[mking1024]

Being remote certainly helped Australia, but I think this "island" line is a massive cop-out.

Mainland USA only has land borders with Canada and Mexico, right? Do you believe that if those borders were impermeable that they'd have COVID beaten? And the only reason the outbreak there is so large is due to cases sneaking in from Mexico and Canada every day? In reality, the vast vast majority of USA's COVID cases came from the exact same place as the majority of Australia's COVID cases - people flying in, and community transmission.

Yes, Australia has had a few advantages when fighting COVID. But hand-waving Australia's success away as "it's an island!" just serves to ignore the lessons that could be learned from Australia's response.