A few years back I was prohibited from seeing my Nan in her aged care facility because they had a flu going around (or gastro bug.... can’t remember which). Those sorts of facilities have semi-regular ‘lockdowns’ with restricted visitor numbers and increased health protocols to protect people.
So if the aged care system is ‘broken’ why are we only seeing the catastrophic death statistics in just one state? NSW seems to have sorted out the issues once they worked out what was going on at Newmarch. It took a galactic level of stupidity in Victoria for so many aged care homes to be infected.
I think the reason is that there actually aren't any catastrophic death statistics, even in Vic aged care. This is of course because we have locked down.
Having close contact with someone directly in the bus here in Melb, a singificant number of cases reported are dying WITH covid rather than FROM covid.
That's not to sat that there haven't been tragic cases and certainly COVID can bring forward the inevitable considerably.
In Victoria anyone who dies with COVID is automatically added to the COVID death tally and reported as such. Only this morning The Age finally ran an article about this, including that the death of the person in their 20s (who was widely promoted on the media as our youngest COVID victim) is actually still under investigation, which tells you everything you need to know.
Also of interest is the official state death statistics. Granted I don't have access to Aug figures yet - but on average between APR and JUNE around 48 people died in Victorian nursing homes each day*. It is possible that this will rise in JUL/AUG, but it also may not. I'm looking forward to the day the media tell us no-one died in aged care overnight.
All this is not to say that Dan hasn't bugled the way its been handled, but the death stats themselves seem to be more about scaremongering than anything else.
* Source bdm.vic.gov.au