I'll try to keep this brief, as I've been avoiding posting in this topic after it was correctly pointed out that I don't follow a wide enough range of news sources to get the full picture, as I was always just referring to ABC and SBS news reports and websites in my covid updates in this topic back during the first wave, without referring to right-leaning sources like Fox News and their newspapers (which I don't have access to anyway).
I just preferred not to watch or refer to the commercial news programs because they are influenced by advertisers and their owners, making them unreliable... and fortunately I didn't have access to Sky News or printed newspapers, which are worse for being privately owned or controlled by one or two rich people.
The news programs I watch that I recommend...
- ABC - news24, Insiders, News Breakfast, Planet America, Media Watch, and whenever Casey Briggs is on with his covid graphs and stats (for over a year now).
- SBS - evening news, PBS newshour (publicly funded, so no owners interfering or vetoing content), This Week (only on Mondays here), American ABC news (commercial news, but one of the more centrist news programs over there, always declaring if they are covering news that relates to one of their owners or partners), and sometimes BBC news and Al Jazeera news for news on Europe, Middle East and Africa that you don't get on commercial channels.
- TEN - The Project (it's left leaning, but sometimes focuses on important things, and can make them entertaining enough to have to pay attention to things you need to know about), The Late Show (yes, with Stephen Colbert... his opening 15 minutes covers a lot of American news in a comedic light)
If you watch enough centrist news programs, you don't even need to watch left or right leaning programs (like Sky News) because their content is often referred to, if it is factually incorrect or misleading (like climate change deniers, covid deniers, anti-vaxxers, etc).
You have no idea how much is going on around the world until you turn away from the commercial news programs and switch on global news programs. You may think, "why should I care about what happens outside of my country, or even my city", but everything that affects us domestically has influences or causes from beyond our borders... like how much things cost, how much you earn, how many people have a job, and of course this pandemic. Not knowing about what is happening in other countries, even in countries that you may not have heard about, can leave us unprepared for what our future holds as a country.

So, on topic now...
Watching the news programs today about the covid/lockdown protests around the country today... humans can be so selfish. After we saw the Sydney covid cases spike after their big protest march (and continue to spiral out of control since then), we see a 100s of people in Melbourne in a tightly packed group and minimal masking, protesting lockdowns, but are actually making sure it lasts longer because all the extra cases will drag out the current spread even longer.
We've seen in NSW (and this last week in VIC) just how much more contagious the Delta strain is over last year's Alpha strain outbreaks. Alpha was spreading to 1 or 2 other people on average, so a lockdown was able to stop enough people contacting other people to create enough dead ends for the virus, while quarantining enough known contacts to prevent transmission from people who haven't yet been confirmed to be infected. Unfortunately, that element of contact tracing is impossible to do when there are hundreds of cases generating thousands of potential contacts that are spreading the virus for several days before they are tracked down.
In comparison, Delta is said to be spreading to 5 to 8 people on average, which means just to keep the case numbers steady, they have to lockdown or isolate at least 80% of people who've been at a contamination site... and just about everywhere is a contamination site in Sydney by now. So you just need 20% of the people not limiting their movements to keep infecting more people than the number of infected people being isolated.
Reducing the movement of people was enough to eliminate the Alpha strain outbreaks... but it isn't enough for the Delta strain, even if you don't have tools intentionally violating distancing and masking requirements (I think Brisbane just got lucky this month with their outbreak, but with NSW cases just south of a high-traffic border, expect new infections in SE QLD within the next 2 weeks).

Some of the protesters today on camera were saying that covid doesn't even exist and that the media was to blame for spreading that fake news... that's like "flat earth theory" level of nuts there, thinking that all of those people dying, all of the hospital staff, and the grieving relatives all around the world, are all fake, like paid actors. Those people at the protests (and those not adhering to lockdown/masking mandates) should be forced to spend time at the covid wards in the hospitals, to not only see that it is real, but also to see what damage they are helping spread... particularly those protesters who do accept it exists, but believe it isn't that serious or isn't likely to affect them, or anyone around them.
People who claim that "only 1% will die" are not only heartless, but are unfamiliar with how maths work. For a country like Australia, that's about 260,000 people dying, and about 3 million people with symptoms that require hospitalisation (we see how just a couple hundred cases in Sydney hospitals have stretched their medical resources) and end up with shorter lifespans from long term symptoms due to the virus destroying their lungs and nervous system. The news here doesn't cover that, but in American news programs, they will sometimes talk about the 10% who get covid symptoms who end up suffering from them long after recovering from the virus... those who had serious symptoms are unable to work or live a full life, and are expected to have a shortened lifespan. Those "only 1%" people who refuse to get vaccinated, are most likely going to be in that 10% who will live out the rest of their shortened lives regretting not having the vaccine.
This virus is contemporary proof of Darwin's theory of evolution, with mutations occurring around the world, but the stronger mutations become the dominant strain... and future mutations that are even more destructive and contagious, will keep becoming the dominant strain until all of the unvaccinated are dead and there is no one left to harbour the virus long enough for it to mutate and spread (vaccinated people only appear to be dying if their immune system didn't generate anti-bodies, or are also suffering from something else at the same time). This Delta mutation has resulted in hundreds of children under 12 in hospital in America, because the vaccine hasn't been tested and cleared for kids under 12... so what if the next mutation is able to infect and kill children at the same rate as the elderly... would covid deniers and anti-vaxxers have a different opinion if it was their children at risk.
And masks have been proven to work, otherwise doctors wouldn't use them, and they have to be the smartest people in the world, as they need the highest marks from school and do 18-20 years education. Medications like vaccines are made by doctors and scientists, and are only used because they were proven to work in trials (or at the very worst, are significantly the better option in terms of odds of dying)... and like with EVERY medication you take, there are potential side effects (more people die from aspirin and paracetamol medications than vaccine medications).
If the smartest people in the world recommend something and set the example, then isn't it the dumbest people who do the opposite?