Coronavirus in ROI/NI part 2

[Zantedeschia]

Following on from the other thread

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/craicnet/3834552-Coronavirus-in-Ireland-N-Ireland?pg=40&order=

The new neighbours are a couple in their 50's with two kids who are in their early 20's.
I'm outside with the kids now and there are two men (aged around 40) there that I've never seen before. One of them shouted over to me to say "coffee would be nice (I have a cup in my hand) but I'm drinking captain morgan"
We live in a scenic area and I'm guessing they must have people staying there for the long weekend

The deaths per 100k of population is probably the most accurate comparison, ireland doing ok with that at 5.91 .
Still the ethnic makeup in Ireland is protective, much more deaths in BAME groups which disproportionately hits the US , and the UK to a lesser extent.
Urbanisation also affects the spread, which helps the likes of NZ and Finland keep their numbers down.

LadyEloise, here is a link to the Worldometer page that compares countries

www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

You can order the chart any way you like by clicking (twice) on the heading of each column. If you click Europe and then Deaths per million population it puts them in order (click again to get high to low) and you can see that Ireland is about half way down with 58 deaths per million population.

Bearing in mind that Ireland includes all Covid deaths, whereas most countries (UK in particular) only include deaths in hospital, we aren't doing too badly.

NI has 92 deaths for a population of around 1.88 million, so around 50 deaths per million, but that doesn't include deaths outside hospitals.

Yes, Carrie, I never thought about ethnic make up of the population. I'm also trying to find comparisons on Vitamin D deficiency, as I know there is a lot of concern about that in relation to Covid, and there have been reports recently that Vitamin D levels are dangerously low in many people.

Get out in the sun everyone! Advice is 15 minutes a day without sunscreen, divided up into 3 sets of 5 minutes if the sun is strong. Sunscreen for kids is good, but they need time without it as well.

twitter.com/seamuscoffey/status/1248215014017765378?s=21

What I also find interesting is how many more people are dying, no of Co I’d, but because they are not accessing healthcare.
My DH treats acute stroke and he is paradoxically quiet at the moment - our ED is seeing 50% of normal attendance figures

Thé Twitter link is to an Irish economist who has analysed comparative death rates using RIP.ie

Dk20 oh God it could be a long noisy day. Captain Morgan's in the morning.....

Good luck with that

On a different note, I cleaned my windows the other day so I can my neighbours better.

The news is just relentlessly awful. Such a dreadful time for people who are being bereaved. The health service staff are amazing. I always believed and spoke out about the fact that nurses, paramedics, firemen and carers etc were vastly underpaid and undervalued in Ireland compared with other professions. I hope they get pay rises when we get through this crisis and the economic one that will follow.

Was this posted already:

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1249127908876128259.html

That is a really powerful twitter thread 3luckystars. If you were to post it elsewhere on MN, however, you would get absofuckinglutely eaten alive by the "who do you think you are, the UK is the best" ranters.

But the really interesting thing about that thread is that they have missed the worst fact of all - the UK figures at more than double, per head, than the Irish figures, don't include any deaths outside hospital nor does it include the fact that there is delay of a week or more on the UK government's announced figures.

Watching the facts/figures thread, it looks as though deaths outside hospital, and late announcement of hospital deaths, may mean that final death counts for some days are double the official announced figures which is even more appalling.

As far as I can see Irish figures include ALL deaths. Bad and all as they are, at least the numbers aren't being hidden.

@3luuckystars
What a brilliant piece by Lainey Doyle.
Could you put it up on a link on one of tje main Coronavirus threads please. I can't do links.
UK Mumsnetters need to read it.
It doesn't reach a wide enough audience in Craicnet.
Why aren't UK newspapers picking it up ?
DH commented last night that the BBC tv news never mentions Ireland re Coronavirus.

No way, I am not kicking the beehive!

One additional point - I worry that when we reopen schools and borders and tourists come flooding back, we might get a bad second wave and have to lockdown again. Whereas the UK might have enough people already infected (or dead ) to avoid a second wave.

