Six months ago, I wrote a story about how much death Australia could tolerate on the road to "freedom" from COVID-19.
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The Imperial College London had just released modelling showing that between 100 and 200 people a day could die of the disease in the UK after Boris Johnson lifted most restrictions at the height of the delta wave.
Using a crude population comparison, I estimated 300 to 600 people a week could die in an Australian "exit wave", including 19 a week in the Hunter.
At the time, it read like a worst-case scenario.
Instead, Australian governments screwed down tight on delta while building high vaccination levels, a more conservative approach than in most other countries.
The nation avoided the worst of delta over spring, but it was a false dawn.
In the past seven days of the omicron outbreak, Australia has recorded 574 deaths, and that in a population with far better vaccination levels than anyone thought possible in July.
The Hunter New England Health district has reported 19 deaths in the past week.
At the time of my report six months ago, 916 Australians had died with COVID-19. Now that number is 3887.
What could not be predicted back then, at least not with any certainty, was that a highly transmissible new variant would arrive with the ability to not only evade vaccines but to kill people who had received two and, in some cases, three doses.
Omicron was described initially as "mild", and, in a clinical sense, this may be true to a point. But I wrote on December 30 that the sheer weight of omicron numbers could overwhelm hospitals and lead to a high death toll.
The health system might have coped until now without the need for field hospitals and grossly compromised care, but are 500-plus deaths a week tolerable?
A month later, the hospital load appears to have stabilised for now at highly stressed but tolerable levels, though the return to school and omicron's possible spread to older populations could stretch doctors and nurses further in coming weeks.
The health system might have coped until now without the need for field hospitals and grossly compromised care, but are 500-plus deaths a week tolerable?
Are tens of thousands of new infections every day, and the isolation and social disruption that come with them, tolerable?
Australians are not showing much tolerance with Scott Morrison, who is suffering in the polls as the pandemic rolls on.
If the polling is right, the Coalition would lose heavily if an election were held now.
Professor Adrian Esterman, the chair of biostatistics and epidemiology, told the Newcastle Herald on Wednesday that there was a "good chance of case numbers getting down to manageable levels in most states and territories".
"However, these declines could be derailed or slowed if public health measures are relaxed, there is a big increase in transmission due to schools reopening, or mass events like the Australian Open cause super-spreading," he said.
The terms "freedom day" and "exit wave" have become meaningless as the community wrestles with the realisation that COVID-19 is not going away and a new variant may be just around the corner.
Many virus experts predicted just such a scenario when SARS-CoV-2 arrived in Australia two years ago.
Other countries continue to take a less conservative approach to handling COVID.
Denmark scrapped masks, digital check-ins and almost all other measures on February 1 despite case numbers of around 50,000 a day and the rise of the even more infectious BA.2 omicron variant.
Its officials said COVID-19 was no longer a "socially critical disease" as the number of patients in intensive care units dropped to 32, down from 80 several weeks ago.
Denmark also no longer requires household close contacts to isolate unless they develop symptoms.
In the UK, household close contacts do not need to isolate if they are fully vaccinated or are under 18.
Will Australia follow suit before the election in an effort to get life back to something resembling normality?
A week is a long time in politics, but even longer in a global pandemic which has taught us that predicting the future is a mug's game.
The PM has little over three months, at best, to push through to the other side of omicron, if that is even possible, and convince voters he is the right leader to navigate whatever comes next.
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