10 nearest countries: (UK, Holland, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Spain, Czech Republic.)

Total Dead: 74,297
Average Mortality Rate: 8.6%
Average Testing Rate: 16,277

Ireland:

Dead: 687
Mortality Rate: 4.3%
Testing Rate: 18,358

Discussion:

That ^ is the reality of WHERE WE LIVE. That's what's happening.

People are fond of plucking out Madagascar, New Zealand, Chile or some other random place it would take ages to get to.

"Look they're doing very good way over there"

For our part of the world:

SO ARE WE.

Where we live matters.

The biggest function in the spread of a virus is the movement of people. That encapsulates everything from proximity, travel, migration and trade.

That's part of the reason 91% of deaths so far have been in the Northern Hemisphere.

Yearly:

Top 25 airports in Europe carry 1.5 billion passengers.
Top 25 airports in South America carry 320 million passengers.
Top 25 airports in Oceania carry 270 million passengers.
Top 25 airports in Africa carry 180 million passengers.

Travel within regions matters too...

... 4.5 million more pass through Dublin airport than Oslo airport every year. On any given day that's 12,500 more people.

It's not a coincidence to my mind that the 3 busiest airports in Europe are found in UK, Holland and France - countries all above 11% mortality rate.

And those mortality rates depend on testing levels.

Each of those 10 countries are testing at different rates. Norway is smashing it at 26,425 and at other end of spectrum UK is at 7,386.

The average of the 10 countries gives a better general idea of where everyone is at.

In OUR part of the world, we are doing MUCH better than we *should* be.

-Our mortality rate is fully half of our neighbours mortality rate.
-Our testing is higher than our neighbours testing rate.

We should have more dead than we do, given the experiences of those countries.

What gives us the right to expect better than what our nearest neighbours are enduring?

[Allegedly] our health service is shite, our investment in science is shite, our infrastructure is shite and if all that wasn't bad enough, we have one of the busiest airports in Europe.

And yet we ARE doing better than we should because of people coming together in pursuit of a common goal to save lives.

We should be applauding efforts of our HSE, scientists, doctors, nurses and wider society for their hand washing and commitment to social distancing.

Sad part of it is "better" is morally the same as "worse" to begin with.

Denmark's 346 dead is better than Ireland's 687 dead and ours is better than Spain's 20,852 dead...

It's still lots of dead people and a perverse way of looking at loss of human life.

Nobody is winning.

But I'll continue to counter narratives that we're doing shite.

The doctors and nurses on our frontline who saved people by invasive treatment in an ICU, they deserve it countered.

The scientists who broke chains of transmission, and saved YOUR grandfather, deserve it too.

Imagine how you'd feel reading the erroneous criticism of testing rates having worked EXHAUSTING shifts for 8 weeks in an Irish lab?

Imagine how you'd feel as a DRAINED ICU nurse, having saved lives, to read people converting dead bodies into stats and the stats into weapons?

Those narratives might be aimed elsewhere but they're taken personally by people on the frontlines giving it everything physically and mentally, in testing and treatment.

687 dead.

One number you'll never precisely know is how many lives they saved.

Guarantee it's thousands.

If Ireland outperforming our neighbours is not good enough for you then nothing would have been.

We are doing our very best in an unprecedented crisis and it turns out our best is pretty good.

Right about now I'm beyond proud to be Irish.