HIS hitherto secret accumulation of ministerial portfolios exposed, Scott Morrison tried this week to justify his behaviour by describing himself as the captain of a ship floundering at sea amidst a storm of unprecedented proportions.
Not many were buying it as an excuse, but the early months of COVID did disorientate the world and turn any number of old ideas - including the concept that work was work and home was home - on their heads.
But if government reactions to COVID were draconian back then, we could also say now that the command for us to "live with" the virus may have tilted too far the other way.
COVID has been "normalised" to such an extent that most of us no longer pay any real attention to the virus. It has gone back to being something - in many minds at least - that happens to someone else.
But as Anita Beaumont's interviews today with high-profile Hunter medicos Nick Talley, Peter Wark and Craig Dalton make clear, COVID is still killing an uncomfortable number of Australians, and the sheer numbers of people contracting the virus (some of them more than once) means that "long COVID" is an appreciable risk that cannot be ignored.
And that is even though the statistics indicate that only four or five people in every hundred will go on to have subsequent problems arising from their initial acute infections.
The latest figures from Hunter New England Health reveal 376 COVID-related deaths within its boundaries since the start of the year.
Most people walk around unmasked inside.
Even in crowded shopping centres mask-wearers are generally a small minority.
Yet the national figures reveal that 2201 Australians have died with COVID in their systems in the past 28 days.
All up, we have lost more than 13,200 Australian lives since the pandemic began.
Professor Talley, editor-in-chief of the Medical Journal of Australia, likens COVID to a silent war, with the public becoming "numb to all the deaths".
He's right, but human nature - for better or worse - means we tend to take such known risks increasingly for granted.
And the massive numbers of cases - 594 million infections worldwide, resulting in more than 6.4 million deaths - can become overwhelming.
But on the past month's cases, Australia sits number eight of more than 190 nations worldwide.
If we care about ourselves and our nation, this is not something we should accept as inevitable.
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