Sealed borders appear key to cutting virus risk

ONE statistic about the coronavirus which doesn’t get much of a mention is the measure of its deadliness – the number of cases for each death. The higher the number of cases per death, of course, the less deadly the virus has been in one place or another.

This can lead to some unexpected results.

The US (17.10) and Brazil

(16.08) are doing better than Canada (12.93). Even Spain (10.46) is doing better than the UK (7.13).

On the whole, though, the figures do not give any comfort to the open-the-borders-right-now crowd. In Scandinavia, for example, locked-up Norway (35.74), Finland (21.38) and Denmark (20.31) are doing much better than let-it-rip Sweden (8.31).

Australia’s national figure is 69.31, which is good.

The worst state is hermetically-sealed Tasmania (17.53).

Completely-open ACT comes in at 35.66. WA, NSW and

Victoria are respectively at 63.33, 64.35, and 85.15.

But the best are South Australia (110.00), Queensland (151.14) and the Northern Territory (no deaths at all). Whatever the reasons for these three outstanding results, sealed borders are a prominent common factor in all of them.

So, memo to Gladys

Berejiklian, Clive Palmer, Pauline Hanson and Queensland’s LNP: do not criticise the success of SA, Queensland and the NT.

Instead, please explain Tasmania and WA’S failure, as well as the relative awfulness of the ACT, NSW and Victoria.

And bear in the mind that the closer the Queensland state election gets, the better your explanation will have to be.

GRANT AGNEW, Coopers Plains.