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As an American it is absolutely astounding to hear about things like this. My girlfriend fell off her bike last year and needed stitches and before we let the doctors at the hospital do anything, we were on the phone with her insurance agency to try and figure out the cheapest way to get them. Of course we had no idea what it would cost in the end, so we had to worry for the next few weeks until we got the bill.

> than I did in a US supermarket at the peak.

Where was this though? I am in chicago and even now I've never seen anyone in a grocery store without a mask. All the store require people to wear masks and have mask policies.

which supermarket was this ?

> . In America they just send you home.

https://www.health.qld.gov.au/news-events/news/what-happens-...

> If your symptoms are manageable without medical supervision, your doctor will instruct you to look after yourself at home in isolation.

https://www.coronavirus.vic.gov.au/what-do-if-you-have-coron...

> I have received a positive test result for coronavirus (COVID-19). What should I do?

> If you test positive for coronavirus (COVID-19) you must immediately go home and isolate

Why were you put up in an apartment if you only had 'very mild symptoms' when they advice everyone else to isolate at home?

I would guess that he was not in a city.

which supermarket doesn't have mask policy. Some store in middle of nowhere represents "US supermarket" ? .

"Supermarket" doesn't mean large chain store, it just means large store containing both food and household items. Plenty of locales have local supermarkets, either as singular stores or small regional chains. Whole Foods started this way. It was six years after the first store that they first expanded outside Austin, and their growth was fueled by buying lots of these small chains.[1]

I would say it's not only possible, but likely that some of these chains used a pro/con mask stance to distinguish themselves in certain regions of the U.S.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Foods_Market#History

Everywhere I go had a mask policy posted but that doesn't mean it's actually enforced. If I had a dollar for every person I saw "wearing" a mask that wasn't actually covering their mouth and nose, I'd have retired last year

Also in Chicago here.

I, too, have seen 100% mask compliance in grocery stores.

And when I was downstate for a non-COVID family medical emergency during the December peak, I saw 100% compliance…in the grocery store. The gym? Ha. Nary a mask in sight. They actually scoffed at me when I asked when I went in for a day pass. And this is a franchise of a national gym.

And from friends’ experiences, you had to go all as far as Indiana to experience maskless in Meijer.

I always thought Australian culture had its individualistic streak like American culture. I guess I was wrong, or at least it's a different flavor of individualism.

I didn't get the impression that individualism was the USA's problem here, so much as political tribalism. Mask-wearing seemed to get established very early on as a tribal marker, and everything else followed from that.

I guess political tribalism was certainly a big factor, but I always thought it was something that amplified an already existing characteristic for "rugged individualism", as in, a tendency for people not liking being told what they can or can't do.

It exists to various degrees in pretty much any culture (even highly collectivist cultures like some Asian countries), but in the USA, I think it's seen as a bedrock upon which the country was founded on and successful with. I don't disagree, and I think this individualist go-get-em culture contributed to some of the country's successes, but in times like this, it certainly shows its dark side.

You could chalk up the whole US healthcare system fiasco to this too.

Perception from SA is that Australians are fairly strict rule followers. Personally I’d like more of that, but some friends didn’t like it at all.

Doggy bags discouraged: https://www.foodsafety.com.au/blog/are-restaurant-doggy-bags... (That would astound most SA’ns)

First mandatory cycling helmets: https://www.mondaq.com/australia/crime/899922/are-cyclists-i...

Yeah, not allowing leftovers for meals bought to be taken with you would not go over well in the U.S. either, for multiple reasons.

Tribalism was certainly a significant factor, but I would wager that inconsistency played a bigger role:

- Major political figures publicly flaunted their own mask mandates and lockdown rules, with zero consequences.

"The rules are for you, not us" is not how you get people to come together to fight a pandemic.

- Media condemning social gatherings as super-spreader events, while at the same time, endorsing only very specific riots/protests.

- At the start of the pandemic, everybody wanted masks.

The CDC then stated masks were ineffective.

After that, if you tried to get ahold of masks, you were attacked for doing so. I personally witnessed this tens of times. The same people then flipped around and attacked you if you didn't wear a mask.

