Although early Covid-19 modelling was inaccurate, experts say it did make us see what could happen if we did nothing
When Covid-19 shifted from a disease in returned travellers to a virus that was spreading throughout the Australian community, dire predictions of deaths proliferated on social media and in the news.
In March, the deputy chief medical officer, Prof Paul Kelly, said modelling revealed the federal government was preparing for 50,000 deaths in a best-case scenario and 150,000 deaths in the worst-case scenario. In the same month, Prof Raina MacIntyre, the head of the biosecurity program at the University of New South Wales’s Kirby Institute, warned of a “flu season but on steroids”, and said “hundreds of thousands” of Australians may die under a worst-case scenario. Health workers in NSW were told to prepare for 8,000 deaths over the duration of the epidemic, and that the “first wave” of the virus could last for up to 22 weeks.
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