Am I The New Normal In Your Life?

Covid-19 has most certainly had a MASSIVE effect on the world, but is it REALLY bad enough to cause the reaction from Governments around the world?

Certainly, it is infectious, very infectious, but is it a killer of the magnitude people talk of?

The statistics say otherwise.

For my first ever blog, I don't want to be too controversial, so I will stick to the facts, those published and updated daily on sites like https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/.

I imagine these figures are as close to accurate as one can get?

So, as I am from Australia, let's have a look here. If we were to have prevented the fiasco of the Ruby Princess, (28 deaths) had we better contained the infection at the nursing home Newmarch House, (19 Deaths) BOTH of which were preventable, even with the information we had at hand at the time, then the death rate in NSW would have been substantially lower. With a total of 53 deaths, NSW would have had only SIX deaths from Covid-19 without the errors made at these two hotspots, from a population of 7.54 Million.

That equates to 0.0000795% of the state population. Does anyone tell you that? Even including those two poorly managed hotspots, the death rate is only 0.0007029% of the states population.

So.... infectious, yes, deadly (as the main stream and social media want you to think) not at all.

Melbourne, run by "I forget, I never knew, it wasn't my fault, DAN" accounted for 817 of the 907 deaths in Australia. He should be proud to wear THAT badge!. But of course, politics is the ONLY place you can get praise for fixing a monumental cockup of your own making. And Dan is a master of that. Both monumental cockups AND taking praise for fixing them.

So 90% of ALL deaths from Covid-19 in Australia, have been in Victoria! 73.5% of ALL infections in Australia, were in Victoria! Try to get your head around that one.

But even with horrendous figures like that, like those in Victoria, we are STILL only talking about 0.110792% of the entire population of Australia, contracting the disease. Of course, this is because of the way it was managed, lockdowns, social distancing, QR tracing codes, etc etc, and I do admit we did a good job of it, HOWEVER, I wonder what those figures MIGHT have been if we DIDN'T lock down, social distance, "bump elbows" rather than a traditional handshake, what would those figures have looked like?

Well, I guess we can only look at the other side of the world to find out. Let's look at the WORST country (according to worldometers.com , the US. It is in number 1 place, a position it is normally happy to be in, indeed strives to be in. How many presidents have told the country that they are NUMBER 1?

Congratulations, they are the number one in Covid-19 infections, and in Covid-19 deaths.

It sounds appalling when you say that 10,659,421 people in America have contracted Covid-19. Doesn't that just scare the crap out of you? If it doesn't, then does 247,008 deaths do it?

What if I told you that, on a percentage basis, the death rate of people infected is LESS than Australia? Only 2.368% of infected people in America have died. In Australia, that number is surprisingly 3.278%.

And what if I said the infection rate, with hardly any lockdown laws obeyed in the US, was only 3.1% of their population? Sure, ours was down to a miniscule 0.11%, even though Dan thought he was in competition with America, but still, Australia's death rate, based on a percentage of the population, is 0.0036%. America's death rate by population is STILL only 0.07% of their population.

In fact, only 2.4% of infected people WORLDWIDE have died from Covid-19, only 0.0162% have even been infected.

Given that the mortality rate is very low, extremely low, and given that even the infection rate is not tragic, why is it do you think, that the world has panicked to this extent? No other Pandemic has caused the destruction of the world economies. Why this one?

Don't expect the answer here, I am asking you!.

However, I do wonder....... could it be the prevalence of Social Media? Think about it, this is the first pandemic that has been covered on so many social media outlets, in fact twitter was not even about until March 2006. Facebook February 2004 but not available to the general public until 2006.

SARS was in 2003,MERS in 2009 (while social media was just a toy) and swine flu in 2010 , and now, 10 years down the track with politicians and world leaders utilising social media to spread their message, we get Covid-19.

Is it a coincidence that the Media reports an issue, Social Media panics, Politicians feel the need to placate the masses, so they begin to hold daily press conferences to tell everyone how bad it is, and how good they are, which then causes mass hysteria in the Social Media Ranks, which force the Media to question the politicians, which causes them to give daily press conferences, which all goes around and around, causing panic where no panic should exist!

