It’s not just about the healthcare system but also the reaction of the state, country and the state of the social welfare system.

My own country (Australia) locked down pretty quickly at the start.

Western Australia and Queensland locked their borders down so fast and hard to every other state and international and when they realised this was serious. Then the Northern Territory and Tasmania and South Australia followed soon after.

The difference is they had state leaders who basically said F* this, no, and decisively despite opposition just slammed the borders shut and even now are playing hardball and refusing to open despite the entire country having nearly completely beaten covid - or being cautious, because they just aren’t willing to risk it.

Contact tracing in those states was pretty good. They went into various stages of lockdown at the start, Western Australia put homeless people into the hotels to get them off the streets when the hotels had to go into lockdown and had no customers. The government paid the hotels to house them so the hotels wouldn’t go bust and so people who were vulnerable were safe.

Canberra was good with contact tracing and was able to avoid much lockdown or border closing.

In NSW and Victoria (Sydney and Melbourne) they didn’t close the borders.

In NSW it nearly got out of control - F* up with contact tracing and the cruises docking - and in Victoria it got out of hand because contact tracing went off the rails.

Victoria nearly became like the rest of the world. They were out of control and climbing as fast as everywhere else.

The difference here being that, the rest of the country was doing okay and the having the support of other states behind them and basically that one last push to get over the line for a covid safe country they went to the extreme.

They went into complete police lockdown. Curfew. Regional and city and suburb style border closures. You could only be out of your home for a certain period of time, for certain reasons. The majority of businesses had to close.

If you didn’t adhere to these rules, the police would fine you and if you resisted, they’d arrest you. It was that simple.

But In saying all that - they didn’t leave people with nothing.

Our government has been paying $1100 as a couple each every two weeks (so a two person family would get $2200 every fortnight plus you could take up to $20,000 out of your retirement fund that every working Australian has - employers pay 9%-11% extra as part of your contract into a super fund that you access for emergencies or when you turn 60.)

They frozen rental evictions, they gave relief to the banks and utility companies so that they could pass those on to the homeowners and then down to the renters - you could get out of leases easier, you could negotiate a temporary rent decrease or a mortgage stop.

They had a scheme where businesses would be paid $1500 a fortnight per employee that they kept employeed too. The goal of this, was so that for example Target or Kmart could just close their doors and not go bankrupt but keep paying employees - to stay at home. Then when it opened again, they hadn’t lost employees, it was to save jobs and big corporations.

They gave bailout funds to industries that needed it. To stop them collapsing. A huge lockdown is a massive pain in the ass. Big companies still pay massive rents to the people who rent out the store space, amusement parks and zoos still have bills to pay and animals to feed.

But the point of all this - is that when Victoria went into total lockdown - it lasted three months and was hell on earth for them but at the end of it what do they have to show for the pain?

Lockdown just eased for them. They are at zero cases a day. From 400-700 and climbing.... to zero new. Low mortality. They did it.

The whole country is at low cases now. Most are either under control or are from people returning home from overseas at which point they are forcefully quarantined in hotels for two weeks.

Is it harsh? Yeah. Very. But we got paid to stay at home and not everybody will agree with the government obviously but they didn’t totally leave us with nothing.

It is worth it to be in a country where I feel safe, but bittersweet and terrifying to know my friends around the world and the world in general is suffering and wishing they could have the same.