What made the difference in Australia at least, is a national health system and an early approach on a national level.
A national health system means centralised coordination for health resources. none of this silly states bidding against each other for resources.
Also, very early on, a "national cabinet" was convened which consisted of the Prime minister and the state premiers. They coordinated policies across the whole country which were then implemented in each jurisdiction. There was none of this "we do our own thing whenever".
One of the other main contributors is testing. We started testing very early on well before March, and it gradually expanded in scope as things chnaged.
But, the main contributor, and I think this is a good Australian setup, is a responsibility matrix (or combat agency).
In Australia, the Chief Medical Office is the authority when it comes to panedemics/infectious diseases. This means that they usually have the final say, but in this very complex and devastating situation, they advise the governement of the day.
They listen and act accordingly.

It is evident in how things progressed in Australia. Initially our PM was playing it down, but then his tone and approach changed as the advice changed and so we are in a good place now.

I suspect NZ is in a similar setup hence the same (actually better) scenario.

The free travel and movement between EU and UK is still in effect until end of year.
Trump wants to blame the foreigners or his "adversaries": first China, now the EU.
Notice that Russia is not included in the ban. Is that because there is no virus outbreak there?

I used to carry a pager for almost 15 years when I was part of our state emergency service in NSW.
The reason we still use them is because of coverage.
Pagers rely on radio transmitters that cover massive areas. They are not subject to emergency mobile signal shutdown during emergencies or congestion periods.
SMS (and email) is much more useful, and we use that as our primary mass communication tool to our members, however, for team leaders and officers we still use pagers as well.
I have had situations where an emergency SMS was not delivered for over an hour due to the fire emergency we were in.
This is not to say that pagers are perfect. I have had missed or garbled messages due to interference (I was working near a phone exchange at the time).
I think pagers are still useful, the problem is the number of providers is shrinking rapidly and that will be the only reason they will disappear.

In Australia, voting is compulsory, so turnout is in excess of 80%.

There is no requirement for IDs when voting, just making sure your name is crossed off the list in the seat you're registered for. This obviously means that you can, illegally, vote twice at two different locations, but the system will pick it up (when they scan the registers)
I'm not entirely sure, but I think the election officer can request some form of ID if they suspect foul play.

Anyway, it is possible to cheat, but the percentage of rejected votes is so small that there is no reason to change the system and increase the costs associated with it.

I guess, because the voting is compulsory hence a large turnout minimises the effects compared to a voluntary voting system where the turnout is low and the percentages become significant.

I don't understand the summary, and so I am scared to read the linked articles.
Can someone please translate the summary so I can make an informed decision whether to read the articles or not.

Speaking as someone who had to do a "computer" subject at school back in the mid 80s, I will say that I leared a lot from that time that still applies today. We basically only learned BASIC, but I can't remember the PCs. I think they were Casio.
Anyway, this subject was compulsory, even though it was not a core subject and was not part of final year exams. Most of us loved it, even though quite a few struggled with it.
Like some others have already mentioned, programming does teach you logic.
In my opinion and experience, I highly recommend it.

I remember a time when I was still working for HP, and was in charge of setting up support some global customers.
I was based in Sydney, had to deal with one of HP's call centre operations out of Chennai. This is normally fine becuase they were only 5 hours difference, so there were a few working hours overlap.
The problem was, this particular group operated for some reason on GMT time, so it really annoyed me because there were no working hours overlap, and they simply would not work with me during my business hours!

Anyway, back to the survey, I've only worked for a living in 5 distinct timezones, (not counting supporting anyone/thing in a different timezone)

I voted plastic, but really meant polymer.
Our notes are made of polymer material
These are so easy to identify, counterfeit proof and last quite long, even if washed many times.
I prefer to have lots and lots of them, but hardly seem to have any in my wallet! So I tend to use the other plastic there.

I remember when AltaVista was the best search engine before google started.
It was quick and did have quite a lot of results, but that was in the day when a search term returned a limited number of pages and you could technically reach the end of the search results.
Ahhh... Information overload. Love it.

And I still get occasional letters for the previous owners. I used to write on them "return to sender" but after a few years I stopped. Most of the post is advertising and brochures, so I now read them. Some are interesting since he was an electrical contractor.
Occasionally I get letters from collections agencies for random people who I have no idea if they ever lived in the house!
It doen't bother me though.

We grew up drinking coffee as a social drink: when visitors come you serve them coffee and it was also used when the family gathered to chat or chill.
You drink coffee slowly while sitting down.
Now, I only have one cup of coffee a day, which is usually when I first wake up and it literally takes me a good 20 minutes to finish it. This quietness helps me think through the day and also go through my junk mail (paper ones). It's a relaxing ritual.

I don't understand people who are so addicted to it that they would drink coffee while walking or catching the train. What's the point?

Personal PCs at home are backed up to an extrnal drive.
At work I backup to a hard drive (backup server) which is then replicated to another server. The backups are also copied to tape for external storage provider (mainly for monthly and yearly backups)
I suspect, in the future we will dispense with the tape backups unless we're really required to keep information indefinitely!

On a side note, but still on topic, my brother's got an iMac and a Time Capsule. He had to change the hard drive a couple of months ago, and when we rebotted the Mac with the new drive it rebuilt the iMac from the Time Capsule backup. I was quite impressed at how smooth the operation was.

I voted the same as my siblings. I come from a family of seven siblings, and I am the youngest. 4 of us have got a university degree, and three only finished highschool.
The amazing part though is that my mum was illiterate and my dad has never has formal schooling (friends in the army taught him to read and write). They both valued education so much that sacrificed a lot for us to go to good schools.

There was an article on CNN about the US voting system. http://edition.cnn.com/2012/11/05/opinion/frum-election-chaos/index.html

Pretty sad to be honest. We take voting system for granted here (Australia), it is run pretty smoothly, and even though it is paper ballots still, the results are known within hours unless it is pretty close. I have never heard of vote disputes. Usually recounts when the result is too close but that's about it.

1986 I was still in highschool. Our school brought in a few Casio (I think) PCs with the monochrome monitors.
We learned to program basic on them. It was great. Learned logic and helped with maths.
I remember we had one of these PCs connected to a TV and a tape player where we would read programs from. This is where we did the colour graphics.
I've loved working with computers and programming from that day on.

That was my introduction to computers. I only knew 3 people who had computers at that time.
I did not get to use computers again until I went to university in 1991 where we used Apollo then DEC 320(?) which had Mosaic.
In the university library they had Apple macintosh computers with Netscape Navigator. They were the easiest and best to use.