More than half of Australia's population is in lockdown in a bid to try to control a worsening COVID-19 outbreak.
But locking down as a result of the spreading Delta strain is wearing some people down mentally and it's generating a lot of interstate hostility — particularly towards New South Wales.
ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews have both criticised NSW leader Gladys Berejiklian for failing to lock down "fast and hard" when cases were first detected in Sydney.
Ms Berejiklian in turn says her critics hold "completely unrealistic" views on how to manage the disease's highly contagious Delta strain.
The three capital cities in these jurisdictions — Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne — are now all in lockdown. Each began on a different date, and the rules differ a little, too.
But putting aside the political acrimony of the lockdown debate, what can we learn from how people moved during that time?
This week, Google published travel data showing how these cities' residents responded during the first two weeks of their restrictions — the crucial period, according to epidemiologists.
Canberrans closed up hardest and fastest
ABC News: Donal Sheil
)The charts below are the result of Google using devices (mostly mobile phones) to track where people go.
Google plotted how much time people spent at various locations against a "normal" period in early 2020, before the pandemic.
The two clearest impacts of lockdown were obvious: people spent more time at home and less time at work. (Day 0 in the charts marks the day each city-wide lockdown began.)
Canberrans' reaction differed significantly to residents in Sydney and Melbourne, though there are some obvious explanations.
The ACT workforce has always been skewed towards administrative or knowledge jobs — work that's comparatively easy to do at home.
Nor had Canberrans endured four months of lockdown last year, as Melburnians did. Prior to their lockdown, which began on August 12, ACT residents had enjoyed a relatively carefree year without a known case of local infection.
As such, they had no reason to have "lockdown fatigue".
Sydneysiders were granted more freedoms
AAP: Joel Carrett
)A key difference between the three cities was the rules of each lockdown.
When the NSW government ordered a city-wide shutdown on June 23, most residents were not limited in the time they could exercise or enjoy outdoor recreation, nor how far they could travel to do it (if they stayed in the city).
A wider range of businesses and stores were also permitted to stay open, though these policies were later tightened.
The data shows that, early in the lockdown, Sydneysiders spent more time at outdoor leisure venues than people under harsher restrictions.
And while images of crowds enjoying themselves at the beach angered some, in most cases they simply showed people complying with NSW health orders.
Looking for lockdown lessons
None of the cities' lockdowns have worked perfectly so far — COVID-19 continues to spread among all three populations.
At the same time, all of the lockdowns have, to varying extents, slowed infection rates and prevented deaths.
The NSW government has been accused — including by other governments — of not initially locking down fast or hard enough, allowing the disease to spread further.
Yet, overall, the mobility data shows relatively small differences in how Sydneysiders and Melburnians altered their habits.
The value of this data is not in scoring political points; it's in helping to work out what restrictions work best.
Does it matter how much time people spend outside? Which travel patterns are associated with low and high local infection rates?
We'll need answers to these questions at some point because lockdowns are likely to be part of life — coming and going as needed — as we learn to "live with the virus" for years to come.
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2021-09-01 22:50:50Z
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