World 24.2 million Brazil 3.7 million India 3.3 million
Some people say that there are more people are dying from other causes than from COVID-19. This is their argument against the lockdown. Suicide numbers are up, but how many more tragedies would there be if there was no end in sight to this pandemic? The fact is that the shutdown has PREVENTED thousands of deaths…both from COVID and from other causes.
What if you were sick and there was no hospital bed available? What if you were just left to die on a trolley in the foyer, assuming there were paramedics available to transport you to a hospital? If you fell and broke a hip, or had appendicitis, or a heart attack and couldn’t access a hospital how would you feel? If you did manage to get admitted, with every hospital overloaded with COVID patients, then you would be certain to get the virus.
This week, even with Stage Four restrictions, Frankston hospital has 618 staff in isolation after an outbreak. We don’t yet know how many staff at the hospital have been infected with COVID-19, but a number of wards at the hospital have been closed. How would the health system cope without any healthy staff?
While this lockdown is very tough, life would be a good deal tougher without any restrictions in place to bring numbers down. Life will get back to a version of normal much quicker when this virus is under control. I’m very thankful we have the Dan Plan.
There is financial help available and there is help available to support mental health. No system is perfect, but it’s so much better than many other places across the world that do not have access to these resources and have thousands and thousands of virus infections every day. We have so much to be thankful for. Numbers here continue to trend down. 113 new cases overnight. Though we have had another 23 fatalities overnight, there would be so many more without these restrictions. We have many reasons to be hopeful.