10 October

Feedback suggests some people like a different perspective on the pandemic, beyond the endless repetition of meaningless political slogans like 'live with the virus'. So I'll keep at it. Today - hospitalisations. "It's not case numbers that matter, it's hospitalisations and deaths'. Everybody repeats that slogan now, as if it's common sense. Like all the other slogans, it's nonsense. The graphic shows the leading causes of death in Australia, across age groups. Do we assess the seriousness of all of these according to how many people go to hospital? Nope. Most people with these conditions rarely go to hospital. Many will die at home or in the community. Put it this way, would we say heart disease isn't a problem in Australia, because we have enough beds for people who get heart disease? It's so ridiculous as to be laughable, nobody would say it. And yet this is what now passes for common sense, with Covid.