"In the US, they have made the decision to go along with life," she said.

Her family in the US go to public places. Flights are packed. When a friend flew from Sydney to San Francisco, the plane was empty but then full for the onward journey to New York.

It's true that the number of cases and deaths in the US is high: more than a thousand deaths a day compared with an average of a couple a day in Australia. In the US, nearly 40 million people in total have had Covid. In Australia, it's just over 45,000.

But Americans are going about their lives. The economy is open for business.

In June, California announced its "grand reopening". New York lifted most restrictions once 70 per cent of the population were vaccinated. Ritu Clementi thinks Australia should do the same once around three-quarters are vaccinated.

Those who suffer in America, she said, were often those who had chosen not to protect themselves. "They are getting a pandemic of the unvaccinated," she said.

Her view is that Australia has been far too restrictive in the trade-off between keeping the economy going and trying to eliminate the virus.

In Britain, too, they have taken a different course from Australia's - opening up the economy and living with infections. The rationale is that more cases don't result in proportionately more deaths or serious illness because a high proportion of the population is vaccinated.

But there are different views. Many British people who have been fully vaccinated are living much freer lives but they are still careful, avoiding crowds, for example. Life is nearer normal but still far from normal.

But there is another opinion. "In Britain, where the percentage of vaccinated adults is twice as high as here," Professor John Dwyer of the University of New South Wales said, "that achievement triggered the removal of all public health restrictions as the country embraced the freedom associated with the decision to go forward 'living with COVID-19'.

"The result? Hospitals in crisis, with about 800 admissions each day for COVID-19 and an average of 90 deaths a day."

Israel was hailed as the great success story.

It started to lift restrictions in February as more and more of the population were vaccinated.

By the middle of June, when more than half the population had been fully vaccinated, Israelis stopped wearing masks. Shops, restaurants, hotels and cinemas opened.

But ten days later, as cases started to rise quickly again, some - but not all - restrictions were reimposed.

South Korea was also once hailed as the example of how to get it right.

It decided to allow vaccinated people to go without masks. Small gatherings were allowed.

And cases soared.

A record number pushed the government to tighten social-distancing rules. Meetings of more than two people were banned in the evenings.

In the middle of June, infections had fallen to their lowest in nine months so the government decided to ease restrictions in a big way.

Nightclubs reopened. Music festivals were back on and attracted many thousands of people.

If people could prove they had been vaccinated or had recovered from COVID-19, they were allowed to party like pre-pandemic times.

Twenty-thousand people went to one festival - infections started to soar. Two weeks later, a thousand festival-goers had Covid.

Holland slammed the doors back shut. Cafes, bars and restaurants closed. Social distancing was reintroduced. Nightclubs were forced to close again.

"We certainly can learn from other countries," Professor Adrian Esterman of the University of South Australia told this paper.

"In many of them, opening up too early has been a disaster.

"Basically, when we do open up, it has to be done carefully and staged, still retaining many public health measures if we are to avoid some of the disasters that have happened in countries like the Netherlands."

The choice is not either complete, tight lockdown or no restrictions and a full economic and social life.

Australia (and New Zealand) have shown that the virus can't be shut out - and there is an economic cost to lock-downs, not to mention the mental strain on people.

But relying on vaccines doesn't do the trick either, particularly with new infectious variants like Delta and its successors.

The likely path will involve as much vaccination as possible combined with continuing rules to prevent people coming into contact with each other. The rules would be imposed according to local conditions, changing from time to time and place to place. It won't be easy.

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