For the last few weeks – since about mid-April – I have noticed we have been seen both many more cases and death than previously.
Since the end of the month we have discovered that we have had more deaths in the last 4 months than in the more than 2 years previously.
My concern is really crystallised with the following article:
10:00pm, May 6, 2022 Updated: 11:23pm, May 6
COVID’s death toll has soared since the election was called, but nobody is talking about it
Australians seem to think COVID-19 is all wrapped up as an issue. It's not. Photo: Getty
10:00pm, May 6
It’s just shy of a month since Scott Morrison announced the election.
Since then, as of Friday, 907 people have died from COVID-19, way more than 10 per cent of all deaths since the pandemic began. That’s a lot of heartache.
You could fill a couple of Boeing 747s with that many people. Politicians would be lining up to join a national prayer meeting if those planes went down in quick succession.
But the high COVID death rate, and the very high case numbers, are not getting a mention, particularly in the election coverage.
In the week leading up to Mr Morrison’s announcement there was an average of 54,337 new cases reported each day.
As of Friday, that daily average had dropped to about 41,000. Still very high.
Do you remember when the suggestion we might see a thousand cases a day was terrifying? Certainly, a couple of years ago we seemed to feel a little frightened every time half a dozen grandmothers passed away.
Now, aside from people directly affected by a COVID death, the issue, certainly at a political level, has seemingly become ho-hum.
Could the real numbers be higher?
Professor Adrian Esterman, Chair of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the University of South Australia, told The New Daily that there’s evidence, as reported by the World Health Organisation, that the true death rate is three times higher than what’s being reported.
He said this was because there are people who get sick at home and die at home and they don’t get picked up in the statistics.
“There’ll be a lot of people who never report that they’re sick and they end up dying and don’t get reported as dying from COVID-19,” he said.
“Those deaths are the tip of the iceberg.”
Regarding the high number of reported deaths, Professor Esterman said: “Nobody seems to care about it or worry about it apart from the families involved.”
He said it was “partly the fault of governments, but really, the vast majority of Australians are sick of COVID. They want it to be over and I can completely understand that. The problem is, it isn’t over”.
Professor Esterman noted that since the beginning of this year, “there have been more deaths than the previous two years combined – it’s now our second-biggest cause of death”.
Meanwhile, governments have largely abandoned high-profile public messaging and advice. Public health officers advocating the wearing of masks in crowded spaces are simply not being heard.
“The message from different state governments and territories is it’s up to you to work out what your risk is and protect yourself,” said Professor Esterman.
What do these numbers mean?
Professor Catherine Bennett, Chair in Epidemiology at Deakin University, said “it’s a really difficult time to assess what’s really going on”.
Case numbers appear to be coming down nationally, whereas the average number of deaths has moved upward.
Professor Bennett said: “When you look at the deaths data, there is a delay. People often survive the initial infection. It can take them a week or two to get really unwell and pass away.
“So we’re still seeing the deaths associated with the peak in case numbers.”
There’s also the likelihood that case numbers are being undercounted because “we’re probably not fastidious in getting tested”.
Plus, there’s the grim reality that the more cases of COVID-19 will lead to a higher number of deaths.
But compared with where we were in October last year, before vaccination took off, the proportion of people dying from COVID-19 is much lower.
“Our infection rate has gone from 2750 a day to 40,000 or more a day, but a smaller proportion are ending up in hospital,” she said.
More here:
https://thenewdaily.com.au/life/wellbeing/2022/05/06/covid-deaths-2022/?breaking_live_scroll=1
In the last few days we have also seen the following just to top it up!
6:00am, May 2, 2022 Updated:
Michael Pascoe: COVID quietly jumps to become our second-biggest killer
Michael Pascoe.
A third of the way into our year of letting it rip, COVID has jumped to become our second-biggest killer.
And, no, it’s not killing people “just like the flu used to”. COVID is killing at more than three times the rate of flu and pneumonia combined.
And it’s killing people at a younger age than those who typically die from flu or pneumonia.
No, the plague hasn’t faded away.
It’s continued to spread and have its way with people, from the asymptomatic to the fatal.
We’ve just collectively decided it is what it is and downgraded our attempts to further limit the fatalities, accepting that thousands of Australians will die prematurely from it.
And finally this worry:
Covid’s true death toll close to 15m, says WHO
By Rhys Blakely
The Times
6:22PM May 6, 2022
Governments around the world have massively under-reported the number of deaths caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, an analysis suggests, with nearly 15 million people estimated to have died.
A report published on Friday AEST by the World Health Organisation gave a jarring new perspective of the toll taken by two years of disease and disruption.
The report calculates that between January 2020 and the end of last year, about 14.9 million more people died than would have been expected in a world without the coronavirus. Governments officially reported about 5.4 million Covid-19 deaths during the same period.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the numbers “sobering”, and said they pointed “to the need for all countries to invest in more resilient health systems that can sustain essential services during crises”.
The analysis aimed to include deaths that were directly caused by Covid-19 infections, and also those that came about indirectly, because of the pandemic’s broader impacts on health systems and society. Indirect deaths will have included people denied care for other conditions because of overburdened doctors and hospitals. The figures should also reflect deaths that were avoided during the pandemic because of the lower risk of events such as traffic accidents during lockdowns.
Some countries appear to have acknowledged only a small proportion of their Covid-19 deaths. Nearly a third of the excess deaths globally, almost 5 million, took place in India, according to the WHO report, fuelled by a huge surge of infections last May and June.
The Indian government has said that fewer than 500,000 people have died. India has claimed that the WHO’s methodology is flawed and it had sought to delay the release of its estimates.
Russia had reported about 310,000 Covid-19 deaths by the end of last year. The WHO has estimated more than a million excess deaths.
Twenty countries, representing about 50 per cent of the global population, account for more than 80 per cent of the estimated global excess mortality. They were Britain, the US, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, The Philippines, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Turkey and Ukraine.
The official figures reported by Britain matched the WHO estimate, which said that about 149,000 more people had died during the pandemic than would have normally.
Jeremy Farrar, director of medical research charity Wellcome, said a lack of urgency from governments had contributed to the number of deaths.
“There can be no hiding from the fact this devastating death toll was not inevitable, or that there have been too many times in the past two years when world leaders have failed to act at the level needed to save lives. Even now a third of the world’s population remains unvaccinated,” he said.
Sir Jeremy warned that Covid-19 would not be the last disease to pose a global threat.
More here:
So where are we?
I seems, that with almost zero public discussion, we have dropped pretty much all efforts – even simple ones like masks – to limit transmission of the virus and are prepared to accept the resulting 2-300 deaths a week for who knows how long.
It seems the pollies have decided we all need to get over it, run the election not mentioning COVID19, and just live with the outcome! Interestingly we seem to see the same thing happening in the US and UK.
I find this totally bizarre, and don't understand, that there is not even some real debate
about the way forward! This seems to be a period of joint uncaring insanity to me! What is going to wake us up?
What do you think?
David.
It scares me. I'm over 60 and haven't had it yet. I'm five months out from my booster shot; surely any protection that provided me has waned. The daily numbers are shocking to me (I remember when there were just 700 cases in my whole state and I was scared then), and you're right, nobody else seems to takes much notice and I don't understand it either.
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