I don’t think I’ve seen this mentioned anywhere else yet, so I’ll bring it up here. While a number of nations that had successfully seen off the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic during the March-May time frame have indeed had to deal with a resurgent second wave this Summer, none (other than Israel, where the second wave shows no sign of subsiding yet) seem to have had a worse time of it than Australia.
For a period of two months from late April to late June, Australia’s caseload increased by less than 15%, and for a similar period from mid-May thru mid-July, their cumulative fatalities increased by an even more modest 10% — not quite as good as New Zealand or Taiwan’s record perhaps, but far superior to that of most other countries. Then starting in early July, a second wave struck that while now apparently winding down, is distinguished by a sharp reversal in its Case Fatality Rate (CFR, or the percentage of confirmed Covid-19 cases resulting in death) that is nearly unique among those nations experiencing such a resurgence.
The usual pattern in this pandemic, as the coronavirus spreads from the older and more vulnerable demographics to younger and more resilient age groups, is that the CFR tends to go down, particularly once the testing regime becomes robust enough that it is identifying significant numbers of relatively asymptomatic carriers. But in Australia, where the first phase of the epidemic saw a CFR of just 1.4%, it’s now more than doubled to 3.1% during the current phase, and still climbing as new cases taper off and the already infected continue to die off.
So the question that should concern us all at this point is just why Australia is seeing such a disturbing increase in its CFR. Are there any unique characteristics as to Australia’s demographics and/or environment that could explain such a reversal, or is this perhaps a harbinger of a Spanish Flu like evolution in at least the Australian strain’s lethality that we all may have to deal with soon?
