dolorosa_12 | (Reply)

From:

Oh absolutely, people from WA are the absolute worst about this, although early on in the pandemic I was getting that same sense from people all over Australia. There was a strong sense of moral superiority, as if every single person in the country had personally done something really self-sacrificing and clever, and an attitude that those of us in Europe were too selfish and stupid to have made the 'right choices' that Australians made. (Whereas pretty much the only difference was luck and timing — it took longer for the virus to reach Australia, and the borders were closed sooner, whereas in Europe people closed the borders after the virus was already spreading too rapidly for border closures to do any good.) People from Victoria soon changed their tune, and after the Delta outbreak and vaccine strollout most other Australians also lost that sense of patronising superiority, but for most of last year and early 2021, I found it impossible to discuss the pandemic with anyone back home other than my immediate family.

But I do think there were people treating a positive COVID test as an individual personal moral failure from the beginning, as well as those treating places with big outbreaks as dirty and suspect

Yes, this was exactly it, and I think Australia's really successful, precise contact tracing system had a lot to blame for this attitude. Until the big outbreaks, you knew very precise details about every case — how they'd caught it, where they'd been, how long they'd been infectious in the community and so on. Whereas in the UK all we got were (huge) case numbers, with no further details, which made the whole thing less specific and personal, and ensured that we understood that (particularly prior to the existence of vaccines) catching COVID was generally due to bad luck and systemic failures and inequalities (e.g. nursing home workers not being given paid sick leave and therefore coming into work sick).

The thing that's most frustrating to me as an immigrant is the tendency for a lot of Australians to immediately call for border closures (or stricter border closures) rather than mask mandates, improved vaccination programs, or any restrictions on their own lives. This feeds into the attitude you've mentioned — that the virus is something brought in to the country/state by those dirty, immoral people over the border, rather than something that requires behavioural change from everyone in the world.