THE accompanying graph of daily coronavirus cases from the Johns Hopkins University shows that whatever progress is being made against this 21st century plague, it still leaves an infection curve that is growing by a million individuals every three to four days.
Without taking anything away from the unprecedented political effort that our federal and state governments have expended in keeping the virus under control, the Australian experience is increasingly at odds with the devastation elsewhere, largely because of the physical isolation that we once decried as "the tyranny of distance".
Distance is is now our saviour.
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As the northern hemisphere edges closer to winter, literally dozens of nations are bracing themselves for big increases in coronavirus case numbers: countries whose best days have been almost unimaginably beyond the worst experienced in Australia.
Perhaps it's only a pause in the media cycle, but hopes - if not expectations - of imminent vaccine breakthroughs appear to have receded, and the political mood in the US and Europe is very much one of battening down the hatches before a winter of fatal contagion.
Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania and the "anti-lockdown" favourite, Sweden, have all reported record case numbers in recent days. And this is not a full list. Despite what US President Donald Trump may say, American cases having been rising since early September and are now closing in on 60,000 a day.
All of this means that the COVID-19 pandemic is nowhere near under control, and that Australia's determination to eradicate the virus may win a short-term battle, but leave us in little better position when it comes to the long-term war.
This is not to admit defeat, but it is to acknowledge that we are a very small wheel - in 79th position in terms of national infections - in a global machine attempting to deal with one of the biggest health problems in human history. We are also one of many nations hoping that debt-funded stimulus will somehow "fix" our economy. At the same time, any plan to increase spending must also be impacted by the restrictions that governments are sensibly forcing on their people to keep them alive.
It is, as they say, a perfect storm.
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