Seasonal Flu, contrary to strange numbers people are quoting, kills between 1500-3000 people a year in Australia depending on the season. In the US it’s 12,000-60,000.

Let’s compare a typical season: 2250 (Australia), 36,000 (US) Flu deaths/year to COVID-19? And what will success look like?

Well, it’s hard to say.

Let’s all remember that unchecked COVID-19 would have likely killed 250,000 Australians (including 20,000 young people & 50,000 middle-aged people) & something like 4 million Americans (including 300,000 young people & 800,000 middle-aged people) assuming herd immunity protection & a mortality rate at the lower end. A huge tragedy. Near apocalyptic. Seasonal Flu pales into insignificance, hence the fuss.

Fortunately everyone has come to their senses and is essentially almost trying to locally eradicate it which I support (despite many academics still only calling for ‘flattening the curve’).

So, in that sense, almost any reduction to near seasonal Flu-like death counts would be some sort of success.

Would Dr. Fauchi’s prediction of 100,000-200,000 US deaths (including 10,000-20,000 young-ish people) be a success?

Well, it’s only 2 or 3 or 4 bouts of the worst seasonal Flu. It’s, 3 to 6 typical seasonal Flu.

So in that context it sounds almost like a success.

But it’s not really for two reasons.

Firstly, this tragedy will hit us over a month or two so, not 6-8 months like Flu so it’s impact is worse again.

Secondly, we have to compare to what we could have done. Since, unlike seasonal Flu, COVID-19 has such horrific potential, we always had to fight this thing seriously, so why not do it properly and early? We had warning. And we should act as if vaccines are coming. Because they will.

So we could have reduced the US to far less deaths, possibly even less than a typical Flu season. That doesn’t mean it was ‘the same as Flu’ because that’s with mitigation of course!

I’m still hoping lockdowns might achieve that: a COVID-19 death count of less than a typical Flu season in the US: 36,000-ish. I hope I’m right. Not really a success because a month’s earlier marshalling and it could have been a fraction of that.

In Australia, I think we might keep it below 250 deaths, or even below 100, well below a minor Flu season. Pretty successful.

All of this is predicated on early release of vaccines upon safety testing only because we can’t lock down forever. And keep iterating candidate releases. We must do that. Any other approach would be madness.