Report from the The Health Protection Surveillance Centre to NPHET on COVID-19 cases and deaths in Ireland

Gavin T writes:

The most recent HSE Covid-19 report might put things into perspective.

It reveals the median age of all deaths was 84 and of the 1,777  deaths, 1,677 had underlying conditions…

So, the number of deaths with no underlying conditions in Ireland was…100 people

Um.

Epidemology of COVID-19 Cases in ireland (HPSC)

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103 thoughts on “Underlying

  1. Joe Small

    Not sure what the “Um” is for. We knew most people who died had underlying conditions. They still could have had many years of full of life, being there for their grandchildren bringing happiness to their loved ones.

    Does Broadsheet think the lockdown was unnecessary because most of the Covid victims were elderly and had may have died within a few years? If so, it doesn’t say much for your respect for human dignity and compassion.

    1. broadbag

      Exactly, how many of these ‘underlying conditions’ would have resulted in death this year without the added impact of Covid?

      1. Joe Small

        That’s an entirely separate issue Micko. It’s a hugely important one but not one raised by Broadsheet above.

        1. rominick

          Cmon Joe, we need perspective.
          By the looks of it its pointless carrying this lockdown on as it’s doing more damage to our physical and mental health than C19.
          “Does Broadsheet think the lockdown was unnecessary because most of the Covid victims were elderly and had may have died within a few years?”. This is the type of emotive language which goes against critical thinking and prevents a mature conversation about actions versus results.
          Micko has the right of it.

        2. Micko

          Disagree Joe.

          I have someone close to me who had a Breastcheck just before lockdown. She thankfully got the all clear before lockdown.

          Imagine the torture she would have gone through waiting 6 months to find out. She was very lucky.

          We cannot sacrifice one part of society for another and what BS is highlighting is the fact we probably didn’t need to.

          1. ReproBertie

            “we probably didn’t need to”
            We have no idea what would have happened had we not gone into lockdown and slowed the spread so that the health service could cope. We have no idea who the death rate would have been had we chosen that option.

            I wore my seatbelt for the whole journey and we didn’t even crash. What a waste of time that was.

          2. SOQ

            The data shows that countries which did not lock down have had the same number of high risk fatalities as those who did.

            The infection pattern of CoVid-19 is extremely similar to that of an annual flu- and we never wrecked the economy over that.

          3. ReproBertie

            What is a high risk fatality?

            Sweden, no lockdown, 5,837 deaths.
            Finland, lockdown, 336 deaths
            Norway, lockdown, 264 deaths
            Ireland, lockdown, 1,777 deaths

            When was the last time flu killed 1,777 in Ireland in a matter of months? We have a programme of flu vaccination every year to control the virus and protect the population. We do not have a Covid-19 vaccine. Same old boring arguments.

          4. SOQ

            Round and round in circles we go.

            Fatalities per million are of no use because it is not comparing like with like. Sweden had three times the number of deaths than Ireland because it had (roughly) three times the number of high risk over 65’s in the first place.

          5. Cian

            @SOQ
            Now compare Sweden with it’s neighbours:
            Sweden, no lockdown, 5,837 deaths.
            Finland, lockdown, 336 deaths
            Norway, lockdown, 264 deaths

          6. SOQ

            That is per million Cian- as above.

            You won’t use a per million stat for cervical cancer because of half of that million are of zero risk- meaning men- so why would you use it here?

          7. Cian

            @SOQ deaths per million:
            Sweden: 577 / million (no lockdown)
            Finland: 61 / million (lockdown)
            Norway: 49 / million (lockdown)

            Both men and women can get Covid, so your comparison to cervical cancer is moot.

            These three countries are very similar geographically, politically, socially, historically, demographically, urban/rural divide, ages, emmigrants.

            Explain why Sweden has (about) ten times as many deaths as its neighbours in Finland and Norway.

          8. ReproBertie

            Oh look, deaths are not listed per million.

            So what percentage of the million are zero risk for Covid-19?

          9. SOQ

            And what is the age profile of those countries Cian?

            The comparison of like with like is vital in accessing how successful (or not) a country was in their fight against CoVid-19.

            Otherwise, by sheer numbers, a country with twice as many young people will have half as many deaths – which makes no sense.

            This virus was VERY age specific.

