Micheal Martin- we saved 2245 lives, apparently

On July 1st, Micheal Martin made a surprising revelation during leaders questions that went almost entirely overlooked, and attracted seemingly zero critical assessment, regarding what would have happened if we took the Swedish approach- the vast majority of the economy kept open with a few basic restrictions on capacity, opening hours et al.

According to MM, we would have suffered 2245 further Covid related deaths.

Now, the below article a- pre dates the post Christmas surge and b- is written by Sorcha Pollak, who isn't a real journalist, but probably had to be given something to do because lockdown meant she couldn't be sent out to interview her regular types in their free homes moaning about how bad we treat them, but there is no reason to assume the figures would differ greatly from the numbers post Christmas.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:BV5sBWZVuJEJ:https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/over-93-of-people-who-died-with-covid-19-had-underlying-condition-cso-1.4402354+&cd=13&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ie

93% who died had an underlying condition. Not all of these people were already on death's door, but a great many, probably a majority, of them, were.

Of the 1450 aged over 65 who died while suffering an underlying condition, 725 of them were aged 83 and over, so one can assume the vast majority of the rest were not far off the age of 83, which in itself is a good age to live to. And anybody who has spent much time around elderly relatives will attest that most of them have a fairly come what may attitude to death as the years go on- as the body starts wearing out living forever for most seems a chore than an aspiration.

Extrapolated to the figure of 2245 MM gave us, we can assume that only 208 of these people would not have been sufferers of a serious underlying condition (7%).

That leaves us 2037 people, all suffering a serious underlying condition. Of these 2037 hypothetical people, going by the actual cases that happened, 1018 of them would be 83 years old and over, and the bulk of the rest would be within touching distance of 83.

I think it would be reasonable to assume that a majority of people around the age of 83 who were suffering from serious conditions in, to start off, March to September of 2020, have since passed away from said conditions.

I think it would be reasonable to assume that most people of around that age who are currently seriously ill will not live to see NYE 2022, and that is being generous.

It is fair to assume that a great deal of these people have no quality of life left. They are immobile, in many cases mentally detatched by senility, Alzhemiers etc.

1/5 of nursing home residents die within 3 months of admission, for some perspective on the state of health of many involved.

In effect, MM announced that an operation that has tanked the economy, put us up to 40 billion euro in debt, skyrocketed the cost of housing, lead to God knows what sort of increase in suicides (Garda armed response call outs to mental health episodes involving barricading/ hostage taking doubled since lockdown 1 which is a good indicator as to the state of the nation's mental health), cancelled cancer screening/ treatments for thousands of younger people, all of this seems to have been for to save the lives of 2037 who have by and large since died of the conditions they already had, or will do so in the next year or so.

It prevented 208 unexpected deaths in presumably younger cohorts. These individuals are lucky. Less lucky are the many times 208 who died, or will die, from suicide, untreated cancers, or simply stress (I can only imagine the rate of death from heart attacks will show a considerable upswing when the stats for 2021 are finalised. If we thought the initial 2020 lockown was bad it had nothing on this year).

That Micheal Martin has not been pulled up for a critical analysis of this figure shows the breathtaking collaboration between the media and the government in propagating this absolute farce.