Mark Keown

So, COVID-19 is just a flu? Yeah, nah (as we say in New Zealand). COVID-19 didn't exist in humans until the end of last year. Since then, 1,343,153 have died (3.39 pm, 8/22/20 Worldometer). That is, 1,343,153 people who may or may not have died in the interim, but have been lost because COVID-19 hastened their death. At the moment, about one person dies every minute in the US. And this pandemic is still going strong and on the increase in many nations. Who knows what the final death toll will be?   We all know what kind of outcry there is when one horrific event occurs that takes lives. In NZ, we have had a few disasters in the last few years. Twenty-one people died on 9 Dec 2019 in an eruption on White Island. Fifty-one people died on 15 March 2019 in the mosque attack in Christchurch. Earlier, 185 died in an earthquake in Christchurch, 22 February 2011. And we all remember 9/11 when 2977 people died in 2001. The previous worst disaster in the 21st century was the 2010 Haiti Earth