"Nobody cares about Covid anymore"

Emblematic

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121012994#Comment_121012994

Exactly. Sweden only look good when it comes to saving lives as the figures unambiguously show.

However they don't look so good when it comes blindly following others and imposing strict lockdowns. They are a miserable failure in this second regard.

Goldengirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121014481#Comment_121014481

I don't know about that ...as discussed on the Swedish thread they followed every one else from Dec 2020 on ...

daithi7

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121014535#Comment_121014535

They didn't, that is complete BS imho. They persevered with much more lax guidelines wrt to public health, they didn't close cafés & restaurants, gyms, sports facilities, workplaces, state exams and a whole lot more!!!

But shur none of those are important to maintaining people's health & well being are they!?

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/coronavirus-lockdowns-are-still-a-step-too-far-for-sweden-1.4473119

Suzanne Cahill

Tue Feb 2 2021

"...but are a far cry away from a nationwide lockdown. An initiative that would hugely jar with the Swedish culture of “lagom” meaning moderation, personal responsibility and autonomy."

Former Former Former

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121014481#Comment_121014481

They had a 33% higher death rate than us, and more than double that of Norway.

How is that a good look?

facehugger99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121014535#Comment_121014535

Utter nonsense.

Sweden is the inconvenient truth that lockdowns were almost entirely useless, completely disproportionate, wholly unjustified and an outrageous waste of resources.

All the gaslighting the the world doesn't change that.

Sconsey

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121014481#Comment_121014481

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121014910#Comment_121014910

Or alternatively you could try actually looking at the facts, like the chart below that compares Sweden's lockdown stringency with some of their neighbors (Finland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands).

What do you make of that in terms of Sweden being an inconvenient truth? Looks to me like they locked down just as much if not more than their neighbors from about the summer of 2020?

The notion Emblematic has that they did not lockdown or follow others is complete rubbish. They er just later in adopting compared to most.

daithi7

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121016035#Comment_121016035

If you really want your chart taken as some indicator of lockdown, take out vaccinations firstly, as they are nothing to do with it imho.

Sconsey

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121017074#Comment_121017074

I don't think you understand, it is not my chart, it is the most accurate data-driven measure of lockdown severity available as far as I am aware. Do you have a different chart?

The vaccinated/non-vaccinated takes into account restrictions that varied depending on vaccination status. I am not going to take it out as the experts that created the information know more about what is an accurate measure than I do. Do yo know better than the data-scientists?

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121014481#Comment_121014481

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121014910#Comment_121014910

Sweden lost more lives than their neighbours in the first year of the pandemic. They also later adopted measures and restrictions.

facehugger99

coronavirus-data-explorer.png

If the lockdowns were to prevent the health service becoming overwhelmed with Covid patients perhaps someone can explain how that all worked out.

Sweden consistently adopted a much lighter touch wrt to lockdowns over the course of 2years - there is absolutely no correlation between the severity of the lockdown strategy and a reduction in hospitalization and deaths due to Covid. Yet we were all told this was the raison d'etre for lockdowns in the first place.

Lockdowns achieved absolutely nothing in Ireland, unless you consider becoming one of the most indebted nations on the planet an achievement

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121017288#Comment_121017288

Lockdowns reduced the number of cases which reduced pressure on the hospitals.

Relatively speaking, Ireland is not considered highly indebted (last check we're outside the top 50 countries in the world, we're also AA rated)

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121017288#Comment_121017288

We've been running budget surpluses for every year for the last number of years now, including throughout COVID but I take your point on Sweden

The reason behind the initial lockdown in March 2020 was to stamp out the virus. The reason it got so bad at the time, and we had an initial 800 or so deaths in the space of 9 weeks, is because our hospitals were moving COVID patients out of hospitals and into nursing homes. All I can think is that perhaps Sweden didn't do that?

