I feel like there are a lot of pandemic relevant factors that are pretty different. 25m people vs 300m. Island nation, less international travelers, very different climate during the opposite season.
Similar in what ways? Aus is an island country whose societal composition and Constitutional rights are nothing like ours. I wouldn't say they're very similar at all.
Australia has its seasons shifted by half a year, so even if Australia had taken similar measures, I'd expect them to have a lot lower transmission rates because respiratory disease peak in winter.
https://www.mja.com.au/sites/default/files/issues/210_10/mja...
Because a large number of those cases are NYC, which is already on the downside of its curve by a considerable degree, while the US as a whole is still trending upward, meaning that the country outside of NYC is doing pretty poorly.
Sadly people can’t look past the big absolute number of deaths and attach proper context to it. Like deaths per million, or ignoring that ~half of cases and deaths are restricted to a single metropolitan area.
