Thread by @MackayIM

On this "Australia" day I'm extremely grateful for the jurisdictional across which advised State leaders on COVID-19. I'm also grateful that State leaders listened & acted on that advice. I'm grateful for our established health systems that could support that advice.

We never have openly chased down eradication (local elimination) of SARS-CoV-2 transmission, but in saving lives, reducing fear & protecting livelihoods, Australia got to the same point just via a different route.

By aiming to address fear, prevent illness and support jobs, Australia's leaders really couldn't have ended up anywhere but eradicating SARS-CoV-2 from within its borders. That's what was needed to meet those goals. We've seen that "living with the virus" is actually

living with an epidemic. Anything else involves aggressive non-stop vigilance leading to the tracing, quarantine, isolation of cases and halting community transmission; which is just dressing up the eradication of local transmission.

I'm grateful for our extensive network of expert accredited laboratories who are trusted to work independently (thus react quickly) meant we had testing in place in January. That capacity has only grown as has our whole-genome sequencing network.

We have a population who is aware of the benefits of vaccines (an awareness we can certainly build further) and a system that is working hard to deliver vaccines to the Australian population, only after those products have been closely scrutinised to our own high standards.

We have brilliant hospitals and healthcare workers who have worked tirelessly (and been very tired!) to treat the ill while still keeping an eye on all those non-COVID-19 illness and diseases ate the same time. They've all kept learning as the story has changed.

We have a spectacular network of public health experts who have tracked, traced, guided, instructed, learned, written and protected us from a new infectious threat. Even if the public don't really know much about them and all they do to keep us safe

Our closure of international borders to all but a small number of people prevented a steady onslaught of new cases. Massive internal border closures prevented spread from hotspots within the country. They were opened when safe. We didn't have % thresholds of "safe" case numbers.

Those border closures prevented human travel but didn't prevent trade of goods. We have continued to export and (although things are slower due to production delays elsewhere-party balloons of all things!) import.

Our experts were mostly aware that any cluster that becomes an epidemic starts from one person. They knew speed was essential & effectiveness depended on their eyes on the ground-lab testing-being fuelled by a cooperative public, willing to get tested when sick. And they were.

We mostly thought through the legal ramifications of what was going to happen early on & gave needed legal powers - in a bipartisan way - to those health experts who knew what would be needed to protect us. Planning ahead and acting quickly was essential here. It saved lives.

And while our tourism sector has taken a massive hit it's clear that open borders lead to an eventual need to close things-perhaps over & over & over-to tamp down a raging epidemic that kills 1-15% of those aged over 65; more when hospitals can't deal with other illness

While I can't speak for our federal leaders, I don't expect we'll open those borders until after all are vaccinated. Perhaps after that we will see a fixed amount of student entries, some tourism (in and out)..it will depend on the appetite of our healthcare system for

managing travellers who will become ill while visiting or after returning.
But there's a lot to be grateful for around COVID-19 management in Australia, a year after our first case arrived. And still a long road ahead.

*jurisdictional expertise 🙄