&quot;Covid Beat&quot;

Originally posted by boatboy: ↑

That is the correct way to view mortality rates in any given country over a period of time. It has been proven statistically that this virus is more lethal to the elderly and infirm...who would likely have died within months anyway.
There have also been many folk in their 80's and 90's that have survived too.

It will surface at some stage I am sure that Australia's annual mortality rate will be pretty consistent with previous years as well...taking in to account of course the 250,000 odd people moving in to this country every year swellng the population and adding to the annual death rate by default.

" ...to be honest a good stiff breeze would take 90% of them out.....thats just how it is.....with all due respect."Factual too...if anybody has been to an aged care facility at all they would note that the residents are there because they need round the clock supervision with regular medication to keep them alive.
The vast majority of the deaths world wide have been older sick people...

As I have written before, I would not have been any sadder to see my mother die a couple of years earlier than she did...she had no quality of life and was near confined to bed for her last couple of years. i am sure she would have been more than happy to check out much earlier than she finally did.

This ongoing panic is pathetic imo...just get on with life and learn to live with another virus, just as we live with Flu and Cancer...

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Just as we live with the flu and cancer ???

So let's stop bothering to try and save people from cancer then ?

" Arghhh, they're going to die anyway. Why are we wasting all this money on medical research ? ".

While I agree there are many older people in aged care homes that are just existing, that doesn't mean that all people are in that situation.

There are lots of examples where otherwise reasonably fit, healthy people have died from Covid arguably before their time.

Where we do we draw the line with people becoming a burden on society ?

The current response to Covid has produced many learnings. Maybe when the next virus comes along we will rapidly act to protect the vulnerable rather than the half arsed approach we took this time ?
With the benefit of hindsight we should've closed the country earlier, managed quarantine much better , should've started testing much earlier, made sure that hygiene protocols were being used, had a large storage of ppe locked away, had a short level 3 or 4 shutdown and removed casual employees from working at multiple aged care homes ? Then we probably would have had very few outbreaks and no deaths and at least the internal Australian economy would be ticking along.

But that is all based on learnings from what we have experienced in the last six months.

As to older people having poor quality of life near the end, we'll that's why we are exploring voluntary euthanasia laws to let people make their own choices.