          10. Nigel

            So Sweden failed to adequately protect its population, knowing they were particularly vulnerable? That’s not good.

          11. Cian

            The age profile In Norway and Finland is similar to Sweden (in terms of under/over 65s).

            But Sweden has TEN times as many deaths.

        1. Qwerty123

          Data doesn’t show how many people have long term and life altering lung damage from this, and other ailments they bare discovering about this virus.

          1. Cui Bono?

            The data does show this and will in the future too.

            The vast majority of people who get covid have little or no symptoms at all. Only a tiny fraction have a bad dose and an even smaller fraction die from it.

            You’re talking as if it’s early March when we knew little about the virus. It’s now September and we know a lot about it now.

            Stop with your fear mongering.

          2. Cian

            @Cui Bono:
            Can you provide a link to verifiable number them please? Considering we know all these things:
            – What percentage of people that get Covid have a bad dose?
            – What percentage die from it?
            – What percentage recover, but have further complications?

          3. Cui Bono?

            It’s hard to answer with 100% accuracy because we will probably never test everyone in the country to see who has had Covid or who already had t-cell immunity in the first place to not even get infected. We do however have enough data to make a good estimate.

            The IFR is well regarded to be approx. 0.3% (but most likely lower as recent studies are showing) so if 1,777 is 0.3% of those who’ve already been infected then about 592,500 could have already had covid in Ireland. This is 12% of the population.

            – What percentage of people that get Covid have a bad dose?
            0.57%
            3,412 hospitalised out of 592,500

            – What percentage die from it?
            0.3%
            1,777 out of 592,500

            – What percentage recover, but have further complications?
            We need more time to see this properly but from everything I’ve seen hardly anyone has serious complications. A few scare mongering stories in the media but remember the flu and pneumonia also cause some long term complications too so we have to realise that there will always be some who get a bad dose long term. 10 years ago I had the flu and I had it for about 3 months but eventually it cleared fully.

          4. Vanessanelle

            Well lets hope all those with life altering lung damage from this, and other ailments
            get Medical Cards
            get offered Disability Pensions
            their (if applicable) permanent health insurance stumps up
            get Carer hours
            get all other supports that are supposed to be there

            without having to go to the streets to beg for them

          5. Cian

            @Cui Bono?
            Thanks for your detailed reply – but these are based on:
            “The IFR is well regarded to be approx. 0.3%”

          6. Cui Bono?

            Yes, the IFR is around 0.3% and this has been known for months now. I’ve known since April.

            Why do you think so many people around the world are angry at these draconian policies when the IFR is similar to the flu?

            You should checkout experts like Dr. John Ioannidis, Pr. Sunetra Gupta, Anders Tegnell.

            Many of the most well respected studies from the Lancet etc. are complied here for your convenience https://swprs.org/studies-on-covid-19-lethality/

          7. Cian

            @Cui Bono?
            Hmm… they are being coy on that page saying that the IFR is for “general population” but this isn’t clear that this means – and in many places seems to be *excluding* nursing homes. When nursing homes are included the IFR jumps to 1% and higher.

            If this is the case your figures above aren’t accurate. If the 0.3% excludes care homes, then you need to remove them from the deaths.

          8. Cui Bono?

            That’s just one site which have many of the actual studies listed so it’s handy to share. It’s better to look at the actual scientific studies listed on it. I don’t think they’re being coy, I think they genuinely want the truth.

            The 0.3% is an average estimate of all studies done, it could be closer to 0.4% but maybe 0.2%. We may never know but it’s definitely not 1%. I think the CDC in the US use 0.4% but the used to use 0.26%.

            Here’s an excel sheet with many of the studies https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zC3kW1sMu0sjnT_vP1sh4zL0tF6fIHbA6fcG5RQdqSc/htmlview?urp=gmail_link#gid=0

          9. Cui Bono?

            Also, we know the IFR cannot be 1% because this was the revised IFR estimate from Neil Ferguson and Imperial College London. You just need to look at Sweden to see what actual happened there compared to what Neil and ICL had predicted would happen to them under the “do nothing” and “no lockdown moderate” scenarios. Their 1% IFR was so far off what actually happened to Sweden and yet here we are 6 months later and the madness continues.

  2. Neil Murray

    This is exactly why we MUST keep the fight going. 100 people with NO underlying conditions are dead. You or I could be next.

