Itâs over
Specifically on travel, itâs informative to compare Irelandâs policies and practice when it mattered most to today. There was very little travel from the US since March of 2020, mostly due to Trumpâs Europe ban which was extended to the UK and Ireland early on. Aer Lingus halted all their direct flights to the west coast (LA, SF, Seattle) and they still havenât started back up. I know a few lads who had to go to Ireland for funerals late last year and they travelled through the east coast and the flights were 1/4 full. @Batigol can confirm but there were not many US tourists since March 2020.
Contrast that with travel from the UK. Just in the two weeks alone before Christmas there were 30,000 visitors to Ireland from the UK, the location where the Kent variant emerged in October and was rampant by December. If you wanted to do anything meaningful to minimize the winter wave that was the time to do it, but inexplicitly Ireland chose to have itâs most relaxed approach at the worst possible time. Add in the âmeaningful Christmasâ advice which translated to packed shopping centers and people filling churches for their once yearly visit, and you had the perfect storm.
Whatâs the latest lads?
Latest?
Are you actually arguing that Swedenâs 1.5% excess deaths in 2020 is high due to their callous least restrictive approach? The average in Europe is 10%, Poland 14%, Spain 13%, Belgium 12%, UK 10%, etc.
Finland, Norway and Denmark shut their borders early, they are the only countries in Europe to do so, but you want to compare Sweden to them but no other European country? Iâm sure that makes a lot of sense in your head.
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Can you not read? I quoted an independent report that absolutely contradicts your back of a fag box calc. Youâre some man for spoof.
Were you calling for a more restricted approach back at that time in Ireland?
I was calling for sensible restrictions since January of 2020 mate. I donât recall advising Ireland to allow in 30k visitors from the UK with no requirement on testing, or telling everyone to go on the lash for the month of December.
It doesnât contradict my post. Point out the contradiction.
I love the way the anti-lockdown narrative claims that what different countries did made no difference to death rates and simultaneously claims they did make a big difference.
In countries that locked down their borders in March of 2020 and never opened them up again it made a massive difference. In countries that went the half assed on again off again route it made no difference.
If it wasnât for the hope of long covid and new variants the lockdown lads would have nowhere left to turn
Itâs quite extraordinaryâŚIâd say those PUP payments have a lot to do with it
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But that doesnât explain why Swedenâs approach failed so badly in terms of excess death compared to their neighbours Norway and Denmark, which have had negative excess death rates.
You said Sweden had a low excess death rate. The report says most Scandinavian countries had a low excess death rate, with Sweden being the exception. The report completely contradicts your point. The independent report does not compare Sweden with the UK or Belgium as to do so would be an apples and oranges comparison.
Norway, Finland and Denmark closed their borders in March 2020 and only opened them to each other since then.
The data Mike posted is for the duration of the pandemic, so includes April 2020 and January 2021, the worst months by far everywhere in the western world. Sweden had 10% excess deaths in this period. Italy had 26%, UK 20%, Spain 20%, etc. The average in western Europe looks around 20%. Eastern Europe far worse, Czech Rep has 32K excess deaths with the same pop as Sweden, 3X the rate of Sweden.
The main point is Sweden had no lockdown and half the excess death rate of the rest of Europe which was in lockdown.
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For clarityâs sake I make it from official statistics that Sweden had an excess death rate of 10.22% in 2020.
My workings are as follows:
I took the excess death rate of 91.18 excess deaths per 100,000 population provided by the figures on the British Medical Journal link I provided in a recent post, then multiplied by 102 (for total population - 10.2 million), arriving at a total figure of 9,300 excess deaths for 2020.
Then I calculated that as a percentage of Swedens 5 yearly (2015-2019) average for all cause death numbers of 90,962 to come up with a figure of 10.22%.
You need to get on to them and tell them Sweden is not in Scandinavia. 
Sweden had a low excess death rate, compared to most countries in Europe. Norway Finland and Denmark shut their borders in March 2020 and kept them shut, essentially taking the NZ approach.
Can you still not see the distinction between those three countries and the rest of Europe?
So what youâre saying is that international travel is a major factor in the spread of the pandemic.
I agree.
Which is why I agree with mandatory hotel quarantine, however late and however cack-handed its implementation is.
Sure if nobody ever left their country the virus would never have left China.
The supermarket shelves with no imports of any kind and no deliveries of any kind of pharma or PPE for 16 months would have been interesting.