Australia is on track to have easily double the local death toll of Spanish Flu, with Covid. There are many reasons this is a public health disgrace. Starting with the most common objection to the comparison - that ‘we have a lot more people now’. /1

How is that relevant? If an A-380 crashes in China killing everybody on board, is it less of a disaster than if it crashes in Australia? Is the argument that it matters less that we’ll kill at least double the number of people with Covid, because we have ‘spares’ now? /2

Or that we’re killing smaller proportion of the entire population? Minimising maths is disgusting, again how is that even relevant? Was the recent train crash in India less tragic than one here, because it killed a much smaller proportion of their population? /3

We saw here this week that 10 dead in a bus crash can be considered a solemn tragedy, but 200 dead in the same week from Covid, not. It’s all selective attention, to fit a narrative. What’s ’disgusting’ is the selective attention, not the comparison. /4

Most damningly, we have pretty good vaccines for Covid, we had only rudimentary ones for Spanish Flu. And there were no widespread antibiotics to treat the secondary infections, which killed many. There were also few options for virtual work, and none for online shopping. /5

For me the most damning comparison between that pandemic and this one, is the number of people infected. About 40% of the Australian population caught Spanish Flu. Prevention of transmission was a priority. Compare with near 100% infection with Covid, as deliberate policy. /6

And in fact even the 40% figure was high at that time, the UK and US had closer to 25% of their populations infected. What they would have made of our 100% figure we’ll never know, but their few descendants with lingering sanity are rightly aghast. /7

You could minimise this by saying we’re infecting everybody *because* we have much better vaccines, we’re aiming for hybrid immunity. But we’re on track to have easily double the death toll, which again can only be ignored using sociopath mathematics. /8

There is one fundamental change between 1918 and now, that explains the difference. We had a public then. We don’t now. Humans invented the public between the late-19th and mid-20th century, in response to catastrophes, like infectious disease and wars. /9

That public was replaced with an economy. With a market. A global market, of utility-maximising individuals. (Of course that never happened, it’s just spin, but that’s the loon theory that justified stripping away anything with ‘public’ attached to it.) /10

Spare us the pretence that what we’re doing with Covid is scientific in any way. It’s political. It’s the dominant anti-State, anti-public loons of the past 7 decades, celebrating their final victory. Over the corpses of millions of Covid victims. And counting. /end