If that happens the "I told you so's" will be unbearable.

I wouldn't post it elsewhere either [wibble]

Britain never looks towards us! It's like we're the dumber, younger half sibling who will be always ignored or shut down because they were here first. It's a funny one but obvious in a lot of threads on MN. If an Irish poster comments wrt Ireland's pov it is ignored. Fair nuff you might say, it has no relevance to them. But we look to them, and to other countries because, I think, in Ireland we are very aware of being a small island who do not have all the answers.

A friend worked in retail in the UK several years (90's) ago and was told by a colleague: you Irish are so good at this job because you are so used to serving. We Brits are used to ruling so not good!

While we share so much with our neighbours we do not share an outlook and that is a fairly fundamental difference.

Great post CottonEaster

I find it interesting that when Italy began to record death numbers in the 700s per day, it was “my goodness, what sort of mess have those silly rule-breaking Italians got themselves into?!”

Whereas now- the UK have been in the 900s for days but... radio silence from many corners.

I find that article very one-dimensional. Every country has its own factors at play and its own shit to deal with.
Ireland doesn’t have a city like London, a major global transport hub with multiple airports and many millions of inhabitants. It’s pretty obvious that places with higher population density are going to suffer most.

Scotland and NI are nowhere near as badly affected as the rest of the UK. In fact NI death rate per 100,000 is lower than ROI.

Im not saying the UK didn’t make mistakes and take it seriously enough at the beginning but I don’t see the value in giving ourselves a pat on the back when we are in such early stages of the virus, we don’t yet know how it will play out. Let’s see where we are by the end.

But Linwin, even if you exclude London, the UK death rate is still so much higher than the Irish one of 6.5 deaths per 100,000.

Look at Cumbria - very sparsely populated with about half a million people spread out across the lakes. 69 deaths by Friday. That's 13.8 deaths per 100,000 in a rural area!

Or take Wales - a lot like Ireland in that it's mostly rural with population concentrated around Cardiff. Total population 3.1 million and 351 deaths by yesterday, so 11.3 deaths per 100,000.

It's not population density. It's failed policy.

NI are understating Covid deaths in the same way as England by only counting hospital deaths that have tested positive. Do not comparable to RoI

NI has 107 deaths for 1.88 m people, Ireland has 320 out of 4.9 million, so rates of 57 and 65, which bearing in mind that the NI figure is only hospital deaths implies that rates north and south of the border are similar.

As NI has very little international travel and Belfast is much smaller than Dublin, that is surprising, NI rates should be much lower.

I don't think Ireland has it beaten at all - I worry about where we will stand post-lockdown, but the delay in implementing social distancing in the UK, the frankly disgraceful response relating to PPE, the confusion (deliberate or not) in the numbers and the lack of testing leaves the UK government with a lot of questions to answer when this is all over.

There’s no doubt there have been failures in the UK policy but I just think you underestimate the impact that London has, it doesn’t just impact London itself but people flying into those airports can route outwards across the whole country.
There are also important socio-economic factors as well, for example why are BAME communities so disproportionately affected in the UK.

I guess all I’m saying is there is so much we still don’t know about the virus and the way it behaves. There is a long, long way to go.

We all need to be focusing on what we can learn now and in the future from countries such as Germany who seem to have a better handle on things. I think the UK CMO has already made reference to this.

I think you're still massively minimising the cumulative effect of the UK delaying proper measures by 10-14 days. You can't delay when there's an exponential growth rate without terrible consequences. Every other factor in the current death rate is just icing on a truly horrific cake.

Now that the UK are in the position they're in, I hope they look to other countries for ways to try to reduce the death rate. More widespread testing, properly distributing all the PPE the govt claims is in the country, etc. But it's heartbreaking waiting for this to happen and still not seeing it.

But why are you only comparing to Germany, we are right beside you?

Every country is being hit hard, we have all made mistakes. That article is saying that we can learn from EACH OTHER.