Reflection on the pandemic: questions about the authorities' response.

PommieBast · 01-11-2022 4:21pm

It may not have been for the craic, but they shut it down and suppressed our liberty and the economy on a whim, you don't see them shutting the place down for the flu or the cold.

The problem was how much of the state shut down completely rather than making any sort of attempt at keeping things ticking over.

jackboy · 01-11-2022 4:29pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119819465#Comment_119819465

Many measures during covid resulted in people congregating indoors and helped the spread. Yet people still believe locking up beaches saved granny.

odyssey06 · 01-11-2022 4:29pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119819724#Comment_119819724

And if an outbreak occurred and people got infected at screening and end up in hospital or dead? What would you be saying then?

How do you recover from that? How do you manage staffing? How do you keep screening going?

So you have no real alternative suggestion on how the services could have been safely operating, or handled differently. It was the experts who made the call. Maybe other experts elsewhere made better calls. But on the evidence presented so far, I don't see how it can be said they failed people. They were damned if they did and damned if they didn't.

They prioritised an infectious disease which can kill versus screening for disease which are potentially terminal - but most people in screenings don't have cancer, and they thought they would be able to recover from it with (delayed) treatment when detected.

odyssey06 · 01-11-2022 4:32pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119819787#Comment_119819787

Statement made without evidence or foundation. Not sure how you expect someone to engage with such vague remarks. Would we have been safer in the pubs???

jackboy · 01-11-2022 4:44pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119819806#Comment_119819806

Not sure what you mean. Were you not aware that beaches were locked up. And that banning outdoor events led to many indoor meet ups. The guards policed the beaches while turning a blind eye to the meet ups at private houses. Many many indoor meet ups happened because people could not get away with anything else.

bladespin · 01-11-2022 4:46pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119819793#Comment_119819793

That's daft, they prioritised an infectious disease which was already known to be very unlikely to kill, instead of properly protecting the vulnerable at the start (they had plenty of warning to do that) and threw those at risk or a properly terminal illness under the bus, you can argue all you want but the facts are presenting themselves now for their eternal shame, they were warned again and again.

Cheer them all you like but I know only one person who died as a possible result of Covid, they were already hanging on tbh and we all know they tried to write everything off as a Covid death, their family are still appalled the decision not to properly investigate (their words) yet I know several who have passed as a result of cancer in the same period, including 2 close relations who were badly let down, they didn't just loose their lives, they lost life's when they should have been able to make the most of what little they had left it's emotional so I'm stopping there but I'll be cheering when they're thrown out and have to live with the shame.

DLink · 01-11-2022 5:06pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119819806#Comment_119819806

I've said it before, but I'll say it again, I don't care for any of your official data, statistics, evidence, whatever... all I care about is the fact that during the various lockdowns and the restrictions of my personal liberty, I didn't see the dead piling up in the streets. I still don't know of anyone who ended up dead or in hospital.

First hand evidence tells me all I need to know about, i.e. it was a massive overreaction. The country is still ticking along, but the lads in charge are now starting to flag the missed cancer diagnoses.

I don't care for the pub, but I was a regular cinema goer, I would eat out regularly (and not fast food either), and I travelled a lot.... all that came to a grinding halt for no good reason except for someone slapped the title "pandemic" on covid.

Once the first few months passed and the world hadn't fallen apart, I was like WTF are all the lockdowns & restrictions for? The Vulnerables should have been able to take care of themselves, same as they always should have.

As far as I'm concerned my mental health, my rights as a person living in a supposed democracy, my personal liberty, as well as the economy I pay my taxes towards, were driven into the shítter by a cabal lead by Kind Tony without ANY form of critical thinking or counter argument being permitted.

It was a case of BANG, you're locked down, now shut your mouth or you'll kill granny.

Why are people so dead set against having a tribunal or at least some form of official enquiry? They have held tribunals for less FFS.

Have you something to hide?

Did you call the dancing idiots because you know someone who drove to the supermarket in the next town over for a badly needed change of scenery?

Are you now ashamed that you reported your neighbours for having a secret garden party?

What happens if / when there are more cancer deaths than deaths from covid (as opposed to deaths with covid) as a result of missed diagnoses? Will you finally admit we got it wrong or will you keep fighting Tony's corner for him?

odyssey06 · 01-11-2022 5:09pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119819862#Comment_119819862

It really wasn't clear what point you were trying to make from your initial post - clear now.

The guards didn't turn a blind eye as such - they had very limited powers when dealing with private homes.

It wasn't my experience that it led to meet ups at private houses, but it is plausible. The general point things should have loosened up sooner for outdoors is a reasonable one. And I think the measures were loosened up after the initial lockdown?

e.g. https://www.gov.ie/en/press-release/0bd80-new-public-health-measures-announced-the-path-ahead/?referrer=http://www.gov.ie/en/press-release/81029-government-announces-phased-easing-of-public-health-restrictions/

walus · 01-11-2022 6:50pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119818805#Comment_119818805

“We focused on the direct effects of excess deaths from Covidbut from the beginning it’s likely the indirect effects will lead to more deaths, and more morbidity and more economic impacts than Covid deaths itself” – Prof. Amitava Banerjee.

