wow you raise so many good pints, it's just unimaginable what is happening, you can't keep stop starting stop starting all for what ??! single figure cases in NSW per day, yet they don't report how many deaths there has been over the last 3 weeks in NSW !
It's a classic case of one source of advice - epidemiologists - being relied upon without input from others across the public policy spectrum.
More moderate voices such as that chap from the ACT, Prof Peter Collignon ignored because Premiers/Chief Ministers want to be seen to 'do something'. Yet politicians and bureaucrats mucked up responses - look at the hotel quarantine fiasco in Victoria that cost many aged care residents their lives.
Electorally popular to lock us down yet ultimately very costly - not just financially.
Commonwealth/State/Territory Prime Minister/Premiers/Chief Ministers and Chief Health Officers have access to the same scientific data, yet restrictions vary among each jurisdiction, as does advice. So many inconsistencies.
If I'm not mistaken, today it's 'safe' for a Sydney resident to travel to the NT, but 'not safe' to journey down to Melbourne or up to Brisbane, or across to WA or SA without quarantining, and then only for 'essential reasons' (doesn't include grandparents visiting grandchildren).
%^&*( lunacy.
Airlines and other travel providers, and staff, suffering financially when some of this could have been mitigated.
As you point out and imply, in 2019 the number of deaths in total in the community was above that of 2020, yet even in our 'closed economy' - no international travel unless one quarantines in Oz on arrival, and numbers very limited, we're still panicking.
So many jobs shedded, economic misery, young people having (in short term, at least) fewer opportunities or less than satisfactory starts to their working lives if they can find a position, previous patients refusing to visit hospital EDs during March to November and hence now in some cases having suddenly diagnosed incurable cancers or other major medical problems that may have been treatable if detected earlier (but I'm no physician)...
No wonder QFd is losing money, as are other airlines and surface travel companies.
I originally thought one of our esteemed aviators was wrong to predict as he has, the demise of QF - for me, it's too big to fail, the Fed Govt would step in and if needed nationalise and before that, many (though not as many as previously) will start travelling) - but more and more I can see where our aviator is coming from.