Nobody is denying that lockdowns are hard. But quite often, the negatives aspects of lockdowns are discussed without even a cursory attempt to consider what might have happened without them.
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Thread 1/10
Australia has had just over 30,000 cases of COVID-19 diagnosed and tragically 910 deaths. Globally, there have been 180 million cases officially diagnosed (and clearly many more who were not officially diagnosed) and nearly 4 million deaths.
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A recent study looking at unexplained deaths around the world suggests that the number of COVID-19 deaths is likely to be at least two to three times higher though.
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Countries overseas that have been hit harder than us by COVID-19 have had per capita deaths generally in the range of 50 or more times higher than Australia. France, Italy, the USA and the UK all have official deaths in the range of 1700 – 2100 per million people.
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Australia is at 35 deaths per million. In addition, the UK is reporting more than a million people dealing with the ongoing health problems of long COVID. In that figure, more than 100,000 are teachers and even more are healthcare workers.
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If even a small proportion of them are struggling to return to work, that will have enormous impacts on the running of schools, hospitals, and other workplaces.
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Had Australia gone for softer restrictions and been hit by COVID-19 as badly those four countries, it is likely that we would have had an additional 45,000 deaths and maybe 400,000 survivors dealing with long COVID.
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Had we done a little better like Germany, that number of deaths would still be around 30,000. So, while lockdowns are clearly painful, not locking down or doing softer but inadequate lockdowns also comes with an enormous cost.
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We can’t “live with” a highly contagious virus and magically expect that it will stay at a convenient number of cases. That option is only possible when a significant majority of Australians are fully vaccinated.
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While we work towards that, please remember that the sacrifices that you have made in the pandemic period have saved many lives.
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