Heard from someone in the know. If nothing had happened with restrictions and the majority weren't doing the right thing, the Vic health system would be completely overwhelmed by now and a lot of people dead. Don't be too hard on the actions taken, it really looks like a small chunk of idiots that have ruined things, and the actions have mostly worked.
The restrictions have somewhat worked, but with such high-levels of community transmission we're going to end up locked down perpetually at this point. We needed a much stricter lock-down earlier in the second wave so that community transmission can drop off and we can then shoot for an elimination strategy.
This difference this go round is the fact that
community transmission is occuring. First lock-down positive cases were mostly returning travellers and security staff not doing their job properly at hotel quarantines that were creating cases. Now it's out there in the community, under current restrictions even if
everyone genuinely did the right thing the asymptomatic cases will still spread it without realising. Would've been much better (and would still be better now) IMO to enter a proper,
heavily enforced lock-down - especially while there's still federal jobkeeper money around to stop people defaulting on mortgages and loans. With the current approach there's no end in sight for the current "second wave" in metro Vic. It's going to hurt our state economy and a lot of individuals a lot more in the long run than the short term hit to lock-down properly and get the numbers under control.