Well, that’s a little terrifying. Turns out that coronavirus was mutating during Victoria’s second wave last year along similar lines to those variants we’re seeing now. Had it not gone extinct from the lock-down, this “Australian variant” could have been more infectious and possibly more resistant to vaccines.
I’m certainly glad the state government decided to go for zero community spread. As hard as the lock-downs were, I could imagine maintaining suppression of this variant would have been even more difficult, and would have just worn everyone down, not to mention all the additional sickness and death we would have experienced.