Ezeoul

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121013404#Comment_121013404

One work colleague and two family members both caught Covid in the last two weeks, two of them for first time and both were quite ill.

facehugger99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121017255#Comment_121017255

What your chart shows is that even with no lockdowns and at it's very worst, Sweden had a death-rate of less than 1:100,000 people - no amount of exaggeration of the y-axis scale can hide that fact.

That doesn't really fit in with the killer-virus narrative that was used to justify lockdowns though , does it?

facehugger99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121017330#Comment_121017330

They did nothing of the sort.

Emblematic

I think the mistake some people are making is that they assume that all measures to curb the spread of the virus were justified if they saved a small number from dying as a result of that virus.

That is a somewhat simplistic view as it does not take into account the cost of the lockdowns themselves in terms of illnesses and deaths.

That's why they tend to focus on the early part of the pandemic where the cost of the lockdowns itself is not yet apparent.

Former Former Former

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121017383#Comment_121017383

That doesn't really fit in with the killer-virus narrative that was used to justify lockdowns though , does it?

It wasn't a "narrative". Lots and lots of people died from a communicable disease.

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121017383#Comment_121017383

In 2020 it had a significantly higher death rate than it's closest socio-economic neighbours (5 times higher according to that chart). Which would indicate that they were doing something wrong in that period.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121017388#Comment_121017388

When lockdowns were introduced (typically during a severe spike), the cases would decrease (also mortalities). Moreso early on in the pandemic. Obviously lockdowns also had a cost to them, which was factored into the decisions.

https://www.factcheck.org/2022/03/scicheck-what-weve-learned-about-so-called-lockdowns-and-the-covid-19-pandemic/

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-masks-lockdowns-covid-idUSKCN2AT3JQ

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/yes-lockdowns-do-help-slow-the-spread-of-covid-19#The-virus-thrives-on-proximity

facehugger99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121017473#Comment_121017473

"5 times higher" - is that meant to sound scarier than less than 1:100,000 - because that is what the actual death rate was in Sweden with no lockdowns.

The only mistake Sweden made was caving into the social-media hysteria around Covid - even then they were far more light-touch than Ireland. We were an absolute embarrassment TBH

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121017543#Comment_121017543

And it's neighbours were around 0.2 deaths per 100,000 with lockdowns in that period, which is significantly less.

Not sure how Ireland was an "embarassment", we made similar decisions to most other countries.

Fathom

When there is a relatively unknown serious threat to public health, and hospitals in many countries are suddenly overwhelmed with patients testing Covid positive, along with increasing ICU admissions, and anecdotally associated death rates, there may be a rush to judgment to mitigate the unknown illness not based on rigorous scientific data and analysis, because there has not been enough time to conduct valid and reliable studies.

Covid-19 gets the 19 number from the fall 2019 year it was discovered. This fall will be 4 years. Thus far, there has been time for only short and midterm studies, when longitudinal studies, generally conducted over 5 or more years, would increase the likelihood of more valid and reliable results and conclusions when attempting to mitigate the Covid pandemic outcomes. Especially when Covid has evidenced continued and evolving variants.

The earlier rush to judgment before longitudinal studies could occur may have produced problematic public health care polices and errors (e.g., debating lockdowns, etc). The same could be said about drawing absolute judgements today before time has allowed for these longitudinal studies to occur. Therefore, caution should be exercised today in order to avoid passing on potential misleading or spurious information about the Covid world wide pandemic.

I'd just knock some of the hyperbole in the head.

Yes, the lockdowns were expensive and yes, there's plenty of room for debate about them, but because of the configuration of Ireland's economy, we were in the extremely unusual situation of having been able to afford to do some of those things with minimal impact on the national accounts.

Ireland's got a decent credit rating, but it also has huge amounts of money sloshing and runs a massive budget surplus, which was quite easily redirected into funding those measures.

We weren't under the same degree of financial pressure to undo lockdowns as some places were, particularly those dependent on tourism or labour intensive manufacturing. We're an odd little tax efficiency and an English speaking bridgehead into the EU/EEA for US multinationals and have a lot of jobs that were able to move to work from home.

