There are now two Australias. In Perth, offices, pubs and stadiums are crammed and normal as ever — the payoff for a closed-border approach that has made Western Australia an island within an island. In Sydney, residents are approaching their 14th week of lockdown. The working-class areas with the highest infection rates have faced a heavy police presence, and, until recently, a 9 p.m. curfew and just an hour of outdoor exercise per day.

Is the sacrifice worth it?…

“We might be looking at the country turning the clock back on itself,” said Tim Soutphommasane, a political theorist at the University of Sydney. “There is an explicit insularity and parochialism that now dictates debate.”…

But many Australians, while frustrated, see something else. Asked if the sacrifices have been worth it, they look to their neighbors, their community leaders, the millions of people waiting in long lines for vaccines and the tens of thousands of Australians who would have died of Covid without all the restrictions.

Their answer, with caveats or zeal, has generally been the same: “Yes, it is worth it,” or “Yes, we believe it will be.”