Deaths:

UK - 891 per million
Ireland - 335 per million

That's according to The Times analysis of UK's excess.

It's understated how much of an achievement this was from Ireland to have such a wide disparity, given how very vulnerable we were to the same outcome.

People like to dismiss this argument on a number of grounds:

1. Boris is a dope
2. No great shakes being better than worst.

50% true.

BoJo's Herd immunity was officially backtracked after Imperial College London released their model on Paddy's Day. Pubs closed by the Friday.

When you analyse steps taken in early March - such as the early masking of workers on the London Tube - the UK started on the right track, got sidetracked for a few days and ended up a little behind Ireland's lead.

Alone doesn't explain the enormous disparity in outcome.

Moreover, between February 1st and March 16th, we were directly vulnerable to the actions (or inaction) of the UK Govt.

In truth, we've been vulnerable throughout, as we do maintain a Northern border.

Their decisions had direct consequences for our risk levels.

Find it funny when you read articles about Portugal, they almost universally acclaim Portugal for having a much lower death rate than Spain.

Headline in The Irish Times:

"How Portugal turned back coronavirus tide that swamped its neighbour" https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/how-portugal-turned-back-coronavirus-tide-that-swamped-its-neighbour-1.4245360

And yet...

When I google "How Ireland turned back tide of...", the first result I get is "Tidal Observations from the Marine Institute"

How closely you're linked to your neighbours, especially in terms of movement of people, seems a clear factor in your countries outcome.

You can map the hotspots of infection from Belgium to the Netherlands and it pretty neatly goes up the road from Brussels to Amsterdam, getting gradually less worse.

And yet people bizarrely seem to think 50 miles of Irish Sea is some sort of magic shield.

10 million people visit Ireland every year.

UK accounts for nearly 4 million of those visitors, which is insane when you process that number.

To give it some sort of context, only 1.8 million Dutch visitors go to Belgium annually and they live across the road from each other.

Even allowing for the In Bruges hypothesis -

Ken: Ray, we’ve only just got off the fucking train. Could we reserve judgement on Bruges until we’ve seen the fucking place?

Ray: I know it’s gonna be a shithole.

- that's a relatively small number.

Anyway, in the other direction, close to 3 million Irish visitors to UK every year.

When you do the calculations on trade, travel, movements of people between neighbouring countries, you quickly come to a conclusion that Ireland and the UK are massively tied to each other.

Certain naysayers became obsessed with the Cheltenham Festival, and the 20,000 Irish who attended, and seemed oblivious to the 650,000 people who flitted between Ireland and UK in the 7 weeks before Paddy's Day, who statistically posed far more risk.

A slightly bizarre statistic that I didn't even consider is the fact some years, Ireland and Portugal were neck-and-neck at 2 million on "most visitors to Spain."

So we've got 7 million people floating between Ireland and UK every year, and we're massively tied to Spain too.

The Irish Sea:

It's a complete myth that being an island nation in itself is some super-duper, automatic advantage in the early phase of an epidemic outbreak.

For some islands, it very well might be.

Ireland has planes and boats, and lots of people were on them daily.

That other very similar "island" called New Zealand...

Typically has 1.2 million visitors from Europe and North America combined every year.

Typically Ireland has 9.2 million visitors from Europe and North America combined every year.

Slight gap. 8 million people.

Inevitably people tweet me to say we should have closed airports and ports, a measure that has such proven low efficacy, almost nobody beyond NZ tried it.

Because if you're not in the middle-of-nowhere, with low connectivity to Europe, it won't accomplish much - if anything.

Janet Napolitano oversaw the Gold-Standard US response to the H1N1 pandemic in 2009 and I try watch her testimony to the late Senator John McCain whenever I find the clip.

McCain: Why not close the airports?
Napolitano: You can't keep a virus out when it is already here.

Ireland's first case was February 29th. By March 5th, we had 13 cases.

Given everything we know about incubation periods of covid19 (typically 5-6 days, up to 14 days), all that tells us is the virus was probably in Ireland somewhere between Feb 14th and 23rd.

Already here.

Why so reluctant to praise ourselves?

We dish out praise to Portugal for avoiding Spain's level of death and Irish Times cite their testing response as a big factor.

Cool, agree.

Ireland's stellar testing response is also a big factor in avoiding the UK's level of death.

People have analyzed this backwards.

Premise that it's no achievement because "UK are the worst" overlooks how vulnerable a country is living beside "the worst" outbreak.

Especially given our connectivity to the UK, how many Irish live there and obviously the Northern border.

Our fantastic testing response was a big factor in disparity of outcome.

Another factor we don't discuss is the Irish psyche.

The Guards raided 1 party in Longford March 21st and the public had no tolerance for it.

Manchester police raided 500 parties the following weekend.

How much Boris's nonsense contributed to parties is up to people to decide but the science on social distancing has been clear for centuries - i.e. very clear in March.

As an Irish society, we refused to accept those shenanigans.

We should celebrate our younger people for that.

Imagine being 17 again and knowing this virus likely won't harm you but you still don't go risking house parties in your free gaf because you genuinely care about other people.

We're criminally under-appreciating the pure class of younger Irish people in the pandemic.

So, yeah. I think it's a fabulous achievement that we avoided the scale of death in the UK because we were extremely vulnerable to their outcome, living next door.

We avoided it through all the clichés you can think of - Irish spirit and pride -because often they're true.

For years I'd wince hearing our sports teams given backhanded praise for spirit, rather than for technique or skill.

In a pandemic, you can have all the scientific skill in the world but if you don't show the community spirit to match it, it'll get you nowhere.

We showed it.