We can’t let rip, that’s the issue. Continental Europe, the UK and the US don’t have the same population distribution that we do. Many regional towns don’t have a GP, let alone any viable plan or contingency for Covid. Major regional centers have small hospitals that are, for the most part, understaffed, under resourced and consequently stretched at the best of times. The aggravating factor here is that residents of these rural areas fall into higher risk categories than those in metropolitan areas.
A our population distribution is closer to Canada (a little worse actually because of the distribution of population is more centralized in Canada than Australia.) They are at 82% vaccination for over 12s. The daily death toll today was 26 with 300 people in ICU. Their medical system has higher critical care capacity than ours (12 icu beds per 100k to our 9 beds per 100k.) The population here is two thirds that of Canada. So from that we can guess at some rough numbers of how it’s going to go down if Australia (or even NSW) let’s rip at our low vaccination rate. Remember too that you aren’t looking at today’s double dose rate for full coverage, you’re looking at the double dose rate nearly two weeks ago to see the percentage of the population who is actually at full vaccination coverage (20 odd percent).
Enjoy your picnic.