Americans in this thread might not appreciate how different Australia's experience of Covid has been. It has not ripped uncontrolled through our community, and the vast, vast majority of Australians want to keep it that way, and are willing to pay the price of harsh restrictions in order to do so.
That's a valid point...
Perspective is everything...
The idea that the military would start patrolling my neighborhood because of a daily case count of 300 in my state of 11 million people is practically unthinkable.
Although, on the flip side, that bubble had to burst at some point.
On the flip side, rolling lockdowns can only exist for so long (even in a nation where many people had the best of intentions and sense of altruism) before people start to lose their sanity a bit.
Constant lockdowns and restrictions and shifting goals are going to make a lot of people rebellious after a certain point.
This has been going on for well over a year now... it eventually takes a toll on peoples' mental health, and at a certain point, I can empathize with the person who says "enough of this, I can't take it anymore, I just want to get back on with my life, I don't care if I get sick".
Hopefully you guys can get some more vaccine doses soon...I didn't realize that Australia only had 15% of people fully vaccinated...for some reason, I just assumed it would be more.
We have idiots here who refuse to take it, despite the fact that we have adequate doses and businesses all over the place with "free vaccine: no appointment needed" signs up.
There are people in other countries who would love to get protected from it...here, we can't get some people to take it, even offering them a $25 gift card at the store they're literally walking into to buy something.
Funny/Sad story, I went to a Best Buy (popular tech/electronics chain here in the US) to pick up a new graphics card for my gaming PC (that finally was back in stock after all the wanna-be bitcoin millionaires killed the GPU market)... a large local hospital system had a stand set up offering a $25 best buy gift card for getting a vaccine on the way in... people walked right by it, one even saying "
<expletive deleted>, I'm not lettin' them put chemicals in me for $25"
That's what we're dealing with here.