only state to take it very seriously was .. Western Australia surely - full state border lockdown from the get go up until near 80% of the state population had two vaccinations. W.Australia had near zero cases "in the wild" - the 'outbreaks' such as they were centred about border quarantine issues, ships, quarantine hotels etc and caused relatively (wrt the rest of the world) few hospitalisations and limited mask wearing curfews. For the bulk of the two year period W.Australia was maskless and COVID free.

intothemild 3y ago
I always forget WA exists.
- defrost 3y ago
  S'okay, we like it that way :)
ggm 3y ago
The aboriginal communities across australia also went hard, and avoided a lot of problems with older, weaker and immunocompromised people.

isolli 3y ago

> Interesting Sweden, who had one of the worst COVID responses That is simply not true. Sweden has one of the lowest excess mortality of the pandemic of all developed countries. Only New Zealand and Denmark appear to have done better. Norway performed similarly, and Finland somewhat worse. Excess mortality estimates are model-dependent, but almost all models tell the same story.

obscurette 3y ago
Initial response in Sweden was disaster for elder people. But they learned fast and in the end they did much better, seems. It's unclear however whether other countries could behave in same way. For example vaccination share in Sweden is relatively high (72%) and rather flexible health system. Could for example Bulgaria (vaccination share 30%) with their even normally overwhelmed health system behave the same way?

ggm 3y ago

Yes. Australia, well spotted. Maniac freedom fighters massing at the borders at Tweed heads, hiding in car boots out beyond Goondiwindi, storming the barricades. Oh dear.