    1. Cian

      You are reading this wrong.
      If there are fewer than 5 cases in any cohort they show “..”.
      This is standard for this type of data to protect the identity of people.
      If there are zero they show 0.

      At the bottom of the table in notes it says: “⁵ ‘..’ Indicates a cell number < 5 or a cell number < 5 can be identified."

  3. george

    You say underlying conditions as though these people were on the brink of death to begin with or as those there are few of them. That isn’t true. Some facts on underlying conditions in Ireland:

    • Almost 750,000 adults have hypertension (over 50%)
    • Over 308,000 adults have asthma or chronic lung disease (20%)
    • 183,000 adults have diabetes mellitus (13%)
    • 129,000 adults have chronic kidney disease (10%)
    • 167,500 adults have past or present cancer (12%)
    • 638,000 adults live with three or more chronic diseases
    • Over 30% of over 70s live with three or more chronic diseases

    1. george

      I should have specified that this is from a TILDA report and I believe the %s refer to the population that is over 50

    2. george

      “The International Diabetes Federation Diabetes Atlas (2013) estimate that there are 207,490 people with diabetes in Ireland in the 20 – 79 age group (prevalence of 6.5% in the population) which is in line with previous estimates that by 2020 there would be 233,000 people with the condition”

      “Approximately 470,000 people are affected by asthma (1 in 8 of population)”

      Underlying conditions aren’t unusual.

      1. Janet, dreams of big guns

        as a wise man once said
        cut down on the pork pies and get some exercise…
        I recently caved and got an Irish GP , the doctor recently told me I should get thirty minutes a day exercise, I couldn’t believe my ears, you’d get that getting up to go to the jacks, how can that be good advice , how stationary are people that a half hour is considered a goal or healthy?

        1. alickdouglas

          Cannot lay my hands on a reference, but if memory serves the 30 minute thing is about ’30 minutes of exercise that makes you sweat’. So a brisk walk just about creeps you in, but you really need to be going for a run or equivalent, to make a difference. I’ve not found that message to be well delivered by GPs as a whole, but they have enough messages to be dealing with (stop smoking, cut the drinking, cut the fast food…). On a side note, I invested in a smart watch (ahem) and was quite amazed that on days where I didn’t make a concsious effort to do 30 minutes of sustained exercise, I came nowhere close.

          1. Janet, dreams of big guns

            that makes a little more sense, I’d still consider that very low even if you get up a sweat, cars and desk jobs and ” convenient ” food have a lot to answer for

      2. Andrew

        I think the figure for being overweight is more than 1 in 4 Bertie. There seems to very little focus on this.
        If anything people are eating more junk now than ever.
        “The percentage of people who were classified as overweight or obese in 2015 was 60%. This has risen to 62% in 2017. A person is classified as overweight if their Body Mass Index (BMI) exceeds 25 and is classified as obese if their BMI is 30 or higher.”
        https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-wbn/thewellbeingofthenation2017/hlt/#:~:text=The%20percentage%20of%20people%20who%20were%20classified%20as%20overweight%20or,BMI%20is%2030%20or%20higher.

        1. george

          The figure for obesity is 23% according to the most recent Healthy Ireland survey. It is 60% when you add in people who are overweight but not obese.

          However, obesity does not seem to be included as an underlying condition by the HSE though there is increased risk of severe symptoms.

          1. Janet, dreams of big guns

            it’s partly cultural, I know. lot of cuddly people who seem to think they are a normal weight because they are reassuringly surrounded by similarly cuddly people,

    3. alickdouglas

      +1

      Nature has a recent article (Google: doi: 10.1038/d41586-020-02497-w) exploring some of the complexities behind analysing mortality stats. It’s difficult, it’s time consuming, and believe it or not, when you study epidemiology you are primed to delve into the complexity of co-morbidity. Unfortunately COVID policy and opinion is driven by gasbags and people with little understanding of complexity.

  4. Junkface

    Nobody is going to agree on any covid 19 figures released. That’s that.
    It seems to be a very , very difficult thing to calculate accurately, there are too many variables.

  5. fluffybiscuits

    Fact is COVID still played a role in their deaths

    I’m type 2 diabetic, I wear a mask. I’m at risk but I’m still going to live a life in confines of lock down. No martyring but common sense

    No one likes a lock down

    1. Fake Pandemic

      My sympathies

      But surely you’re not suggesting we lock down healthy people because someone else may have a medical condition?

