Harrumpf takes another look at Australia’s Covid numbers.

As NSW and, for that matter, much of Australia continues, and indeed intensifies its lockdown, we are daily regaled with news of ‘record’ numbers of new cases. Indeed, to the extent that the case numbers in NSW are amenable to statistical analysis, they do show an exponential rise. But in absolute terms, our case numbers remain, er, absolutely tiny.

As in my earlier Reality Check, I have used the UK as a comparison, because it lifted its lockdown on 19^th July, when its daily new cases were running at 48,500, the figure they had reached after successive bouts of lockdown. They are now, despite the dire predictions of the charlatans who persist in pretending to understand the epidemiology of Covid, bumping along in the low 30,000s. Nonetheless, they dwarf Australia’s numbers, and make a nonsense of our leaders’ claims to be dealing with a major threat to the nation’s health.

Here are the figures for 22/8/21:

Could be worse, I suppose – across the pond, the sainted Jacinta is reacting with predictable pearl-clutching to yesterday’s crop of 38 cases – that’s around 0.00066% of NZ’s population.

More worryingly, and given that the UK had, until July, attempted to suppress Covid transmission through measures very similar to those currently in place in Australia, we may infer that our own efforts will enjoy a similar lack of success. That implies that we have many months to go before our gauleiters finally have to admit that the game’s up, and follow the UK’s suit.

Tom Forrester-Paton