Australia is a big place with the major population centres isolated from each other by hundreds of KMs, you can't just look at overall numbers. Here in Melbourne we successfully eliminated 2 covid outbreaks, and then we were able to control the spread until most had been vaccinated.
As a proportion of the population only a very small amount of us have been exposed to covid with a naive immune system; not being vaccinated.
We can look at such numbers when it is relevant, and if the claim is that the virus was eliminated then it's relevant.
It was not eliminated in any country, at any time during the pandemic, the claim is entirely false. Whether some places did better than others is undoubtedly the case, but not only is that a different argument, and not only I don't think the numbers would support the goalposts-moved argument, it certainly shouldn't start with trivially falsifiable statements.
Feel free to make a new argument in support of lockdowns but try to start by clearing up the obvious counter argument instead of assuming the point to be good and true - Sweden and Japan could not institute lockdowns because of legal restrictions, how did they do in this league?
Those countries also did not eliminate the virus at any point, which only underlines how vapid the other assumptions made were - that elimination was possible or necessary - if indeed it still needs to be underlined.
You don't necessarily need to make that argument with me either, a top level comment might be more appropriate.
> It was not eliminated in any country, at any time during the pandemic, the claim is entirely false.
You're just wrong in this claim. For example, New Zealand completely eliminated the virus in early 2020 and went for over 100 days with zero local cases, from 10 May until 11 August 2020. That's when a new cluster was discovered - genetic sequencing of the viral genome showed that it was imported from abroad.[0]
I suspect that the mistake you're making is that you're looking at aggregated case numbers, which include cases caught inside border quarantine (you can see an example in this report: [1]), and confusing them with local cases (compare with this report: [2]).
COVID was fully eliminated in Western Australia for > 138 days (looks like ~400 days all up) until vaccinations became widespread and borders were reopened.
Most days recorded zero cases, every now and then there was a cluster of quarantine cases from people travelling in|out the state - which didn't impact the state population.
As a proportion of the population only a very small amount of us have been exposed to covid with a naive immune system; not being vaccinated.