This month about as many people have died with COVID-19 in Australia – more than 1,000 – as die in the whole of a bad year from influenza.

“Because of extraordinarily high virus transmission, we’re getting more deaths now in this ‘enlightenment’ COVID-19 time than in the ‘dark ages’ time,” says Professor Brendan Crabb, research scientist and director of the Burnet Institute in Melbourne.

“On a seven-day average, we are now seeing more than 60 deaths every day, with no sign yet of a decline. Lessons from the UK and US are that without effective controls we may settle on a high baseline toll beyond the Omicron peak that is not much below this.”

Yet as deaths suddenly spiked in the last few weeks, attention on them doesn’t seem to have spiked proportionately.