      That’s a weird kind of equality.

        1. fluffybiscuits

          Regular check ups. Monitored

          The lock down applies to us all

          I’d rather normality but Covid has taken someone I knew a long time and another acquaintance

          I did initially think it’s not that bad but I learned the hard way

  6. Col

    Correct me if I’m wrong. But is the strategy not partly to limit the numbers in hospitals?
    I thought the numbers admitted was a key figure. Because if hospitals are inundated, we’d be in big trouble?

    1. Micko

      Indeed Col.

      I was only listening to a head nurse (Nurses Union I think) taking on Newstalk this morning.

      According to her, Ireland has NOT increased the number of ICU beds.

      I was gobsmacked. Surely that would be the right thing to do?

      1. Andrew

        I suspect the harsh reality is that our health service is no better equipped to deal with this now than it was in March.
        I have yet to hear anyone ask Paul Reid any simple questions on numbers of staff, beds, ICU beds etc. and where we are now as compared to where we were.
        All we get from him are platitudes and frequent comments on areas that have nothing to do with him.

  7. Micko

    That’s not fair Qwerty

    I hate when people do that.

    I disagree with what you’re saying here so I’m going to draw parallels between you and a nutter like Gemma.

    Too easy and Not cool.

      1. Junkface

        They removed all posts in reply to and including @Fake Pandemic saying its all fake. A little heavy handed I think.

        This was my reply:
        It’s not a fake Pandemic Gemma. Unfortunately its very real and has cost many people their lives.

  8. Daisy Chainsaw

    I come from a family of underlying issues, but none of us is on our last legs, even octogenarians Mammy and Daddy Chainsaw. Actually I’m currently at a hospital appointment for an underlying condition so don’t assume it’s something to die of.

    1. Hrumph

      Sure Daisy.

      Meanwhile, the rest of us will put our lives on hold just so you don’t get the flu.

      Feel better?

      1. Daisy Chainsaw

        Oh no! Some internet rando doesn’t believe me. You’re really not important enough for me to make stuff up.

  9. RobbieC

    Um….. Because WE LOCKED DOWN. I am weary of saying it. had limited deaths because we locked down. If we had not, it would obviously have been higher.

    Having an underlying condition doesn’t mean you’ve accepted the inevitability of your imminent demise. Who reaches middle age without a health quirk or two. It doesn’t mean you are a lamb an the alter, ready to die for others. Who do we ask that of.

    And the question is not lockdown OR cancer screening, who should die?. The question is why on earth can we not prioritise government effort going into cancer screening over pubs reopening, cycle lanes and pennys clothing taxes. They were able to operate other medical services for the whole of lcokdown, why not cancer screening? Are we THAT short of medical staff? Why are we that short of medical staff??

  10. Eoin

    The definition of the term ‘underlying condition’ is very vague. But if it means ‘weak enough to be killed by a flu’ then that should be made clear. The fact that it is not being made clear is giving rise to distrust. CBS in the US just did a poll and found that trust in the CDC is rapidly declining and only 35% polled trusted the media coverage of the virus. There are a hell of a lot of regular people, with legitimate questions that are not being answered with ‘Shut up you conspiracy theorist’. That response does not address questions.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/voters-covid-19-vaccine-opinion-poll/

  11. frank

    What’s writ large here and people are struggling to see for whatever reason is:
    The emergency measures did not protect the section of society it needed to protect while simultaneously destroying the economy and the healthy functioning greater part of society that’s needed to keep the whole show running.
    That is a double fail and still that bike is being peddled.
    Failure heaped on failure

    1. Janet, dreams of big guns

      how succinct,
      also people need to calm the fupp down, everyone who.asks questions is not automatically a Gemma,
      in light of how the most vunerable were in fact treated despite everyone’s efforts at their own personal cost is what people should be roaring about,

    2. george

      They did a bad job in nursing homes but that is largely because our nursing homes were absolutely terrible to begin with which is quite shameful.

      However, there are many at risk people outside of nursing homes who are very vulnerable to covid-19. We do not know how many of those might have died without the restrictions we had but quite likely it would have been many many more.

      We’re also not out of danger. Our hospitals will be over crowded this winter as they always are. The risk of a major spike during the winter is real and I hope it is not as severe as it could be.

