October 2021 Update

Vaccination rates in Australia continue to climb. As at October 29: 87.6% of people, aged 16 and over, have had their first dose 75.5% have had their second dose.

In many parts of Australia, the fully vaccinated now exceed 90% of the eligible population and a third, booster shot, is being administered to people whose full vaccination was completed six months ago. 

Sydney and Melbourne are no longer in lock-down but as predicted above, Queensland and Western Australia have not yet reached their 80% vaccination target. 

As the country opens up it's expected that deaths will begin to mount, particularly among populations where vaccination rates are low. But it is hoped that this will neither have a great deal of impact on the overall annual deathrate nor on the capacity of the health system to cope. Over 170 thousand people die, mainly of disease, each year in Australia.

How many have died as a result of Covid-19?

Australia's first Covid-19 death was on March 1, 2020.  Over following the twenty months almost seventeen hundred have died as follows:

These deaths are similar to those normally expected, over neatly two years, due to influenza. Yet in 2020 there were only 36, laboratory confirmed deaths, due to influenza and there were no deaths at all due to influenza in 2021. This compares to 902 deaths due to influenza in twelve months in 2019 and 1181 deaths in 2017. The demise of influenza is attributed to to Covid-19 social distancing and travel restrictions. Thus, it's believed that at least one influenza pandemic strain has been eliminated.  

Handling the pandemic 

At first glance, at the table above, it may seem that Victoria has mishandled the pandemic, particularly due to damage to the economy, as a result of the world's most extended lock-downs. But on a world scale the economic damage has been limited and the State has done brilliantly well in saving lives.  Norway, the shining best performer in Europe, has suffered 164.66 deaths per million. Denmark, that is often compared to Victoria, as it has a similar population size, has suffered 466.17 deaths per million.

At the other end of the scale, unbelievably by comparison, the United Kingdom has lost 2,059.34 lives per million of population and the United States has lost 2,227.54 lives per million to date.

The UK is at last getting the Delta Strain under control and is getting close to 70% fully vaccinated, with a renewed vaccination drive.

Unfortunately, in the United States, where only 57% are fully vaccinated, there is still a very high death rate.

Right at the beginning of the pandemic, on March 15 last year, I published Love in the time of Coronavirus where, using the 1918 influenza pandemic as a guide, I projected that: if a vaccine was not developed in time, as many as two million Americans could die.

This was revised upwards in the July 2020 Update when better information became available. But surprisingly soon, (the first, the Pfizer-BioNTech got emergency approval in the UK on December 2, 2020 and in the US soon after) we had not one but over half a dozen, effective vaccines. And several of these were developed fully or partly in America. Modern science had come, galloping, to the rescue. Read more at: The race for a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.

Yet tens of millions of Americans obstinately refuse to accept the obvious evidence that, worldwide, vaccines are indeed defeating the pandemic. 

So, every day, almost two thousand, mostly unvaccinated, Americans are losing their lives because of their refusal to accept the advice of their own experts. And now the United States appears to be on track to losing over a million lives in this pandemic.

My final message to everyone: if you're still hesitant, get over it - get vaccinated. And be sure to get that booster when your six months immunity has expired. If we can get rid of flu we can get rid of this too.