Hi Peter,
That's right.
And what is different is that for this novel virus we have unprecedented
levels of vigilance, testing, containment, quarantine measures, social
distancing and so on.
Imagine what things would be like if all these measures were not taking
place.
None of us have ever experienced anything like it.
It reminds me of the Y2K Bug. A lot pf people say, "Well, nothing
happened", but what they don't account for is the small army of people
who worked behind the scenes to make sure nothing happened.
The hospitals in some parts of Italy have already become overrun.
What is particularly sad to read this afternoon is the story out of Italy
where 200 more have died today and that the Italian College of
Anaesthesia, Analgesia, Resuscitation and Intensive Care
are proposing that the coronavirus pandemic may mean patients over a
certain age could be banned from intensive care units and left to die to
give others a better chance of survival.
With the median age for people who contract the virus and then die
as being 65, that does not bode well for a large percentage of the
population. And that is the *median* age - the one in the middle - not
exactly old by modern western standards today.
With overrun hospitals, heaven forbid anyone there suffering a heart
attack, stroke, being in a car accident and so on and requiring intensive
care. In other words the types of things that happen to people every day
and which the survival rate might otherwise be pretty good.
Like being in a natural disaster or a casualty of war, a split second
decision might be made there on whether you or your loved one
meets the cut-off.
The Australian Pandemic plan has the Prime Minister in charge.
Decisive action today could avert Australia from going down the path
of the current Italian experience. Forget about people that are hoarding
toilet paper. It is obvious to me who needs to be given the wake-up call.
Australia could avert this and the first thing you would do is close the
borders, as many other countries have already done and concurrently
you would try to extinguish the limited number of clusters Australia
has here at the moment, as they are trying to do but with a moving target
of new arrivals from overseas.
The story about that tough moral decision Italy is about to make here :-
https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/...12-p5499t.html