Greater Sydney (basically metropolitan Sydney and surrounding communities within commuting distance) is still in lockdown as cases of covid still are being detected at around 200+ a day.

I mentioned at the start of this current lockdown the bizarre social-class dimension to covid outbreaks. With Sydney, this outbreak started out in relatively affluent suburbs and the state government hoped to contain the outbreak without a fall lockdown. It wasn't quite a "lockdowns are the last resort" mentality but the tougher measures were still delayed by crucial days. The result of trying to avoid a lockdown was a) you get a lockdown anyway and b) it is longer because community transmission is more widespread.

Covid's cruel punch-line to the social class dimension is that while the outbreak started in wealthier suburbs, it has become entrenched in poorer suburbs — mainly in the southwest part of Sydney's urban sprawl. So as the measures have become harsher, the places and people feeling the worst of it are people with less income and fewer choices. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jul/29/nsw-covid-update-rules-tightened-in-western-sydney-as-state-reaches-record-high-of-239-daily-cases

In 2020 state and federal politicians showed more willingness to help people stay home rather than attempt to force people to stay home.

Across New Zealand and Australia, we've had 15 months of experience with managing outbreaks with mixed results. Other countries circumstances may be different (especially in terms of the practicality of limiting internal movement between major urban centres) but overall there is a clear pattern of what works: lockdown early and pay people to stay home by supporting impacted businesses. That approach leads to shorter lockdowns and quicker returns to normality. What doesn't work is dithering about lockdowns and trusting in aggressive policing to get people to stay home. We've known since at least March last year that cases rise exponentially when unmanaged and that there is can be a delay of days in terms of knowing the extent of the spread.

Australia has also messed up two other aspects.

Firstly the hotel quarantine system has been doubly inadequate. It's firstly been the source of multiple community outbreaks due to poor controls in place leading to infections spreading and by having the majority of quarantined travellers in the CBDs of major cities when infections spread from people returning, it is straight into areas with high population density. Secondly, the numbers that can be accommodated are too small to manage the number of Australians who want to return home but can't get flights because of caps on numbers. As a stop-gap in 2020, the hotel-quarantine policy made sense but the government has had months to develop better options.

Secondly, the vaccine roll-out has been shambolic. Again, there was some wisdom in Australia taking a slower approach than say the UK at the start of the year. Even with the current outbreak, covid rates are relatively low compared to other countries but luck was playing a role in that.

A slower approach didn't stop major errors, the biggest of which was initially putting hope in just one vaccine: Astra-Zeneca. A rare blood-clotting side effect meant that the vaccine was subject to shifting health advice, which in one sense couldn't be predicted but in another sense was inevitable. Once vaccination happens en-masse, inevitably differences between the various vaccines would become more obvious and not just side-effects but potentially in efficacy or ability to cope with variants. Trusting in just one was a gamble. Even given that, health advice and vaccine availability has been muddled and difficult to navigate.

Overall, Australia has escaped much of the worst aspects of the global pandemic through luck, circumstance, geography, timing and some good policies. Looking at events now what worries me more is not covid but the next virus. There will be another global pandemic at some point, possibly another SARS type disease, possibly something else. That governments are still making avoidable errors with covid makes me apprehensive that the next big pandemic will proceed as badly as this one. It may even be worse given the more entrenched opposition to public health policy that has developed this cycle.

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