      1. frank

        We will never be out of danger George.
        There are those that need to be protected from danger and those that must take their chances.
        To treat both diametrically opposite sections the same equates to the collapse of both.

        1. george

          We will be out of danger from covid-19 once we have a vaccine and inoculate 70% of the population starting with those most at risk.

          1. SOQ

            Why would you want to inoculate 70% of the population with something which may or not work, with all the associated risks, when the current thinking is that herd immunity is reached at between 10 and 20%?

          2. Cian

            the current thinking is that herd immunity is reached at between 10 and 20%

            Can you add a source for this? Any searches I do are coming back with 50% or 60%.

            According to the BBC the proportion of the population needed to become immune to achieve herd immunity (the ‘herd immunity threshold’) is calculated by 1 – (1/R₀). For the coronavirus, this gives the threshold of 60 per cent that was quoted by Vallance (using a R₀ value of 2.5).
            If this formula is correct, then a 10%-20% herd immunity would make R₀ between 1.11 and 1.25 (each infected person passes it on to 1.25 other people)!

    3. alickdouglas

      If I can add another fail onto that, it was that the emergency measures shouldn’t have been necessary in the form in which they were rolled out (aka blind panic). The health service should have been in a position to ramp up to the threat. There was a lot learned with H1N1 in 2009 about how to deal with an emerging pathogen, from public health measures to a heightened awareness of adapting intensive care based on outcomes. In the UK PHE and its predecessor were vocal at requesting better preparedness against emerging infectious threats (the UK situation is more clearly in the public domain). Given Irish access to UK public health expertise, there is no excuse for government here not to have taken steps. Despite 6 months of lockdown, it seems that the health service is just as fragile as it was at the outset.

    4. Andrew

      How on earth is that ‘writ large’ ? How many people might have died if there had NOT been a lockdown?
      My Mother is elderly but she isn’t in a nursing home, she lives independently and we got her shopping etc. If she had not been asked to isolate and continued going to the shop, she might have contracted the virus.

  12. SOQ

    Just a question on the 1777 figure- did Leo not say a couple of months ago that figure was a over estimation and that it was at the time around 1250?

      1. SOQ

        Thanks Bodger- so if they can’t agree on the over all figure then how can we have confidence in any sub sets of it?

  13. Just Sayin

    People need to see that Covid wasn’t nearly as bad as the ‘expert’ modelers said it would be.

    Until people cop on that lockdown didn’t work (we simply saw the curve decline as per any seasonal virus)
    then there’s little point doing further analysis.

    We should abandon the idea of lockdown and masks and revert to sensible influenza season type precautions.

    i.e. Hand washing and minimise interactions with vulnerable groups

    Then we have to decide what to about the government, the opposition and the media.

    They have all behaved shamefully.

    It won’t be pretty when people do cop-on

    1. Junkface

      The lockdown was necessary and it did work. Case numbers and deaths would have been so much higher otherwise. Look at the botched shutdown attempts in the US, they have the highest death rate in the world! 190,000 dead and counting. The proof is there. Same goes for Brazil, their president interfered with lockdown advice and their deaths suddenly spiked in certain regions.

      I hate the lockdowns, but I can see that they were necessary in Spring to stop the floods of people in hospitals, but now that we know more about the virus we should consider different methods that do not wreck economies and jobs so much.

      Also covid 19 is unlike any other seasonal virus. Epidemiologists all said that its so highly contagious that, that alone was a serious and alarming threat to the world.

      1. Just Sayin

        Junkface you can compare states in the US, some did lockdown, some didn’t. You wont find any correlation between those. (except more lockdown = more deaths, suicides etc…)

        https://twitter.com/Humble_Analysis/status/1297029607602794496

        Brazil canceled lockdown, Peru didn’t, any difference ???
        https://twitter.com/FatEmperor/status/1275841060204396551

        Its pretty clear lockdowns dont work

        https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-failed-experiment-of-covid-lockdowns-11599000890
        https://epidemiologyexplained.com/norwegian-health-authority-report/
        https://unlockthelockdown.com/smoking-gun-two-german-professors-expose-the-key-junk-lockdown-science/
        https://summit.news/2020/08/24/uk-government-scientist-admits-lockdown-was-a-monumental-mistake-on-a-global-scale/
        https://medium.com/@staceyrudin/superstition-in-the-pigeon-can-lockdowns-really-stop-death-62bf3bc885a0
        https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/07/lockdown-killed-two-three-died-coronavirus/

        “covid 19 is unlike any other seasonal virus. Epidemiologists all said that its so highly contagious”
        They were wrong, because they were all looking at Neil Ferguson’s Imperial College London failed model.

        https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/09/04/covid-why-terminology-really-matters/

        We can’t recover from this mess till idiots like Junkface and others on here cop-on that they’ve been fed a ton of lies from our government and the media.

