There is no greater Amsterdam. The next city is Utrecht which is almost attached. There is what we call Randstad, the Western part of the Netherlands that includes the large cities, an area of 11,400 km2 with 8.4 million inhabitants. So that would be comparable with greater Sydney. Smaller in size, almost twice the population.
I live in the Netherlands and have spend long periods Down Under and visited all major cities, including Perth, so trust me, Australia is not a densely populated region. Not even the big cities like Melbourne and Sydney. They have a densely built CBD, but that is a small area and not necessarily where most people live. Even in these cities, many people live in detached houses. Well that is virtually non-existent in Amsterdam.
The point I want to make is that the whole of Europe is highly populated, and banning non-essential travel still results in a large area in which people move back and forth, even crossing borders. Containing a virus is obviously going to work much better on islands like the UK, Taiwan or Australia. No land borders to worry about. And having a centralist government or dictatorship also helps. South-Korea's success is also based on a very intrusive governmental system, with surveillance everywhere (forced tracking via mobile phones) without any privacy. If you don't care about that, there is a lot you can do that is not possible in countries like the US, UK or Netherlands. Most people in the latter countries already find the measures we have now intrusive enough I would say.
Let's hope the vaccines do their job for a long period of time. And rather than these festival dates I'm looking forward to new music.
You're misquoting me... ...but, to be accurate, what then is the "Metropoolregio Amsterdam" - if not the metropolitan area of Amsterdam?
Hence the point that 'if' you're going to use Greater Sydney then you also reasonably need to use the metropolitan area of Amsterdam.
Yeah, it's just part of how villages & towns & cities grow, that what were once a separate communities outside (be it for many 100s of years or new built) either coalesce or get subsumed into the whole as everything expands - & exactly when you decide that point changes is part of where the issue with city sizes & land areas comes in.
Whilst the differences in either average or peak population density are pretty much irrelevant when we've got Seoul with one that's, got one of >3x that of Amsterdam's peak...
...& where these are tiny in scale vs the potential for 111,111 people to each have their own 3x3m square per km².
More generally though, you're now saying that -
"The point I want to make is that the whole of Europe is highly populated, and banning non-essential travel still results in a large area in which people move back and forth, even crossing borders. Containing a virus is obviously going to work much better on islands like the UK, Taiwan or Australia. No land borders to worry about."Now, firstly, you're clearly now agreeing with my original point that island nations 'can' do things differently - as my first reply to you on this started -
it's certain "closed" in terms limitations on people coming in from abroad & those who can having to isolate in hotels & whatnot - but that's an issue with the rest of the world's response; not Australia's...
...but i think it's reasonable to say that things have reopened within the country in the way that Andre005 has described.
That's not to say that Australia didn't cock a load of things up along the way - but it would certainly be true to say that limiting people coming into a country to reduce the import of cases is 'an' option that an island nation 'can' potentially use much more easily...
...& that's probably the most significant difference.
(i had meant to type "certainly" in the first sentence originally)
However, i'm not quite sure why you're including the UK here - as, whilst again the figures are not necessarily 100% directly comparable the quoted death rate on statista is 1,890.49 per million - which is roughly twice that of The Netherlands atm.
Yeah, in theory, we (in the UK) 'could' have done all manner of things as an island nation, we simply didn't for much of the pandemic - & what we did do tended to be pretty slipshod, inconsistent & far later than it could be...
(we also haven't consistently acted as a single nation, with the 'devolved regions' - Scotland, Wales & Northern ireland - often having differing restrictions at different times to England)
...&, whilst the rights & wrongs of what's happening with vaccinations going to people in need are a different discussion, we (thus far) significantly lucked out on putting money into developing vaccines that worked above the 70% WHO efficacy target, ordered in huge quantities blind earlier than the EU & were quicker to regulate.
[NB as an aside, whilst it would have been foolish of me to turn down getting vaccinated on Saturday as doing so would have made no positive difference to anyone at all - & potentially could have led to the dose being wasted, since i was contacted due to them needing to fill slots to use up the supply; & my 'turn' shouldn't have been for something like another month-month & a half ish... ...my personal opinion is that it's b stupid that the situation allowed me to be offered it, as i'm under 50 & not high risk - when much higher risk people in other countries haven't been vaccinated.]
That said, there was nothing to stop EU countries from doing the same - either as (particularly) Germany put lots of money into the Pfizer vaccine &, at least under emergency measures, any EU country could have acted independently with regulation & ordering vaccines & whatnot.
Well, the UK was still within the transition period until the beginning of the year, & so we were operating under the same rules as The Netherlands or any other EU country for it all.
Likewise, let's look at The Republic of ireland then, as it's an EU island nation, albeit one with a single land border - & their death toll per million is 944.26 (again from statista) - which is roughly the same as that for The Netherlands.
So, simply because something's an island nation, it doesn't mean anything if measures aren't taken & people don't adhere to them.
& as to your last point -
"And having a centralist government or dictatorship also helps. South-Korea's success is also based on a very intrusive governmental system, with surveillance everywhere (forced tracking via mobile phones) without any privacy. If you don't care about that, there is a lot you can do that is not possible in countries like the US, UK or Netherlands. Most people in the latter countries already find the measures we have now intrusive enough I would say."
- then yes, you certainly have a point in terms of what had already been set up...
...however, within the limited context of the pandemic, wasn't this the aim of the UK spending (wasting?) however many billions on the "test & trace" system...?
Or the similar systems in The Netherlands & other countries?
More generally though, it wouldn't be wholly unreasonable to look at gross revenue as being a proxy for GDP in terms of scale...
...& with Google having a gross revenue of 181.69 billion dollars in 2020 - this would make put it in something like 18th place for GDP as an EU country...
...(independently) Apple, at 274.52 billion - would be around 17th or 18th.
(ttbomk, Huawei's sales aren't significant in percentage terms, but as they can't use Android then their $136.7 billion, would place them around 21st or 22nd)
[NB i'm not sure to what extent the EU GDP figures included the effects of the pandemic - so it 'may' be that the positions for the companies are slightly higher atm.]
(& that's obviously ignoring all of the apps that people might install which can/will also collect location & other data - or any tracking via, say, laptops, where Microsoft had a gross revenue of $143 billion in 2020)
So, given that in the order of 75% of adults in the EU (2019 figures) & 84% in the UK (2020 figures) own smartphones, & so are happily giving all manner of data (including location) to companies which are on clearly on the scale of countries financially, i'm not entirely convinced that privacy is genuinely most people's primary concern within either the EU or UK.
Now i'm not going to attempt to argue whether this is a good or a bad thing - not least since it's irrelevant in this context because the data exists...
...but, whilst i think most of us can laugh at the idea that the vaccination programme is really a secret plot by Bill Gates to track everyone, when most of us are choosing to be tracked anyway in return for (nominally) free services, convenience, targetted advertising & the like...
...it does seem a little strange that, for something that could have a significant material benefit in terms of mass protection in this specific context, the data's being wasted because people are worried about their privacy.