It was straight out of the last scene in Orwell's 1984. It was spooky.

Later, the CDC came out and said, "Hey, we lied to you to guarantee a supply of masks for medical personnel. But you should totally trust us now!"

- Media in the US was and is literally nothing but fearporn, which has largely bifurcated the population into "living in terror" and "fresh out of fucks to give".

There's plenty more examples, but I'll stop here.

The inconsistency would have been workable if it wasn't for the violence and anger. Your ability to publicly change your mind without sacrificing credibility inversely correlates to the violence of your opinion.

> At the start of the pandemic, everybody wanted masks.

> The same people then flipped around and attacked you if you didn't wear a mask.

I'm of the opinion that the CDC definitely shot itself in the foot w.r.t. the mask issue initially, but I feel it's important to note that the especially belligerent individualists wanted masks when they thought they would protect themselves, but were completely uninterested in their use when they were determined to primarily be effective as a form of source control to protect others.

Both false and irrelevant.

The most violent people I observed were the ones that flipped from "you don't need a mask, and you're too stupid to wear one anyway: they're complex medical equipment that requires training" to "if you don't wear a mask you're literally killing grandma".

It was amazingly counterproductive.

The goal is to get people to mask up. If they believe doing so will protect them, then good. If they believe doing so will protect others, also good. It does not matter which of these they believe.

What is false and irrelevant?

I'll readily admit that my assertion was based on anecdotal experience, and was probably worded with more objective confidence than warranted, but my experience was that those hostile to the idea that masks were most effective if reserved for front-line medical PPE, were also those hostile to the idea of being obligated to wear a mask for others' sake.

> The goal is to get people to mask up.

Is this a bad thing? Do you believe that there is some ulterior motive in this beyond expected improvements in infection control?

100% spot on. Almost exactly how I saw things go where I am, including the flip-flopping on masks/gloves.

I think it's a lot easier to get people to go along with measures like this when they actually seem to work, which might make it hard to disentangle cause and effect. Certainly, Europe seemed to have a hell of a drop in lockdown compliance once it became clear they weren't going to eradicate Covid or go away any time in the foreseeable future. Also, the media reporting focuses on the success stories and the people who comply when things are going well and the opposite when it's not working - Australia and New Zealand had their fair share of quarantine hotel escapes and government screw-ups in their precautions, some of which they got more lucky with than others, but because it was a success those didn't make it into news coverage elsewhere so much.

I don't think we are particularly individualistic, at least in the cities. Moreso as you head out into the bush, but that's true everywhere.

I suspect it's a hangover from our earlier days, which were recent enough they still live on in popular culture. Also it's not an image we've exactly tried to suppress, since outside of an event like covid it's generally seen as a positive thing.

Most of what you're saying is misleading at best.

> I saw more people wearing masks on Sydney trains at zero cases than I did in a US supermarket at the peak

That's because NSW had legislated the wearing of masks on trains until a couple of weeks ago. It wasn't voluntary, it was either wear a mask or get fined. And since the mask mandate was taken off -- surprise, surprise -- the overwhelming majority stopped wearing them on trains.

> Australian’s have made sacrifices for the greater good of all in the past (giving up guns for example)

"Giving up guns" never happened, what did happen was the forceful buyback of self-loading weapons from law abiding people who followed the law and turned them in. The people who didn't follow the law -- that is, the people who are actually responsible for the violent crime in the first place -- kept their guns and that's why self-loading firearms continue to be seized today from drug dealers and gangsters.

For some general statistics:

1. The number of homicides (and all violent crime) went up after the 1996 firearms buyback[0] and didn't go down until the police took actual action against crime in 2001

2. We have more firearms in 2021 than we did in 1996[1] and, surprising only some, less crime

The major difference in the Australian mindstate is how both major parties are centre-left so it's rare for major issues to be politicised, instead we just have politicians supporting the same things and bickering over otherwise trivial implementation details.

[0] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/AUS/australia/murder-h...

[1] https://www.smh.com.au/national/more-guns-in-australia-now-t...