Because of pharma and biotech concentrations here, and also the IT sector going into hyper drive, we also saw more revenue increase, not go down. So we were able to pay subsidies and supports without really needing to think about it all that much.

I think Ireland failed miserably to take adequate measures that could have been low disruptive impact simple stuff: e.g. improving air quality in buildings, particularly schools, hospitals and public transport.

Instead we went for the most disruptive, draconian and short term stuff that involved little capital expenditure, and lots of current expenditure and did very little to shore up the infrastructure against any future issues / recurrences of this one.

We also have direly tight A&Es and other facilities which really need to be urgently expanded, yet we're taking or sweet time on all of that too.

So despite being loaded, we're really not doing anything to plan for dealing with an future issues like this, and it's fairly inevitable that they'll arrive, just because of globalisation, travel, and all of those things that we aren't likely to be prepared to give up (see NZ...)

---

I'd just add we did a LOT of hygiene theatre during COVID with little sense to it. Long, long after the consensus in science (medical, environmental and everything else) was showing it was airborne, we were going around disinfecting surfaces and using useless shields in shops and all of that stuff. Closing garden centres and clothes shops!? FFS.

Not only that but we spend months frightening the hell out of people with completely hysterical stuff on RTE, and all sorts of high drama worthy of something you'd see on Dad's Army safety demonstrations. I mean, seriously some of the stuff was not very helpful and reminiscent of 1950s Civil Defence, Duck and Cover. Well meaning, but ... utterly pointless.

The stats being provided were also constantly raw numbers and we were encouraging people to turn up at test centres only if they'd symptoms, resulting in all the people who had covid being drive-through tested, at huge expense. I'm not exactly sure what that was supposed to tell anyone. People who thought they might have had COVID definitely had COVID?

The data we actually needed and that would have been useful was random sampling within communities, areas, categories of buildings and work environments and so on. Even a 2nd year marketing student could tell you the data being gathered was useless. From what I gather other than sampling sewage, we had none of that, and we were basically competing with other countries on who could do the most testing and people were cheering this on.

I just saw a couple of years of Captain Mainwaring style (sorry for the Dad's Army reference) running around like headless chickens with no logic and a lot of importance.

The vaccination programme was smooth, slick and a huge success. That was the only part of the response that I could see that seemed to make a ton of sense.

I do think we need a major debriefing. I think it needs to be free from conspiracy theorists and culture war politics though, but we really do need to learn from the errors.

Goldengirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121017383#Comment_121017383

Again this is all discussed and argued in depth elsewhere on the appropriate thread.

Your figures are totally incorrect and inaccurate . Where are you getting them? If you want to discuss this provide reliable links otherwise its just the usual piffle.

Former Former Former

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121017828#Comment_121017828

The stats being provided were also constantly raw numbers and we were encouraging people to turn up at test centres only if they'd symptoms, resulting in all the people who had covid being drive-through tested, at huge expense. I'm not exactly sure what that was supposed to tell anyone. People who thought they might have had COVID definitely had COVID?

The vast majority of people tested did not turn out to have Covid. It was supposed to tell you if you needed to isolate and engage with contact tracing, or if you did not. It was absolutely crucial.

Covid-19 is airborne. It could also be transmitted via contact, and sneeze/cough droplets eventually settle somewhere, thus sanitising surfaces was not pointless. The idea of shields in shops was to prevent the airborne transmission of the virus.

For a post that opened with 'knocking hyperbole on the head', yours certainly contained quite a bit of it. You give out about RTE but you very clearly didn't listen to any of it so what's the problem?

We just seemed to be slow to adopt anything sensible. I remember self-testing had become a thing in the UK, much of continental Europe etc and the US, while we had so-called Irish experts taking excptionalist views on it about how it wouldn't work. That resulted in a total over dependence on PRC testing for ages, which wasn't able to keep up and in most cases wasn't achieving very much anyway.

