The panic I believe is that in the past, the amount of death for the flu can be somewhat expected to be reasonably consistent. Covid is a new paradigm and this is year one where the numbers of total deaths to be expected are totally unknown . Originally some folks were mentioning the possibility of 40,000 deaths in Australia. Clearly a ridiculous number. But in Melbourne, the number of nursing home resident deaths shows no sign of slowing. Would these people have been on this years flu death numbers? No one really knows. I don't follow the overseas numbers to see if there are signs of deaths slowing, but they certainly are not in Melbourne.But for how long? The panic for some is real but the cause of this will be hotly disputed for some time.
