I

 

thought we were the "pro-life "ones.

 

"Gates cited Australia’s Covid response as the gold standard to follow. The country reopened its international borders this week for the first time since March 2020. Over the course of the pandemic, returning citizens and approved international travelers have been required to quarantine in hotels guarded by police and military members. Australia’s states even periodically locked down their respective borders.

Thousands of Australians protested those lockdowns, but the measures seem to have worked: Since the beginning of the pandemic, only 20 per 100,000 Australians have died from Covid, according to a New York Times analysis of John Hopkins University data. That’s a significantly lower figure than the 283 per 100,000 Americans who have died from Covid, according to the same analysis.

Vaccine rates in Australia are also relatively high: 81% of the country’s population is fully vaccinated against Covid, according to John Hopkins University data. For comparison, less than 65% of the U.S. is currently fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Bill Gates: ‘If every country does what Australia did,’ the world could prevent the next pandemic