Risk lingers of second wave

The last time the world confronted a pandemic on this scale, the ‘‘Spanish influenza’’, its first major wave hit in March, April and May of 1918. As Australia and other countries have in recent days announced the easing of restrictions on movement and work, it will have been pointed out to officials that it was the second wave of that virus – between September and November – which caused more deaths. Leaders today are having to walk an unenviable tightrope between the severe social and economic effects of lockdown and the medicine, which tells them there are still plenty of people susceptible to infection, shown most clearly in the UK and Russia which have seen no significant flattening of the infection curve.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison conceded there will be fresh outbreaks, putting faith in testing and tracing regimes and the ‘‘common sense’’ of the public. But there is little indication of what precisely we would do if such safeguards should prove insufficient.

Morrison batted away the idea of a return to lockdown, yet there is still so much we do not know about the future into which we are urged to advance. One thing we do know is that while the virus may be infecting fewer people in Australia, it has not disappeared. Medical testing may be the main weapon in our fight, but there is a second test that will prove crucial: whether we can act collectively to protect one another, even if it means accepting hardship.