Thus more potential to spiral out of control, as it seems to have done...
I disagree, using the previous outbreaks as a model to prognosticate future trends etc is rendered useless with the heightened infectiousness of the variant and lack of ability to bring the situation under control, which was not necessarily the case with the earlier outbreaks... Victoria saw 600+ cases in their major outbreak months ago but I would argue that NSW's present situation is even more dire given the nature of the Delta variant.
Just to be clear, I didn’t actually make any inference about future trends based on the previous waves. To clarify, my comparison was purely a statement of the data as of today comparing the outcomes of this wave
so far versus previous waves at a similar point in time.
The whole point of why we even care in the first place is because we want to minimise infections/hospitalisations/deaths. Therefore these are the key metrics to gauge the situation.
You have concerns about the Delta variant because of its potential to spike up infections/hospitalisations/deaths. Therefore, the situation would be concerning if these metrics were very high given we’re already over month in this wave. However, whilst they may be high, they are yet to be as high as previous waves. In fact, daily case numbers are increasing at a slower rate with a lower count than at the same point of Melbourne’s second wave (where cases rapidly increased to 300+). That’s not to downplay the concern but putting it in perspective based on where we are today.
I am not making any calls about how bad the future state could be and I would personally withhold any calls about it being the worst outbreak until those key metrics actually do exceed those of Melbourne’s second wave.