[Wolfenstein98k]

Fellow Aussie here - this is simply incorrect.

Australia does have competitive federalism, and so many of the localised decisions have been from the states, but the major decisions for seeding - closing borders, acquiring vaccines, etc, along with fiscal backstopping - are federal.

The federal government (under ScoMo) has never polled so well as it has during covid, and for good reason.

(NB: I am no blind Coalition supporter, but they have made decisions which are very popular, and no amount of directing attention to the states would absolve them from blame if we had a situation more like Europe or the US.)

[NicoJuicy]

But Australia is an island. It's much easier to be effective against covid.

Not really sure why the politicians get the slack. Which measurement was highly effective that could also be done in a country with neighbors.

Ps. I'm not pro Facebook. Just curious

[pasttense01]

The United States has land borders with two countries: Canada and Mexico. However these are NOT considered to be major sources of Covid infection in the U.S.--instead it has been China and Europe. The U.S. could have set up controls eliminating people movement by air as easily as Australia did--but it failed to do so.

[Wolfenstein98k]

This is an artefact of bad testing in non-developed countries.

You should assume it's ten or twenty times worse than the figures show, AT LEAST, in any countries that aren't fully transparent and rich enough to test widely.

Compare 477 to 16,000:

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/01/su...

[elyobo]

> Which measurement was highly effective that could also be done in a country with neighbors.

... All of them? I'm not sure why so many people seem to think water is required to make a border effective.

[Wolfenstein98k]

I agree, we are extremely lucky to be an island with hard borders. Most countries that have been very successful are hard islands.

But politics responds much more to outcomes than causes