By Newman Fergard

While the Australian per capita Covid fatality rate was one of the lowest in the world, Omicron and the new “let it rip” approach has us on a trajectory to catch the leading high-fatality-rate nations.

I am concerned that another more deadly variant will hit Australia and our useless fe(de)ral pollies will just sit on their hands while touting open borders. It appears they have adopted the approach that no matter what happens we will “live with it” and it doesn’t matter how many people – young or old – die as a result.

Either I’ve missed something, but it is a fact that quarantine/lockdowns does/do reduce spread if properly implemented. WA has shown this to be true (but they might be in for a shock when they open their borders).

The 7 day average Covid-19 daily fatality rate as at 5 Feb 22 was 75.4, the equivalent of a plane crash every 3 days. Prior to Covid, ischaemic heart disease was the leading cause of death in Australia at around 40 (11636/303) per day.

You would think that anything that comes along that has twice the fatality rate of the number one cause would have the medical fraternity and pollies a bit excited rather than “move along – nothing to see here.” BTW, for those that think Omicron is like a flu, if one considers 2017 which was the worst in the last 5 years, 1181 people died of influenza = 3.2 deaths per day, clearly there is no comparison.

Imagine if the next variant to emerge is something like a mix of the highly contagious Omicron and as deadly as Ebola. The fatality rate could be off the charts. Logic suggests there must be a fatality rate at which quarantine/lockdowns would be applied, with an obvious threshold being when it hits being the number 1 cause of death. Looks like you can add “logic” to the list of things the govt doesn’t do.

Cleary 2 times number 1 isn’t enough for Scomo.

As soon as you put a number to it, it then begs a whole bunch of other questions: What makes that fatality rate acceptable? What were the factors considered? Which panel made the decision? Who was on the panel that set the number and did it represent the broad spectrum of views, i.e. medical, economic, funeral industry, etc? If we have an acceptable fatality rate figure, are there other numbers that would trigger actions that might reduce the fatality rate?

It’s all a matter of planning.

Other questions include: Why is the National Cabinet run like a secret club? Why the need for secrecy? If there is an action plan based on modelling of nastier variants why isn’t in the public domain? (It’s not like we can’t handle the truth because we do get the daily death numbers.)

It is simply not good enough to have the PM say that Omicron is a “game changer” when the government has had 1½ years to carefully consider a range of variants with a spectrum of R0 numbers.

We can reasonably expect our leaders to plan ahead. Planning involves stated requirements/objectives, factors and considerations, one of which for a pandemic is “the acceptable death” rate, amongst a list of other things. We can reasonably expect they disclose and work to the plan. Should they be personally held responsible for unnecessary deaths beyond the limit? They might be more attentive if we – including the half-asleep mainstream media – all held them to account.

We can reasonably expect our leaders to lead, not follow. Good luck with that.

However, since that is something else they don’t do, it’s over to you: What should that magic “let’s get off our arse and do something” number for the daily fatality rate be?

What ever your answer, let us all agree that it’ll be too high.