Post the pandemic, how’s your Covid?

In scenes from the pandemic, workers from multiple sectors attend the #ReclaimTheLine protests in Brisbane in 2021. Picture: Jono Searle

I pine for the good old days of man flu, where the slightest symptom, a cough, a sniffle or a general sense of malaise, could be exaggerated from a state of mere discomfort to the onset of a grim death.

Last week, I thought those days were back.

Symptoms were light, a cough and occasional fever followed by the chills. It could have been man flu. It felt like man flu.

Not serious but enough to head to bed for rest, scan the streaming services for new content, demand provisions from the kitchen and complain endlessly.

The rapid antigen tests (RAT) are not free anymore but I had purchased a few a year ago. Content with my man flu self-diagnosis, I hadn’t thought to use them but when my wife tested positive for Covid, there was nothing else for it but to ram a cotton bud up both nostrils.

The dreaded two red lines popped up in a trice.

There are no rules on Covid infection any more. Only a few guidelines. NSW Health merely urges people with cold and flu symptoms to avoid visits to hospitals and aged care centres. “There are currently no rules which require you to self-isolate.”

Beyond that there is gentle advice to stay at home until symptoms have passed. In other words, do whatever you feel like. No one cares about it anymore.

I briefly pondered where the infection might have come from. It could have been anyone.

Gone are the days of infection tracking and the ugly business of hunting down patient zero with the subsequent naming and shaming in the media.

Anecdotally there appears to be a lot of Covid about. My brother-in-law and his wife fell to it a fortnight ago and speak of its enduring effects. The cough, the fatigue, the mental fogginess.

Flashback to June 2021 and NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian announces a two-week lockdown in response to Sydney’s growing Covid-19 cluster. Picture: Getty Images

Officially, NSW Health believes Covid is on the wane.

The department’s most recent report in the last week of January indicated Covid activity is “now at a low level”.

In December, the department reported that Covid had increased to “a moderate level of activity”. NSW Health relies on laboratory tests for its data on Covid infections. But if very few people are getting tested, how would they know?

The data shows deaths due to Covid infection across the country, as measured by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, for the period January to November 2024 (4507) are almost five times the rate of deaths from influenza (951).

Rates of mortality from influenza have not changed much. In 2019 there were 953. There was a spike in 2016 but overall the figure of just under 1000 deaths per year from influenza remains fairly constant, revealing Covid has not replaced influenza infection as a cause of death.

Some of the more conspiratorial among us have pointed to excess deaths being driven by Covid vac­cines.

The data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveals a slight increase in overall mortality between January and November 2024 compared with the previous year but a decline of 3 per cent compared with the same period in 2022. The ABS collates data on mortality from cause of death as listed on death certificates.

There are no spikes in ischaemic heart disease, and deaths from cancer remain at or just above 38,000 per year since 2022.

There were 13,623 deaths from dementia in 2024, comparable to that of 2023 (12,930) and 2022 (13,592).

There has been a decline in deaths from diabetes while modest increases in death by pneumonia and other chronic respiratory diseases excluding Covid and influenza have been recorded.

The death rate for those aged 75 to 84 years was 2.2 per cent lower in 2024 than in 2023, while the death rates for all other age groups were slightly higher than those in 2023.

In 2024, there were 141,232 deaths in Australia in total that occurred by September 30 and were registered by November 30. That’s a slight increase of 2.6 per cent on the previous year but a decline of 3 per cent since 2022.

What does it all mean? The abiding reason for the spikes in excess mortality, seen at its highest in 2022, comes directly from Covid infection.

Post-pandemic advice from health bureaucrats on responses to Covid infection is thin on the ground. Perhaps governments and health bureaucracies regard the overreach in pandemic management with embarrassment.

Long lockdowns, punch-ups in supermarkets over the last remaining packet of toilet paper. It feels so distant, so 2020.

Vaccine mandates may have made sense for frontline health workers, but few others.

In the latter part of the pandemic, vaccine mandates may have made sense for frontline health workers but less so for teachers, members of the fire brigade and construction workers.

Not only did vaccine mandates cause further mistrust of government in the community, already at a low ebb before the pandemic, but added fuel to the often bizarre claims of the anti-vaccine movement.

The lesson for governments is that health advice is good and welcome, but imposition of it by force is not.

My first Covid infection in 2022 came within weeks of receiving the second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine and I have to report the symptoms experienced on that occasion wouldn’t even have reached man flu levels.

For what it’s worth, my somewhat Covid-jangled memory tells me that I hadn’t been vaccinated for Covid for probably 18 months.

I have a vague memory of receiving a Pfizer booster some time in 2023 but nothing since.

I assume I am like most people and made choices driven by inertia and unwillingness to report to the doctor on a regular basis for a jab.

Pandemic behind us, what we have is Covid causing havoc in our communities and we seem to have forgotten or perhaps choose to forget about it.