They don't want to over-worry the public but they don't want a completely relaxed attitude to a risk that hasn't gone away completely, either. It is a delicate balance. The ACT government seems to be taking the view that less information for the public is now the way forward.

As the ACT's chief health officer, Dr Kerryn Coleman, put it: "I'd like to move to a position where we're not reporting daily numbers, I think there is a level of elevated anxiety that probably doesn't achieve what we need it to achieve with everyday numbers, particularly at a point where we're coming down or actually looking at a stable period."

We know at this masthead know that the interest in the daily figures for new cases of COVID is high. When we publish them, a lot of people read the information.

We think that if the public wants to know about an important event - and it's hard to think of a more important event in recent times - then the public should know.

The truth is that hundreds of people are still being infected with the coronavirus every day. The numbers are falling but they remain significant. And epidemiologists are not completely certain that the pandemic is fading out for good. A new variant of the virus may yet see a resurgence.

Dr Coleman is not a politician, and her authority stems from the fact that she employs her scientific knowledge without thinking first of the electoral implications. She is trusted partly because she is not a politician.

But the public should not be kept in the dark. If the pandemic continues to wane, it's hard to see what harm would be done if people knew that, and could see it with their own eyes in the daily figures.

Dr Coleman's reasoning is that if the numbers start going back up, daily publication of the numbers can resume. She points out that "we don't report daily numbers for any other condition that we monitor".

But nor have we had a pandemic like this in any of our lifetimes. It has been a jolt both to individuals personally and to society as a whole.

Trust, it seems, is a dwindling asset everywhere, so the more that unambiguous hard evidence can back up official assertions, the better. And statistics do that.

Despite some early stumbles, Australian health authorities around the country did a mostly reasonable job of making COVID data available.

Allowing the public to see vaccination rates for example, helped to underscore the importance of everyone going out and having their jab and doing their bit to keep the community safe. It also helped to explain why extraordinary limits on freedoms like lockdowns were necessary.

The pandemic is already testimony to how much nonsense can be believed. All kinds of weird conspiracy theories have spread - like a virus. If authorities start closing up now, and keeping information to themselves, there is a danger that some in our community with malign intent will start propagating more falsehood.

We need only look abroad where mass anti-vaccination movements have taken hold and harmed public health efforts. Death rates have been higher, their health systems more stretched than ours. The best foil against such dangers is factual, verifiable data.

Unfortunately, data doesn't always win arguments in these days of misinformation and hyper-partisanship. But it is important it isn't withdrawn on the spurious basis of causing anxiety.