Loads of people I know were rushing off to get tested when they knew 100% they had COVID and were self isolating anyway, but desperately needed a test because that's what they were being constantly told.

We didn't get any sense of what was going on nationally because all of the resources were going into testing people who knew they were positive and very little seemed to be going into establishing trends, heat maps or anything else.

As for the testing and isolating - I remember people going to McDonalds with the kids or off to the play ground, all of whom had just been down to the test centre because of suspected covid.

We absolutely do need to have a very serious look at what happened over those years. Billions upon billions were spent and people's lives were turned upside down and inside out.

There's still an extremely arrogant sweeping aside of anyone who dares say that the response was not very good or was way out of line with peers in many cases.

Goldengirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121014629#Comment_121014629

"IMHO"!

As discussed on the other thread there were some standout differences from Mar 20 to Dec 20..what were they Daithi7?

Come on you know this, and if you don't I suggest you go to the Sweden Avoiding Lockdown thread to discuss.

The worst issue is that any sensible discussion is hijacked by conspiracy theorists with all sorts of insane notions.

Any pragmatic discussion of any of this is driven into the fringes and it's doing a huge disservice to forward planning or any kind of analysis of what happened or how it could be improved upon.

Goldengirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121017960#Comment_121017960

Most of us have said the same at various points and in this thread but the problem is in the title here which leads to a certain discourse.

The Reflections on The Pandemic thread is more rational I think and doesn't seek to polarise posters into "one camp or the other ".

daithi7

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121017969#Comment_121017969

Ah look, you made a claim that Sweden changed to follow the rest of Europe with similar lockdown measures, etc from Dec 20 on.

Yet I was able to respond to your BS claim with an Irish Times article , authored by someone living in Sweden from Feb '21, showing this was simply not the case at all!

For instance they didn't close their cafés & restaurants, gyms, sports facilities, workplaces, cancel their state exams, shut down their private hospitals and a whole lot more!!!

Some may still think it is a little too early for definitive judgments, but all the current indicators are that Ireland locked down both too severely, but mostly for far,far too long, for it's citizen's greater good, and this has defeated the purpose of the whole exercise.

I.e. This has resulted in worse health on aggregate in the population, which has since caused higher excess death rates than otherwise would have been the case, and all this was done at massive expense in monetary terms certainly, but also in the terrible disruption to people's lives, over hugely & unnecessarily elongated time frames, including really stupid things like completely sabotaging & shutting down private sector health provision in this country, and other such daft measures such as cancelling of state exams, forbidding outdoor sports, walks in the forests, etc, etc, etc. This overshooting of common sense through many daft, draconian measures, implemented for far,far too long, has ultimately cost Ireland far more lives and much poorer general health outcomes than Covid could ever have wrought in itself.

In summary, imho, the cure was worse than the disease.

(And far worse at that!!)

P.s. further these measures were imposed on the Irish people by a very arrogant, self regarding medical elite (I.e. certain members of Nphet) who have now been shown (nearly definitively) to have done the country a massive disservice in the policies they helped impose.

P.p.s anyone who is still expressing an outmoded belief that Ireland's lockdown strategy was either measured, or even nearly correct, are completely wrong and misguided imho. They are either totally 'stuck in the mud', or must have a vested interest in continuing to hold these views (e.g. working for the HSE, or whatever), as all credible evidence now is pointing to otherwise.

Ireland got it wrong, (deal with it), lockdown cost far too much in damagjng people's lives, lifestyles, health, well being & economic & other well being to be justifiable imho. All credible indicators currently support this view. Sorry.

Goldengirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121019266#Comment_121019266

Ah don't be ..sorry I mean .

It's too late now .

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121019266#Comment_121019266

It was a new disease, people were catching it in increasing numbers, people were dying, we had supply issues with ventilators, we didn't have vaccines, staff in hospitals were stretched to the limit, ICU's were filling up. Then cases started to rise, exponentially. Of course we had a lockdown, like most other countries. It made reasonable sense at the time and the vast majority of the public supported it.

