Remember when we locked whole states down and banned people from even gathering in their homes because of the ’flu? Yet more people die from the ’flu in Australia in a bad season than have from the China virus – and that without the obsessive over-counting of deaths and infections that we have seen with Covid. No premier ever mounted the podium to dolefully recount the “daily cases” of ’flu, no matter how deadly the season.
We had a remarkable break last year, when ’flu appeared to practically vanish. But then it is often cyclical, alternating between severe and mild years.
But with Covid obsession wearing thin, the public health troughers are gearing up to make the ’flu their Next Big Thing.
A leading medical body warns thousands may die from the disease when international travel resumes.
True enough, the numbers from even recent bad ’flu seasons are enough to put Covid well and truly into perspective.
The latest Australian Department of Health figures showed there had been no deaths nor anyone admitted to hospital since the flu season started in April.
Having zero deaths is in stark contrast to pre-pandemic 2019, when 1080 people succumbed to influenza[…]1264 people died from influenza in 2017, which then dipped to 141 in 2018, before another 1000-plus fatalities in 2019.
By way of reminder: 984 people have died of Covid in 18 months.
But the public health bullies are brewing up a new agenda. They might, reluctantly, give up on lockdowns. But they’re clearly determined to keep the walls up around Stalag Australia.
“We won’t have the vaccination rates and when we come out of lockdown and get international travel back again. And there’s also the paradox, that most people accept, is that it’s likely when you have a mild year the ongoing herd immunity is less and there is a rebound year.
“We are in new territory with low numbers, so there is a risk we are going to rebound with flu season so we end up with thousands of deaths from the flu.”
Will we see the same hysteria then, as we’ve seen around Covid? It seems likely that getting people as worked up about seasonal ’flu, no matter how deadly, as they are about a scary new virus from China, will be a bit of an ask.
Time for a new strategy, then?
Immunisation Coalition chair Rod Pearce said it might be the calm before a very dark storm when international travel resumed[…]
It all goes to show that, like Covid-19, influenza is an imported disease, said Peter Collignon, an infectious diseases professor at the Australian National University.
“It does appear flu, like Covid, is imported,” Collignon said[…]
However, he said 2023 could be when a large outbreak of influenza sweeps Australia as he believes international travel will still be heavily restricted for the next 12 months.
NZ Herald
Are you starting to see a theme developing, here?
Perhaps I’m being paranoid, but it also seems more than a coincidence that all this just happily dovetails with another obsession of the curtain-twitchers in labcoats: climate change.
There’s something about public health that just seems to attract the busybody, the bully and authoritarian. If they’re not finger-wagging us about sugar, they’re waving their little placards as Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the Medical Association for Prevention of War, Doctors for the Environment, Doctors Against Climate Catastrophe… you name a fashionable, left-wing cause, and there’ll be some gaggle of lab-coated brow-furrowers against it.
Some years back, staff in the Australian public health system were organising special showings of a climate alarmism “documentary”, The Age of Stupid. One of its particular themes: international travel was bad for the climate, mmmkay?
And, hey presto: Australian doctors are setting the stage for ongoing restrictions on international travel.
All just a coincidence, I’m sure.
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