[6nf]

To echo your point:

In New South Wales, Australia the medical sector had 1000 ICU bed capacity in January. When covid hit, it was rapidly expanded and currently over 2000 ICU beds are available.

At the same time all elective surgeries got banned (e.g. hip replacements etc) because some of those would end up in ICU.

At the peak of the outbreak NSW used 100 of those 2000 beds. Currently only about two dozen ICU beds are occupied. About 1% of capacity.

[roca]

The good news for Australia is that you are probably eliminating the virus and will be able to reopen everything soon, safely. The key point of the comment you are responding to --- "If hospitals are empty, it's time to stop sheltering in place, because it means it's working too well" does not apply to Australia, because it assumes a "flatten the curve until we reach herd immunity" strategy which is not Australia's strategy.

The real problem in the USA and most other Western countries is that there is no clear strategy to defeat the virus. The actions being taken are mostly consistent with "flatten the curve and wait for herd immunity", but that pretty much guarantees crippling economic damage and mass death.

[jfnixon]

Australia (and New Zealand) have no clear strategy to defeat the virus. They have won the opening battle and are claiming the war is over. Unless Oz and NZ cut themselves off from the rest of the planet, no, the virus war isn't over.

Herd immunity through vaccine or infection is the only rational strategy for a disease like C19. There is no vaccine, and possibly will never be a vaccine. Sorry to be a realist.

[6nf]

Australia's strategy started off as 'flattening the curve' and as far as I know officials never stated that eradication is now the strategy. There's still about a thousand confirmed live cases and of course there's many thousands more that are not symptomatic or otherwise carrying covid without being diagnosed. Eradication as far as I can tell is not realistic.

[roca]

NZ, at least, has a clear strategy to defeat the virus: eradicate the virus internally, mandatory 14-day quarantine for everyone entering the border (and only NZ residents plus a few essential workers are allowed to enter) to keep it out, intense contact tracing and testing to snuff out outbreaks from cases that slip through. (I think this is also the Australian govt strategy but I haven't been watching their press conferences.)

Sure, the war isn't over, but it's at least plausible this will be effective for a long time. Versions of it are working in China and a number of other countries that were able to stop the spread in time.

If there is never a vaccine, then there will be harder decisions for all these countries in the future about how to deal with countries that failed to defeat the virus. It seems fine to worry about that later.