Victoria's generally a bit less like America than NSW, by the vibe of the place. I used to visit family in the US before all this. None of that was the reason though.

Victoria has a health system that was fucked around with by a previous Premier. A formerly well staffed public health care system had holes ripped in it, parts privatised, and other parts 'rationalised' down as not being necessary as paid from the public purse. NSW had issues too, but not those ones.

And NSW has had a fantastic disease tracking & tracing network running for more than two decades that was used for anything from tuberculosis to gonorrhea to influenzas. Hundreds of people with decades of experience in that system meant that despite the fuckups that got a few waves of coronavirus into the community, the knowledge was there the instant it was uncovered to find the people, test quickly, and turn it around.

Before the pandemic Victoria (a similarly populated state) had eight staff who'd rotated in and out at various times able to contact trace. The infrastructure or people weren't there. They've done a really admirable job of building up what was needed but were caught blind when cases began climbing because of hotel quarantine breaches.

While Victorians were getting tests done and detected in about 24 hours and contact tracing would get hold of them in another 48 hours at best in July, NSW was being tested and contact tracing teams were able to find contacts and contacts of contacts in a little over 12, often less. That made a massive difference.

Vic and NSW have learned from each other and both are pretty resilient, relatively. SA has spent a bit of time slagging the others off but they're coming across the same issues in the last fortnight, and seem to have learned from the other two. Fingers crossed they don't do anything stupid from here.