For much of 2020, Australia's success in controlling the virus was the envy of the world. By March of that year, as Italian hospitals drowned in cases and the UK dithered about restrictions, Australia decisively closed its borders -- and the tactic initially paid off. But more than a year on, Australians remain shut inside their gilded cage, relying on a series of short, sharp lockdowns to quell an outbreak of the highly-contagious Delta variant.
