If your pursuit of "best covid results" (and all the goal post shifting justifications that come with it) requires that your ostensibly democratic, free country turns even more towards something resembling East Germany, i'd say you've failed in some more fundamental way. Many other countries also managed to decently deal with a highly difficult and fluid situation like this without imposing absurd Stasi-like equivalents of exit visas. What a shameful thing for a western democratic state to shift to and what a shame that so many idiots defend the normalization of these things in their terror of this relatively moderate virus.
No. You're confusing public health measures with political ideology.
This confusion is one of the reasons that the US covid response was, and continues to be, such a failure. The US is at 649,754 deaths from covid and counting.
The U.S. response has been extremely variable and has operated under circumstances entirely different, geographically and politically from those of a much smaller, island country like Australia. Comparing the two as countries is absurd. With that said, there are many legitimate criticisms of the Australian government reaction, and yes, on authoritarian grounds as well. The U.S response is in many ways worth criticizing as well. Furthermore, what has Australia really gained? Endless rolling lockdowns and a fragility against covid upticks that's laughably tenuous while also being highly authoritarian. It's wonderful to see the exceptionally low death count among COVID cases in the country (taking into account its unique geographic situation) but had vaccination not become available, this would have been a very fragile, unsustainable thing bought at enormous social cost.
A lot, economically. Australia & NZ returned to growth faster than just about anywhere else on the planet, and the states that locked down hardest returned to growth fastest.
So it was a big win heath wise, and a big win economically. Whether the new rules were a big loss of freedom is a matter of taste I guess, but we already have lots of rules like don't drive too fast, don't yell Fire! in a theatre, your kids must be schooled, don't has sex with minors. More rules than you can poke a pointed stick at in fact. In comparison the new ones were a drop in the ocean, and they disappeared as soon as they weren't needed (ie, when the lock downs worked). I sincerely wish the other rules were reviewed as quickly.
Yes, the US has failed as a nation in its covid response.
You claim Australia's health measures are now "normalized" which is absurd. They are abnormal measures to deal with an abnormal situation.
Let's make a bet: I bet Australia will remove its lockdown restrictions when either the covid case numbers are under control or it decides to just give up and let covid infections rise (like the UK did).
You bet the lockdowns are "normalized" and Australia remains an "authoritarian regime".
In WA we've been pretty much living a normal life sans about ~4 lockdowns, most of which went for 4-7 days. It feels like ancient history. Last one we had was around April 24