There was of course the economic trade-off, but money can be borrowed, lives can't be replaced. People with other health issues would have been heavily impacted if our national health system had become overwhelmed. Anyone can nitpick a thousand things about the mesaures/restrictions were perfect hindsight. We did what most other countries did.

daithi7

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121019335#Comment_121019335

It's hardly nit picking to point out that things like the hijacking & shutting down of private hospitals was total madness, that cancelling state examinations was ludicrous, that the unnecessarily elongated lockdown measures in Ireland were very often both daft and misguided, and that because of all this massively expensive exercise in national self sacrifice, we've actually ended up with higher excess deaths than a country like Sweden anyways, and worse overall health in the general population since Covid due to lockdown measures.

(e g. Increased cancers & serious health issues etc due to cancelled screenings & elective procedures, the' Covid stone' as a symptom of an increase in obesity, and increased domestic violence & worsened mental health due to confining the population to their homes for far, far too long, etc, etc, etc).

This is far from nit picking!!

Goldengirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121019370#Comment_121019370

Sure we have all said here and elsewhere about the madness of the closing of private hospitals and stopping of cancerscreening for so long ..what ...you think you are coming up with anything new here ?

What is novel is that you are continuing with the nonsense about Sweden when it has been shown that they had o many more deaths in the first year when they had to revise their approach following from that .

If they have come out of it well after that it is because they have and always have had , a superior health care system to ours, well funded , better staffed, and more resilience built in in the form of extra beds and planning .

This ...is what we need to take from Sweden's strategy ,and if this government and future ones would build that into forward planning , we would be in a stronger position to deal with anything that may come in the form of a pandemic or natural disaster .

If we had had a stronger health service with more beds ,staff , and better strategic public health planners we might have gotten away with less strict/ shorter lockdowns, especially once vaccinated . Because the risk of our health service being overwhelmed would have been less .

This is why Sweden could afford not to be as strict in the second year of the pandemic even when they did introduce restrictions . Also vaccinations started then .

While nobody denies that there are some poorer health outcomes as a result of reduced screening and services generally ,there is as big, if not bigger long tail coming from Long Covid .

Many poor health outcomes are as a result of Covd infection. These are now reducing our frail health service's ability to move on and get back to any semblance of normality. People with heart disease , diabetes,neurological and respiratory disorders, all either triggered, or existing disease exacerbated Covid infection to a degree and a range ,never seen before with other viruses .

But still our health bosses talk about reducing waiting times and fiddle around the edges instead of attacking the issues of not enough beds, services or staff which is the core of our inability to get to grips with waiting lists and A+E waiting times .

Charles Babbage

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121022348#Comment_121022348

There is a false narrative in relation to cancer. Lockdown greatly reduced Covid and that greatly protected people with cancer. The reality is that we run a health service with no spare capacity and if something comes along then some other processes suffer. We need to learn from this, but not though falsehood.

Goldengirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121022746#Comment_121022746

I agree.

So many people who were undergoing treatment were less exposed to organisms other than Covid which normally would have been lethal.

It was an ill wind, indeed.

Not to mention the changes people made to their quality of life if they could.. wfh and moving out of the cities.

It'll take a while before all the effects and ill effects are really apoarent and measurable.

DLink

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121022746#Comment_121022746

Good news for the people who got diagnosed with cancer before the panic, but what about the people who couldn't get screened for cancer, or any other condition, during the panic?

Talk about trying to polish a turd with "good news"....

Missed diagnoses due to covid restrictions is not a false hood.

Goldengirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121022998#Comment_121022998

But missed 'potential ' diagnoses is ..

DLink

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121023263#Comment_121023263

That's just word play that is being used to justify the restrictions.

Charles Babbage

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121022998#Comment_121022998

In Covid the health service was beyond capacity and some treatment was inevitably going to suffer. The particular things that were done may not have been ideal in retrospect, and we should learn from this, but some damage somewhere was inevitable. My objection is that the points made about cancer is not usually about the specific details, which might have been done differently, but are usually part of an anti lockdown argument which suggested that Covid should have been let rip.

