Back-slapping aside, where’s the plan?

SENTINEL-TIMES COMMENT

AUSTRALIA is ranked 95th in the world for COVID-related deaths per million, at 275/mil compared to the likes of Japan, with its cultural acceptance of masks, at 233 and a super risk-averse New Zealand at 128 deaths per million better placed.

But it’s a far cry from the 2575 deaths per million in the UK, 1584 in Germany, 1241 in The Netherlands and the ladder leader, Peru, at 6453 deaths per million. And they’re just the reported numbers.

At the other end of the scale, if you can believe it, is China with only 10 deaths per million.

However, as good a job as we have done keeping the COVID-19 deaths down in Australia, we’re not out of the woods yet on a number of fronts.

Of the developed countries, Australia is now running at the highest number of new COVID-19 cases per million, on a rolling seven-day average of 1903 cases, compared to the likes of Germany with 739 new cases per million, UK 139 and even the USA at 248.

New Zealand is up there near us with 1498 new COVID-19 cases per million weekly, and with winter, the flu and new variants on the way, the next three to four months look challenging for both of us.

And it’s not just that the pandemic itself isn’t over.

There’s still the massive fallout to be understood, managed and responded to; including the impact on education, supply chain problems in construction, cars and equipment, even the newspaper industry with a lack of newsprint paper. There’s the demographic shift and a resulting lack of housing in sea change areas, particularly, elective surgery blowouts, ongoing problems in aged care, long COVID, and social disruption including numbers drifting away from sport, not to mention the exploding national debt.

But in all the tripe we’ve heard from all sides of politics in the run-up to this election, where’s the plan for a systematic, comprehensive response to the economic, social, and even environmental fallout from the second-biggest worldwide crisis since World War II?

They’ve been too busy trying to get elected to be concerned about us.