How Worried Should We Be about COVID 19?

Many people on Bribie Island and surrounds are worried about their health in the current crisis and rightly so. Many businesses are worried about losing their life’s work and many young people worry about their jobs and rightly so.

So what is the appropriate and proportionate response to the COVID 19 crisis?

Governments around the world have tried all different methods from Sweden’s minimalist intervention to New Zealand’s total lock down approach. These methods have had varying degrees of success and impact on the community with no clear winner emerging at present, time will tell once the disease has run its course or a vaccine developed.

Many readers have their own opinion on this and of course I have mine. Sharing these opinions can result in accusations of overreaction or being uncaring neither of which really help improve things.

The government in Australia has spent over $200B to save an estimated 150 000 people from COVID 19 equating to $1.4M per person which is arguably a good thing if we can afford it.

Imagine though if we spent this money on eradicating or lessening all causes of death as outlined in the chart below. As an example on this basis we would be spending $1700B a year on preventing Cardiovascular disease perhaps banning junk food, $970B on Cancer perhaps banning smoking and $200B on Dementia doing research every year for starters.

In short we would go broke, so what is the answer? How do we save people and pay for it in a way that is consistent and reasonable to our future generations? Get cracking your letters to the editor await!