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

If Covid complicated their recovery and thereby contributed to their death, then it would be wrong to exclude them from an assessment of impact of covid. I suspect if we drill into these cases you seem to think should not have been counted, that will prove to be the case.

You just said Covid statistics. Nothing specific.

Your now changed parameter is "primary reason for hospitalization" or "primary reason for death".

So that depends what the statistic is being used for.

Fact remains neither Ireland or Sweden shut down "everything" like you claimed.

You claimed they were deliberately under reporting deaths so they could massively bump the numbers at bank holidays to justify sending us back into level 5, and that was one of your more coherent conspiracies. What word would you use?

The lads who were screaming the loudest for freedom would often post rambling diatribes and conspiracy theories, and now one year after all restrictions were lifted, they still choose to spend all their time in the boards Corona forum. It's the same 4-6 lads, like a dog chasing a car, got their freedom back but seem terrified of the outside.

And you for me, the world is open, you can ask me out, I will say no but you can ask.

The problem with the Irish lockdowns was how long they went on for especially October 20 to April 21. Yes we had a break over Christmas where everything went mad. But would people have obeyed the lockdown measures over Christmas if we had had level 5 lockdown measures in place? As it was significant numbers of people started ignoring the restrictions especially as time went on.

But I'd agree not everything was shut down. Outside urban areas the 5km restrictions were completely unenforceable because a valid excuse was to go shopping. Gardai couldn't enter private homes so another bit went out the window. And you also had lots of people in essential services going all around the country(to do their jobs) but at the same interacting with people who were isolating going about necessary tasks(shopping etc). So spreading infection that way.

The restrictions while definitely necessary at times were so riddled with loop holes and unenforceable they were not a medium term strategy.

In Nephts defence they were dealing with a completely new disease and as a result had very limited information to go off especially early on. In that situation its natural to be extremely cautious.

However the idea that they were always following the science is ludicrous. It's ludicrous because cutting edge science which Covid was and to a degree still is, is completely uncertain(its why conspiracy theorists love Covid, they can give people certainty in a way science can never give). Nepht were following their interpretation of the science. Science that was always changing. That's something that was never really acknowledged. The decision to limit movement to 5km, county's, €9 meal etc where choices by NEPHT and the government.

The biggest issue with NEPHT was that there was no independent body made up of qualified people set up to hold them to account. As far as I am aware the only person with any medical expertise in government was Leo Varadkar. So it was very hard if not impossible for the government to challenge NEPHT in an educated matter because practically none of knew enough to do so.

I appreciate that's a bit of rant. But I would agree that level 5 lockdowns were necessary at times but I'd be very critical of their duration and the countrys reliance on them.

Only comes up on my radar when it pops up on recent posts front page. The comment about subsequent waves always being weaker "scientifically" caught my interest. Why would that be the case? But predictably first 2 secs into a Google search tells us it's not true. Most of this thread is like that. It's like that shop where you always have to check your change. It's wrong that often.

In 2020 they had which is when they were most out of step with their peers in terms of restrictions and approach to covid.

And those excess deaths were in a situation where there were massive international travel restrictions and lockdowns in their neighbours.

Their approach does not scale to high population density / continent wide.

And in 2021 they were fast out of the traps in terms of vaccines.

They did in 2020.

Asked and answered in previous post.

Well you said Europe then peers. Which is it?

Also you've used a timeline that includes The period when Sweden had a different approach and when it dropped that and had restrictions. So why by combining them it dilutes any meaning as it relates to COVID policy.

Also all the varied issues that seem to influence excess deaths, heat, quality of health system, to mention a couple, Sweden has none of those disadvantage. They are are also not directly related to COVID policy.

It's the magic soup pot of statistics.

Odessy brought up the word 'peers'.

Are other European countries not their peers?