How many people are simply thanking their lucky stars they went on a cruise last year, rather than this one? And despite his qualification - "at the moment" - the hubris pulsating from such a statement might be better directed at emphasising the need not to drop our guard.

The reality is, simply, that we're on par, in terms of deaths per million (two), with countries like Malaysia, Singapore and Ukraine, behind Japan and New Zealand (one) and faring way worse than Hong Kong (0.5).

Comparisons are invidious and meaningless. Let's wait until this is all over before we begin boasting and declaring victory, because there's still a long way to go and much that can go wrong. None of the relatives of the dead are likely to be celebrating today.

Statistics can only get you so far. Behind each number is a person.

That's why we abandoned those original strategies for dealing with this disease - just in time.

Remember Scott Morrison standing before a graph and insisting he'd be "flattening the curve"? The UK was, once, the biggest booster of this sort of "mitigation" strategy. It was based on a simple idea: control the pace of the virus' spread and allow the community to slowly build up immunity. This was, supposedly, much easier than attempting to suppress COVID-19 with lock-downs because the economy would continue functioning, and schoolkids (who are, by and large, immune from the worst effects of the virus anyway) would be resilient. Sure, a few old folks would die gurgling as their lungs slowly gave out, but that was the price of keeping the world economy going.

Britons haven't heard much about that sort of strategy since Boris Johnson had his own intimate moment with the virus; approaching death concentrates the mind wonderfully. The ebullient extrovert in Number 10 may, if only for a moment, have realised to his amazement that he has one thing in common with all those lesser mortals around him. All of us would rather be alive as people instead of dead as statistics.

That's why the mitigation strategy, which was the one Morrison seemed to originally be proposing, was always flawed. This might have permitted the virus to spread through schools, occasionally erupting (at most once in every hundred infections), but conferring immunity and allowing society to continue.

Victoria's premier, Daniel Andrews, quickly derailed this strategy when he chose to suppress, rather than mitigate. This forced the issue because no politician, anywhere, wanted to be left out suggesting that it was worth old people (who are most vulnerable) dying simply so the economy could keep going. So the crackdowns began, and eventually even the NSW Ports and Health authorities have seemed to understand the point of border controls. Since then the enthusiasm with which such restrictions have been enforced by some officials has burgeoned, even to the extent of attempting to fine people who've simply reposted year-old holiday snaps showing them visiting the coast. States are even calling out the Defence Force to block roads and prevent Australian citizens driving from Tweed Heads to Coolangatta.

Don't get me wrong, I think that's good. This is, however, just one example of a policy where governments appear happy to gallop way ahead of the constitution, without considering any ramifications that may flow from it, such as arrogating to themselves the right to (potentially) block interstate trade. The High Court is no doubt far too busy overturning the findings of jury trials to consider such questions at the moment, nevertheless these actions raise significant questions about the future shape of our democracy. Where, exactly, do the boundaries of government lie?

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Many were horrified to see the scenes of repression in Wuhan in February as police locked people into apartments and manhandled residents into vans for quarantine. Would we permit similar actions here?

If you're wealthy, being locked down while watching the waves roll in from the beach house with plenty of bandwidth isn't too bad. It's not so comfortable if you're marginalised, living with an abusive partner, or attempting to keep the children occupied while wondering when you'll have the opportunity to begin working again.

Not everyone's getting the government's generous handouts. Not all businesses have shown the same degree of concern for their workers. Pressure is building.

Increasingly this means the focus is shifting to the lifting of restrictions and, while I'm happily uninhibited in my criticism of the CMO, there's no way I'd like to share the responsibility for recommending we relax these measures. The point is, of course, that there are no strict rules that can be applied to determine exactly when we can go back to normal. This process - and it will have to be a measured relaxation - will take time and, if the virus surges up again, will need to be reversible. This means it's a judgment call. These are never easy, because there are always columnists ready to (quite rightly) jump on those responsible for anything that goes wrong.

A couple of weeks ago I was about to write about how the Defence Force was preparing to intervene if things became as bad as they were in Italy. Individual sub-units had been mobilised and were distancing from one another to ensure resilience. Other units were being made ready to deploy to the cities in case of chaos and the breakdown of law and order. It was responsible and effective preparation. Thinking it might induce panic, a senior officer asked me not to write the story. Other things were happening and so I didn't, but I thought he had it the wrong way around. The knowledge that the military was ready should have reassured people.

Far better than not being prepared for the worst.