Or is that all wrong? Just a coincidence.

Then I put this to you.....................

Given that mental health experts are forecasting an increase in suicides due to government actions and the Media panic to Covid-19, and I can only talk on Australian Statistics, given this is where I live, the forecast is that suicides will increases by up to 1500 people per year above the current suicide rate of 3000 per year, for the next 5 years!.

Even if that figure is halved, that means we will be losing 3750 ADDITIONAL people to suicide in Australia over the next 5 years.

Do you think we will have social media panic over that? Will we have daily press conferences giving updated numbers? Premiers and prime Ministers coming on TV every day to tell us how bad the suicide rate is? How many people took their own lives overnight?

The reality is that IF this is the case, IF we lose an ADDITIONAL 750 people per year for 5 years to suicide, then that equates to 0.015% of the Australian population. Compared to 0.0036% from Covid-19.

Did we really need to panic? Did we really need to force nearly 1 million Australian's out of work, thousands of business to close? The Australian Bureau of Statistics has said 35% of businesses will struggle to meet financial commitments, that is 831,513 businesses that will struggle, and of them, how many will be forced into bankruptcy?

Is the economic cost worth it?

Of course, if it is your relative of friend who dies from ANYTHING it is a tragedy, I get that better than anyone, I have had a lot of death in my family and close friends, but at what point do we have to put the country first?

Yet STILL we have borders closed within Australia. I believe they are illegally closed. Sure, when they were closed earlier, I get it, I don't agree, but it was within the states constitutional rights to do so, our constitution states that "where it is necessary to protect the people of a state from the risk of injury from inbound goods, animals, and people."

But now... what are they protecting them from? When this started back in March, our goal, as a country, was to "flatten the curve" My question today is, How flat Do They Want It?

There have been ZERO community transmissions in Australia for the past 7 days according to https://covidlive.com.au/community-transmission so is there really still a "risk to people" allowing borders to be closed?

Is it not time to force states to open their borders, and get Australia on the REAL road to recovery?

Tourism is Australia's second biggest export, and without the ability to travel overseas, domestic travel should be a huge market at present, but between border closures and the fear that has been instilled in the population, domestic tourism is down exponentially.

For example, Sydney Domestic Airport saw 98000 passenger movements in September 2020. That sure sounds like a lot, doesn't it. Does it put it into proportion to tell you that September 2019 there was 2,286,000 passenger movements? That is a drop of 95.7% in DOMESTIC travel, not to mention International, which shows 34,000 international movements in September 2020 compared to 1,365,000 in 2019. Another drop, this time of 97.5%

Cruise ships in October 2020 have not been able to operate out of Sydney. But in October 2019 there were 52,000 passengers on cruises. A drop of 100%.

So the reality of the situation is that, sad as it may be to lose a loved one, 93.58% of ALL Covid-19 deaths in Australia have been over the age of 70. The international numbers are quite similar.

Having a parent in the 85+ age group, I know how bad it sounds to say that age is a number we should look at, but my own mother has said the Government(s) should "get on with things, those who are dying are of an age that something is going to get them soon!"

The biggest question is, do we continue to kill the world economy in order to buy a few extra years for those most likely to die from this, or do we get on with life?

A Vaccine has been announced, for March next year (2021), but is that the real answer? Many people are saying they will not have it administered to them. So what then? Do we keep the world shut, even though there may be an opportunity to open it?

Finally (I bet if you have got this far you must be VERY bored) has the world response to this pandemic caused a precedent for future pandemics?

Is THIS, considered the "new norm"? Can the world afford to shut down again?

Can you?

Thank you for your time, I promise not all posts will be this long, or this heavy, I guess I just got carried away with this one, because it is so relevant, so prominent, and so important. Please, sign up to the page in the top right hand corner to be kept up to date with all new posts, feel free to comment, I may or may not answer but there is no chance of me answering if you do not sign up and post.

Thank you SO much for your time, and for the record, I am still sober!