Five years on, what did COVID teach you?

I read that just now and it is not surprising at all. Of course cancer deaths wouldn’t have increased much in 2020 or 2021. Why would they? We didn’t stop treating people that had cancer. That would have been unforgivable.

But it says that there was a dramatic decrease in new diagnosis’s due to not screening and they didn’t get back on track until 2022.

What would be really interesting to know is what impact did those missed diagnosis’s have? How many people died or suffered more than needed from 2022 - present due to missed diagnosis?

As I mentioned, overall deaths have increased from 2022 onwards.

Remember, the lockdown mantra was that if it saved even one life then it was all worth it. But maybe we didn’t care too much about all the people in that period that may have cancer.

Temporary lockdowns were to save national health systems, not just lives. ICU's at points were hitting max capacity, globally an estimated 80k to 180k medical professionals died as a result of Covid. In India people were dying on hospital steps because they ran out of oxygen. In Brazil patients suffocated to death because they ran out of oxygen, hospitals had to stop admitting new patients. In New York (some of the best equipped hospitals in the world) they had to resort to using refrigeration trucks as morgues - EMS times doubled.

As a reminder, in a collapsing system cancer patients do not get treated.

All of our European neighbours were more than capable of managing the pandemic without having to lockdown as strictly as Ireland did for 2 years.

We were a laughing stock losing out on the Euros. Most of Europe was back fully open for business while Tony was very concerned because some people were drinking outdoors. Our own Taoiseach at the time was over at a festival in the UK while restrictions remained in place here.

We lost the run of ourselves

I'm sure things like this happened, but no one planned it. When a country is trying to make rules on the fly for a pandemic in a fluid situation there will always be issues and cross-overs like this.

As for the mandatory vaccine rules - it wasn't known for sure if/how Covid would mutate or whether it would be one and done (like Smallpox). In the end it mutated and we didn't require mandatory vaccines. Thankfully most adults got vaccinated.

Yeah, but which side was being selfish? lol, loved poking them to get the reaction, still do, it's mad craic.

i remember back when it was a fact that evil Tony was going to bring in prohibition and close every wet pub in the land forever.

Didn't happen after all amazingly. But that was the hysteria.

Make it two generations to be safe.

You don't speak for the population with your "we all carry some sort of scar from it"

I carry no scars from COVID, had no real issues with the restrictions, thankfully didn't lose anyone during it and only caught it once.

If your cafe was in a shopping centre you could sit (or stand) just outside the cafe without your vaccine card.

You also had to get table service in a pub that closed at 8pm, even if you were just drinking but you could queue to get your coffee at the 24hr cafe.

Some of the rules were very strange

Those scars count as well, it affected us all in some form or other, whether it's loss to the virus or loss of time with loved ones from the restriction it caused,no denying that, either way, I'm not a scamdemic by any stretch, I played my part in more ways than one, disagreeing with extended lockdowns/ forced restrictions doesn't mean I'm denying it.

Do you remember that time when Ireland had the opportunity to host some games for the Euros, something that would have brought a major buzz and money to the country but we said Nah. The only country to turn it down.

And at the same time Tony was going mad because he drove into town one evening and large groups of likely fully vaccinated people were outside drinking.

The rest of Europe in packed stadiums and we were getting scolded for going outside…. But it was ok to fly to another country and go to a festival.

That was hilarious, for all the wrong reasons. Like I said, we lost the run of ourselves