Rising non-Covid excess deaths reveal the disastrous legacy of the pandemic (telegraph.co.uk)

The excess deaths that we have been seeing since late 2021 and especially from Feb-Apr this year don’t even include the deaths due to cancer. Those are yet to come. The excess deaths that are occurring currently among adults are mainly due to cardiovascular issues.

The best of all is that mainstream media are not interested in covering the issue of excess deaths. The evidence is there, but the reporting hasn’t caught up with it. The media are culpable for what is happening now and they know it.

Considering the uncertainty and a lack of data associated with a new strain of virus, introducing restrictions for the entire population for the initial 2-3 weeks was absolutely rational.The massive over-reaction, the suspension of critical thinking and suppression of scientific discourse that followed were not and ought to be thoroughly investigated. The results of such must be brought up to public attention for everybody to see. We need to learn from this very costly process of dealing with the pandemic as another one will happen sooner or later. If we don’t we are bound to make the same mistakes.

Don't Chute! · 01-11-2022 9:19pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119819806#Comment_119819806

Early on during this shots how we knew that young fit healthy people were at very little risk from Covid but what did our fcuking leaders do? They shut down basically every possible form of excercise bar walking 2km from home. We weren’t even allowed to go cycling on our own for some unknown fcuking reason. I myself was stopped up at Sally Gap one glorious summers evening while on my way home from (essential) work. There wasn’t another human being around for probably 15 kms. Can you explain any of that **** to us? And that’s only a tiny amount of what was happening. What is it with you people that you just cannot accept that they got so many things wrong? What would I have done? I’d have done what Sweden did. But people called Sweden killers and murderers not, in my opinion because of their response but because they had the temerity to go against everyone else. Talk to someone in Sweden now and there is nothing about Covid. Over here? Still clutching our fcuking pearls.

PeadarCo · 02-11-2022 12:57am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119819806#Comment_119819806

A review needs to done even as a learning exercise. But responses like this don't help. If you want evidence look up the news papers during the level 5 lockdowns and at other points. People did meet inside private dwelling because of how difficult it was for gardai to enforce those restrictions there(ie get a search warrant)

While restrictions where arguably needed at certain points during Covid many didn't make sense, were unenforceable or the gardai didn't have the resources to enforce them. One of the reasons Covid restrictions were relaxed during the spring of 2021 was that it was clear a substantial portion of the population had stopped obeying them rendering them largely pointless. The 5km and intercounty movement became a bit of joke as time went on. Due to the small size of our police force restrictions relied heavily on public buy in. As time went on less people bought into them.

Other examples are the whole stupidity of the substantial meal, or small events not going ahead while Croke Park was half full and 40k odd crammed the streets around Drumcondra.

There are obviously Covid deniers/conspiracy theorists etc who will reject any level of restrictions and this thread will probably attract a lot of people with those point of view. However there is huge room for a nuanced debate. The various restrictions implemented were not perfect/had limitations and there is a lot to be learned from that. The long term impact also needs to evaluated like any public health measure.

Strumms · 02-11-2022 1:10am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119805089#Comment_119805089

sounds perfectly logical.

but… planes have been crashing for decades…because of mechanical failure, human error, whatever, investigators are trained initially and recurrently….….

pandemics ? People would I’m sure have been educated regarding scenarios but in terms of training , for an unknown, unquantifiable event like covid, on the scale of it ? I don’t know if that’s possible.

DownByTheGarden · 02-11-2022 9:39am

I think they started out the only way they could. This was a serious killer virus and would wipe out many people.

So it was prudent to go in hard.

As it became known that the virus wasnt as bad as it was thought and there were now ways to mitigate it they panicked and statrted with the misinformation. They did not want to come out and say they overshot, so they couldnt just roll back unless other countries went first. Alkl of the politicians and nphet did not want to admit the misery they heaped on the country actually didnt need to be as bad as it was in the end.

If they were honest with us all the way through then we might have had some respect for them but the constant misinformation and massaging of numbers from them made people turn against them.

So my sum up is. Started they only way they could have. Were too scared to take responsibility and speak the truth after that. And just went from bad to worse. Funnily i was just writing the same thing in another thread about rent controls :) 1/10.

walus · 02-11-2022 9:50am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119803875#Comment_119803875

In the context of “reflecting on the pandemic’ the point of my post #238 was focused only on the IFR factor and my own observations from studying how the reported IFR value has changed over the course of the pre-vaccine period as the data became richer and more accurate. The IFR figure is one of the most important characteristic of covid and was something that had a very strong influence on decision makers and was used for justifying various non-pharmacological public health interventions. It matters for establishing the acceptable risk vs benefit ratio.

