This is interesting. From that article:

His federal government has been under pressure to reverse a decision to scrap emergency payments for people who have to isolate but do not have sick leave.

Mr Albanese tweeted on Friday evening: "We will discuss proposals to ensure the vulnerable are protected over coming weeks."

Whereas just today Japan announced a record number of cases, and yet no new restrictions.

This new wave is going to break all records, and it's going to be very interesting. Japan is now experiencing the most covid cases ever. That's astonishing. And yet it has decided, so far, not to reverse the easing of restrictions it has started. Good for them. Smart move. The new strain is causing nothing more than a cold, and people are sick of restrictions and want to get back to living.

Meanwhile, countries that are maintaining some top down, draconian set of control methods are caught in a tough spot. What is the situation is Australia now if you test positive? To the extent that countries demand some stupid quarantine and mandatory testing, they have to somehow compensate the victims, unless of course you're in China.

China is maintaining this farce of a zero policy and it's killing its economy, but I think that's by design in hindsight. They don't give a shit about covid. They probably wanted to cool the economy anyway, and this gives them a good reason to do so while avoiding any blame for the hardship it causes the masses.

In the west, central banks are having to raise interest rates to cool inflation. They have to purposely torpedo the economy after printing so much money during covid that it started causing runaway inflation. China doesn't have that problem. It can blame economic hardship on covid while at the same time use it as an opportunity to expand surveillance.

All in all, I'd say China is winning in this game so far.