        Stop the madness now.

        1. Junkface

          @Just Sayin
          The whole world followed Neil Ferguson’s advice?? Nonsense.

          I believe that it is you who is the fool.

          Don’t let the door hit your tinfoil hat on the way out.

          1. Cui Bono?

            Ah the old tin foil hat comment. It’s always pulled out of the bag at some point by the ignorant who can’t debate with scientific data.

          2. Junkface

            There are so many sources of scientific data at this point. People can pick and choose what they want to see. Who has the definitive data?? Nobody agrees on that.

            And yes, he called me an idiot, so I called him a tinfoil hat wearer because he thinks covid 19 was a seasonal virus. It obviously was not. That is basic really.

            SARS was not a seasonal virus either. These viruses are coming at us from parts of Asia where bats and other animals native to those areas are being pushed out by development and therefore breeding in new areas and spreading viruses to humans.

          3. Cui Bono?

            Only seeing this now.

            Covid definitely seems to be seasonal to me. Have you seen the daily deaths on a chart?

            The epidemic has been over in Ireland and other European countries for a few months now. It’s only killing in southern regions at the moment. I’m sure it will reemerge in Ireland once winer comes too as it’s just following the pattern that coronaviruses do.

          4. SOQ

            This is such a basic question at this stage- if masks and lock-downs work then why is it that countries which had neither have the same rates without the social and economic carnage?

            The truth is- they don’t.

          5. Cian

            @SOQ deaths per million:
            Sweden: 577 / million (no lockdown)
            Finland: 61 / million (lockdown)
            Norway: 49 / million (lockdown)

            These three countries are very similar geographically, politically, socially, historically, demographically, urban/rural divide, ages, immigrants.

            I think it is due to two of these countries having a lockdown.

            Explain why Sweden has (about) ten times as many deaths (per million) as its neighbours in Finland and Norway.

          6. Cui Bono?

            These are Scandinavian countries but do have many differences. Stockholm, where most of the deaths occurred, is not like Oslo or Helsinki. It’s a lot bigger and more cosmopolitan. Brussels is a good comparison with Stockholm and when you compare these two cities you’ll see that the Belgians have had twice the deaths per million. Also Sweden will have less non covid deaths because they didn’t stop healthcare for non covid patients.

            If you look at Sweden’s all cause deaths for the first 6 months of 2020 it is only 24th of the last 30 years so there was no calamity there at all from covid.

          7. ReproBertie

            “why is it that countries which had neither [masks nor lockdowns] have the same rates without the social and economic carnage?

            The truth is- they don’t.”
            Answered your own question there.

          8. Cian

            @Cui Bono
            I don’t know the cities, but they don’t seem hugely different to Stockholm, and more similar than Brussels:
            – Stockholm: municipality 975,904 , approx 1.6 million in the urban area.
            – Oslo: population of 693,491, city’s urban area was 1,019,513. The metropolitan area approx of 1.71 million.
            – Helsinki: population of 650,058… urban area 1,268,296
            Brussels: population of over 1.2 million…. metropolitan area over 2.5 million people

    2. ReproBertie

      “Until people cop on that lockdown didn’t work (we simply saw the curve decline as per any seasonal virus)
      then there’s little point doing further analysis.”

      So until people accept your opinion without questioning it there’s no point doing analysis? I thought analysis was supposed to lead to conclusions, not the other way round.

  14. Gah!

    Why are people still using flu as a comparison? It is much more dangerous than flu. It’s much more dangerous than pneumonia. And ‘underlying conditions’ is not an age-specific term and does not necessarily mean elderly. Even if it did, I still consider the 10 weeks I spent completely alone in lockdown worth it. It would have been so much worse had we not battened down the hatches. As we learn more and more about the virus, we can modify our behaviour accordingly.

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