Other papers such as:

Infection fatality rate of COVID-19 inferred from seroprevalence data - PubMed (nih.gov)

and

Variation in the COVID-19 infection–fatality ratio by age, time, and geography during the pre-vaccine era: a systematic analysis - The Lancet

confirm the findings of the paper I mentioned in the original post. The former states that: “Across 51 locations, the median COVID-19 infection fatality rate was 0.27% (corrected 0.23%)” and “The inferred infection fatality rates tended to be much lower than estimates made earlier in the pandemic.”

The latter also finds that “Among all countries and territories, we found that the median IFR decreased from 0·466% (interquartile range 0·223–0·840) to 0·314% (0·143–0·551) between April 15, 2020, and Jan 1, 2021.” What is interesting to note about this publication is that the authors say that “We have attempted to adjust for death under-registration by using an estimate of the true number of deaths attributable to COVID-19 as the numerator of the IFR.”, which means that the IFR calculated this way would represent a higher value than if it was based on official covid death numbers. What is also interesting to note is the source of funding: “Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, J Stanton, T Gillespie, and J and E Nordstrom”.

As for the flu, according to CDC, the flu IFR ranged from 0.1% to 0.17% from 2014 to 2019.

In summary, a number of sources suggest that the actual death rate of pre-vaccine covid has been much lower than anticipated. In addition to that my own conclusion is that as it sometimes happens the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ has proven to be more accurate than that of the ‘experts’, and that those who claimed that IFR of covid was much like the flu (say 0.31% for covid vs 0.13 flu) were simply less 'wrong' than those ‘experts’ who claimed it was an order of magnitude greater (0.9-2%).

You can try all you want to spin my post into something that it wasn’t. Your tactics to discredit one's posts are well known here at this stage.

odyssey06 · 02-11-2022 9:57am

It hasn't been shown that the IFR for flu and covid were established using the same principles.

The fact that there was such variation between countries on covid figures should give pause for how accurate they are.

The countries with the highest IFR on July 15, 2020, were Portugal (2·085%, 0·946–4·395), Monaco (1·778%, 1·265–2·915), Japan (1·750%, 1·302–2·690), Spain (1·710%, 0·991–2·718), and Greece (1·637%, 1·155–2·678). All-age IFR varied by a factor of more than 30 among 190 countries and territories.

Authorities could see what was happening in their hospitals and acted as they did for that reason. It was not based just on their perception of IFR.

HerrKuehn · 02-11-2022 12:34pm

The government chose the passive management approach, basically set rules and then if people don't follow them, they are to blame. The other approach is active management, similar to what Germany had, freely available testing everywhere, you need to have a valid test before going into pubs/restaurants (2021) etc. The active approach allows society and the economy to continue on for the most part, but it means authorities having to get their finger out of their hole. The passive approach is easier to implement as you don't need to get public sector workers to do something they weren't doing before, always a major problem. Unfortunately, the passive response means people have to put up with lots of restrictions, it basically shifts the work the state should be doing onto citizens.

We needed to contain the pandemic while also allowing society to continue. Our approach was successful in containing the pandemic, but it was one of the most restrictive.

Flinty997 · 02-11-2022 1:08pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119802974#Comment_119802974

They don't align. It's that simple. Corrolation is another way of say they don't align but might be in some way related.

You're saying its vaguely similar because of the waves of the virus (and its strains). Well duh.

Scale of 3yrs. Near...far away.

Its got nothing to do with restrictions. Why would you want to compare Sweden to France anyway? Makes no sense.

Flinty997 · 02-11-2022 1:22pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119823188#Comment_119823188

Not enough testing agreed.

But if someone doesn't want to obey restrictions or be vaccinated, or tested how does the testing be effective with that group.

02-11-2022 1:25pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119823344#Comment_119823344

Word salad.

HerrKuehn · 02-11-2022 1:27pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119823393#Comment_119823393

Did you visit any other country during the pandemic? In Germany it was very simple, if you wanted to go to a restaurant AND the incidence rate was above a certain amount, you needed to have a recent (easily obtainable) PCR or antigen to be allowed in. If you don't have it, you can't go in. Very simple.

We could have done that and kept bars and restaurants open, but it would have involved having lots of testing facilities available (in German cities they were all over the place in tents). It's hard to do that as you would either have to hire people or move other state workers who are not needed in their areas in to do it (a complete non runner in Ireland). So, it's much easier to just close restaurants and pubs for 7 months and to hell with jobs and businesses.

Flinty997 · 02-11-2022 1:33pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119823413#Comment_119823413

Like I said near...far away.

Flinty997 · 02-11-2022 1:40pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119823428#Comment_119823428

I agree with you. But it requires people to comply. Some people don't want to comply.

In effect we reopened expecting people would be responsible. But they weren't and lockdowns kept coming back. They were localised to certain activities and locations. For sure there were different ways of doing the lockdown better, or not all all. But it shows that you can't get everyone (100% of people) to pull together on any issue.