The counter point to that would be how long would we prevent international travel for? There's a huge chunk of the world who would not be able to get anywhere near the level of vaccination countries such as ourselves have got to. Where would we draw the line when it appears that we're seeing the hospitalisation link broken or substantially reduced so far?
In terms of Australia, whilst they do have an "ordinary life" a lot of the time, they are still living under the threat of constant short term lockdowns. Sydney and Bondi Beach are just about to go into another week long lockdown from tomorrow, so with that and a foreign travel ban they are far from living what anyone would call normal life.
I get what you're saying - but all the good work with vaccination could be broken if a variant that busts them emerges. I get that variant could emerge in the UK (again) but it is so much more likely to happen in the rest of the world and particularly where incidence of the virus is that much higher.
If you were to tell me the winter might have 2 or 3 week-long local lockdowns but otherwise pubs, restaurants, hotels and leisure available, I would take it. What I can't contemplate is another Autumn/Winter like we had last year where the controls were ever-changing, life-limiting and often completely futile - followed by a 3 month strict lockdown.
There is too much essential travel in and out of the UK for a policy like in Australia or New Zealand to work, mainly lorries travelling to and from the EU. Absolutely essential if we want food and other goods.
I have family in Australia and although the situation over there is very different they are equally as frustrated with how things are being done in their country (no travel, very poor vaccine roll out etc.).
Obviously HGV drivers can't be subject to the same controls and there is always a risk of importing variants there which Australia doesn't have to deal with. They are already subject to a relatively stringent test regime and I think that situation can't really be improved and more without disruption to essential supplies.
We can't live a normal life without that stuff, I get it.
People can live a normal life without holidays abroad tho - and none of the reasons I've seen for allowing travel abroad without a strict quarantine period are compelling enough to risk that vaccine-busting future variant being imported.
And I know that Australians aren't happy about the lack of travel, but you know as well as I do that they have had a better (more 'normal') lifestyle day to day than we have, far and away.
One of my best friend's wife lives in Australia - it's a bizarre situation frankly but it has worked for them for the last 20 years living on separate sides of the globe but seeing eachother more than half the time. You can imagine how disruptive the pandemic and travel restrictions both sides have been for them and how difficult it was for them to go 15 months with no way of seeing eachother. Our friend finally managed to get a place on a flight last month but in order to do so he had to fly business class (at a ruinous cost) as well as all the tests and quarantining - the total cost was about 7x more than what he would normally pay to get to Australia, and he's relatively lucky that he can do his normal job (writing) in that situation, otherwise there would have been a cost there too.
Trust me, I get that there are problems with the approach and there are a small group of people it totally dicks on, as well as a larger group who it causes dissatisfaction, but unfortunately if that is the cost of keeping every other business viable and more importantly not locking down the entire population, it's got to be worth it.