DLink

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121024519#Comment_121024519

It was so beyond capacity that they were able to make inspirational and motivational videos of them dancing in the wards because they had nothing else better to be doing?

Gotcha.

Dslatt

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121024568#Comment_121024568

Those videos were made by people after or before their shifts, or lunch break.

facehugger99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121024519#Comment_121024519

Presenting the response options to Covid as a binary choice between total lockdown and a 'let it rip' approach shows the absolute paucity of your argument.

Covid was only a danger to a small, easily identifiable sub-set of the population. All of our planned response options to a pandemic involved isolating and protecting this group with targeted measures but once the social-media hysteria got into full swing, Governments decided to follow the approach of a totalitarian State instead and shut down the whole of society with no examination or debate as to the negative consequences that this decision would entail.

We flushed 10's of billions down the toilet on useless Covid-theatre measures - money that could have been used to invest in our infrastructure and our future.

DLink

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121024639#Comment_121024639

It doesn't take away from the fact that the hospitals were empty.

Again, more excuse making for the pointless restrictions.

DLink

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121024649#Comment_121024649

A decision to move the elderly out of hospitals into nursing homes was made by "those who should know best", even thought the dogs in the streets knew that it was a bad idea.

That was our first warning on how things were going to progress, but unfortunately we let it slide....

At least now we know better... once bitten, twice shy and all that. Good luck with them trying to scare us into more restrictions or lockdowns.

As the subject of this thread says, nobody cares about covid any more.

facehugger99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121024834#Comment_121024834

I admire your optimism but I don't think any lessons have been learned from our response to Covid. I don't think the general public even want to learn any lesson from it, which is great news for the politicians who presided over it. There is a cognitive dissonance amongst a huge swade of the population, many of whom can't bring themselves to believe in the waste of time and money and recourses the response to Covid entailed.

I think next time we will make the exact same mistakes again - a double-down if you will.

The sad fact is there are people who would willingly flush another €100bn down the tubes rather than admit they were wrong - the ego is a fragile yet powerful thing.

Dslatt

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121024805#Comment_121024805

People taking photos/videos of out patient departments outside of hours doesnt mean hospitals were empty. Had plenty of dealings with UHK during the pandemic. It was not empty.

Former Former Former

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121024834#Comment_121024834

 Good luck with them trying to scare us into more restrictions or lockdowns.

I think the vast majority of people understood that restrictions were a necessary evil. While nobody liked it, the overwhelming sentiment was of getting on with it for the greater good. When the next pandemic comes, I'd imagine the majority will again do what is right.

It was an already-disaffected minority of people who had the biggest issues with it, and are still complaining about it to this day.

We cannot and should not pander to people who protest against anything and everything, because they will never be happy. All we can do is make the best decisions we can, and hope the loonies don't cause too much harm to the rest of us while they're spreading disease/beating up immigrants/protesting at libraries/etc.

DLink

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121024904#Comment_121024904

I hate to say it, but I agree with you, I think the vast majority will roll over again. I'll be more prepared to stand by my convictions if it does happen again, be the nail that stands out as it were.

I'm done with authoritarian diktats.

DLink

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121024997#Comment_121024997

Sigh... you win, I can't be arsed arguing with you covid disciples any more, even after all these months have passed and we can see what really happened.

Yes, we did our best, blah, blah, blah. Restrictions good, loonies bad.

Charles Babbage

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121024649#Comment_121024649

The mark of a civilised and prosperous society is that it can look after more vulnerable people in its population. No doubt some of the Covid measures were not ideal, it is difficult to optimise your response to something that comes only every 100 years. However, Ireland has plenty of money and the difficulties with infrastructure are plannng delays and a lack of builders and an anti development minister as much as a lack of money, killing more people in Covid wouldn't really have helped much.