At risk of being severely out of my depth I'll add a few comments.
The media is stuffed in this country (and worldwide), heaps of biased sources and lots of flat out propoganda. On top of that horror sells so everything will be geared around the negatives, the AFL media is a perfect example of this.
The bolded quote in particular is what I want to address.
There are two issues here:
A.
"Coronavirus isn't killing people, they are just dying of other stuff and happen to have coronavirus as well"
B.
"Coronavirus deaths are being overreported. It's not that big a deal"
On A, this mindset is really not well thought out. Most people that already have an ailment are still alive, and are in a position where they can monitor and maintain their health to the extent that they aren't about to die. They might have some form of cancer, they might have a compromised immune system, they might just not be very healthy. For these people they would all otherwise live for longer, but the added burden of their body having to deal with Coronavirus means that their ability to do that it severely compromised. Coronavirus may not be the only issue these people have, and may even be a minor issue comparatively, but it is very capable of being the straw that breaks the camels back.
So how do we prove this? We compare total deaths in a country from a non coronavirus year to 2020,
as this graph shows for Italy, comparing death totals for the previous 5 years.
That's pretty clear to me that something is killing a lot more people in 2020 than in any of the previous years, and i doubt it was just a bunch of people whos time would otherwise have already come. Even if Coronavirus doesn't directly kill people, if it's the thing that pushes someone who already has health issues from alive to dead is it not virtually the same thing?
On B, is the over reporting even happening? Again i cite the same analysis of Italy.
This graph shows the excess deaths in 2020 vs 2016 in red, along with the reported COVID deaths in blue. Based on that I think it's fair to say that at least in Italy COVID deaths have probably been mostly under reported, especially when you consider the effect the lockdown would've had on other causes of death like traffic accidents and people overestimating their abilities.
While we are on this we might as well address the other issue that if we fail to contain coronavirus and it does get out of hand as it did in say Italy, then what other repercussions does it have healthwise? The classic example has become that there are only so many ICU beds and that if we fill them all up then other people that need them might die. I guess they don't die of Coronavirus though, so technically they can't be added to the tally.
Now this is the big issue. Clearly keeping the economy as healthy as possible is super important in so many ways, it's negative impact on health could also be catastrophic, like COVID.
How do we fix it? I don't know. But I don't think the "just go back to normal" strategy is the right one. The economy has already taken a huge hit, but if Coronavirus kicks up again, and it will if we disregard it, then our economy is proper stuffed. Sweden is an example of the "ride it out" philosophy, and like everyone else their economy has had its arse kicked.
Our government is clearly trying to walk the line between the "stop coronavirus at all costs" and the "economy ftw" strategies, which basically means we will be in semi lockdown for a while longer. We are in a good position relative to most other countries with our case numbers, which allows us to atleast have a go at this. Community disdain and impatience notwithstanding, it seems to be somewhat working as well as could be hoped, and realistically is the best of an atrocious bunch of strategies available to us. It's like picking between Ryan Gardner, Ed Barlow and James Mulligan. They are all f*cked, so lets choose the one that will probably f*ck us the least (Ed Barlow fwiw).
While it's easy to say this, when people (and there will be a lot of people in this boat) are actually faced with the prospect of their parents/grandparents/themselves sacrificing themselves for an economy that is stuffed anyway I'm not sure we will see much community buy in.
Yeah I agree with you, the whole idea that the vaccine is just upon the horizon is probably not a realistic one, and it's certainly not something we should be rushing into. I don't think that's a realistic solution for the immediate future. Maybe we are angling for this to be the way out, but I think the priority regardless has to be to get it under control here and then assess how we go forward.
I imagine they are refraining from giving vitamin recommendations and the like because that is not the governments role. Vitamins and the like might be hugely beneficial, I don't know, but I can understand the authorities not wanting to send out an official recommendation when they have no strong supporting evidence to back up any recommendations they do make and if anything could lose respect from a public which is already questioning if the government knows what it's doing.
I think it's clear that very few countries were at all prepared for something like this and have been making it up as they go at least early, but we are in a good position relative to the rest of the world it would seem. I personally think our economy is completely stuffed, especially once Job Keeper and the rent deferments stop, but I have no idea what we could have done significantly better thus far. All the options involve losing, mostly in a big way, and each path was very hard to predict how it would actually play out.
I imagine we won't be seeing International travel for a long time, and that we will be alternating between opening up and locking back down for the next few months minimum.
I kind of feel sorry for the government (not really), because they are on a hiding to nothing. Just look at the headlines from dickheads telling them to open everything up whilst also asking how they could be so irresponsible to ease restrictions whenever the case numbers flare up again. This is coupled with a public which has a lot of people twisting the published rules to suit themselves even when it is clearly in contravention of the rules intent.
We will obviously see how this plays out, and I hope it is with the minimum pain for everyone involved, but I'm not sure we are doing too much wrong so far.
Btw if you are interested in reading the report i sourced the graphs from it is available through this link. Like any typical argumentative commenter on Facebook I have no idea as to how reliable this source is, but it passes the glance over test and backs up some things I've read here and there so hopefully it's sufficient.