magichour, thanks for you insightful reply. You mentioned that...

magichour, thanks for you insightful reply. You mentioned that the hospital system may be overwhelmed. I see that the hospital ICU numbers in NSW are 204. The ICU capacity in NSW is 1000, with a surge capacity of 2000. Doesn't look like we are anywhere near overwhelmed. Also, the government ran a series of scenarios and we are tracking even better than the best case scenarios.

With regard to flu deaths versus covid tests, in Australia we've had 3,053 death with covid (over almost 2 years). According to the RACGP as reported by SBS (https://www.sbs.com.au/news/worst-ever-flu-year-for-nsw).

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners' Dr Bastian Seidel says the lab-confirmed cases are just a small part of the story.

"Every year, we are seeing 300,000 Australians who do contract the flu. 18,000 of them are going to be admitted to hospital because of complications and, unfortunately, 3,000 Australians will die from complications of influenza."

So, it looks like with covid deaths are about 1,500/year and influenza deaths are about 3,000/year. If anything, covid is over-inclusive so the ratio could be greater.