Some interesting weaponizing of Ireland's death rate going on by very ignorant people.

"Ireland have the 9th highest death rate per capita".

Do we now.

1. Some countries are counting hospital deaths only in headline figure (e.g. UK)

2. Some countries are omitting those who didn't test positive while alive (e.g. Austria)

3. Some are classifying by the terminal comorbidity involved (e.g. cancer).

WHO guidelines:

"A death due to COVID-19 may not be attributed to another disease (e.g. cancer) and should be counted independently of preexisting conditions"

Despite these clear guidelines, very few countries are bothering to follow them.

Ireland have tried since day 1.

Ireland's 730 deaths are broken down as follows:

Nursing Homes - 427
Residential Settings - 75
Hospital Settings - 363*
Underlying Conditions: 82%

*Including overlap

Here's our current death rate per capita by following WHO guidelines.

9th highest.

1. Belgium 510.24
2. Spain 446.28
3. Italy 399.03
4. France 302.52
5. United Kingdom 248.3
6. Netherlands 217.69
7. Switzerland 167.79
8. Sweden 155.16
9. Ireland 141.55
10. USA 129.28

That's the stat people are throwing around.

That these are not direct comparisons is obvious from the fact the UK is on the list despite only counting hospital deaths.

And yet some highly disingenuous people compare our 141.55 directly to UK's 248.3

Compared properly:

Here's what our death rate per capita looks like by following the UK approach:

16th highest.

1. Belgium 510.24
2. Spain 446.28
3. Italy 399.03
4. France 302.52
5. United Kingdom 248.3
....
15. Austria 53.13
16. Ireland 43.94
17. Slovenia 37.25
18. Norway 34.06

43.94 vs 248.3

Simply applying the criteria the UK are using, our death rate is immediately cut by 69.8% from 141.55 to 43.94.

UK are far from alone in counting hospital deaths.

It's the most popular method of doing it - because it's easier to accurately count dead people in a hospital.

Here's our death rate per capita by omitting nursing homes & comorbidity, as others are doing:

40th highest.

1. Belgium 510.24
2. Spain 446.28
3. Italy 399.03
4. France 302.52
5. United Kingdom 248.3
....
39. Albania 9.07
40. Ireland 7.91
41. Armenia 7.45
42. Chile 7.42

So what is Ireland's death rate?

Following WHO guidelines: 141.55
Following the UK and 40+ other countries: 43.94
Following Austria and dozens+ more: 7.91

Depending what criteria a country wants to use - all 3 of those numbers are accurate.

Take Ireland's nursing home deaths, again: 427.

That figure is broken down into:

330 - confirmed.
97 - probable.

Most countries are throwing that 97 number straight into the bin and counting only the positive tests - 330.

Cuts your infection rate immediately that way, too.

Ireland are trying to be transparent by throwing everything onto the coronavirus pile - confirmed, probable and suspected.

And I think we're doing the right thing.

But mostly everywhere else is saying feck it and including only positive results.

Austria:

"Every deceased person who has previously been tested positive for COVID is listed in the statistics as “COVID dead person”"

In Austria if you test positive and die, you're counted. Die without a positive test, you're not counted. Handy.

https://www.sozialministerium.at/Informationen-zum-Coronavirus/Neuartiges-Coronavirus-(2019-nCov).html

Croatia:

"Close contact with a person with COVID-19 confirmed who does not have any signs of illness is routinely not tested."

Croatia aren't even doing contact tracing. They only test if you need hospital and are not counting nursing home deaths. https://www.hzjz.hr/priopcenja-mediji/koronavirus-najnoviji-podatci/2/

I went through every European Health Ministry website and it's like the wild fucking west.

Some are barely testing, others not trying to contact trace, some you basically need to keel over on the side of a road to get a test.

They're all over the shop. https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/COVID-19/sources-updated

We won't get a FAIR idea of how we did until 2021 after clever people analyze the Excess Deaths.

Take Spain as an example of that.

They had 19,700 excess deaths March 9th to April 5th (compared to 2019) but only recorded 12,400 covid19 deaths.

7,300 difference.

Is it possible all had heart attacks or more likely many of them were coronavirus deaths that weren't counted? England & Wales have 6,300 difference. Belgium has hardly any unaccounted.

That's the practical reality of the flaws in death rate comparisons.

https://www.euromomo.eu/index.html 

Here are the excess deaths March 30-Apr 5th 2020 in central and western Europe (relative to 2019)

Ireland - no excess

UK, France, Spain, Switzerland, Holland, Sweden - huge excess

And yet much of that excess didn't make their covid19 totals, while Ireland threw everything on.

The reality is Ireland's 141.55 deaths per million is most resembling the truth.

Most countries can't say the same.

But if you read all of this and still want to throw around "9th highest death rate" as a weapon, just know you're the bigger weapon for misleading people.