In October 2014, an article by health reporter Aisha Dow appeared in Melbourne’s Age newspaper titled ‘Deadly flu pandemic could shut down Melbourne’. It began with a dystopian vision of Australia’s second most populous city plunged into a Spanish flu-like crisis:

A deadly pandemic could shut down Melbourne as we know it. Public transport could be terminated, AFL games cancelled and the casino, schools and office towers forced to close. It has been predicted that the first wave of a pandemic could cause 10,000 deaths in Victoria. But families and friends may not be able to publicly mourn lost loved ones, because funeral services could be stopped as part of [a] policy of social distancing.