"Open the pubs" is trending, alongside a graphic saying Ireland is the "only country in Europe with pubs closed".

The graphic is false and misleading, and the underlying arguments are debatable. I suppose I'm saying not everything you read on the internet is true.

Most are open in some capacity & like Ireland applied a bunch of arbitrary, made-up rules.

Spain has closed clubs. Bars/restaurants are allowed to open under a 1.5 meter restriction & a capacity of 10 people for food (on top of a public smoking ban). https://english.elpais.com/society/2020-08-14/spanish-health-minister-announces-closure-of-nightclubs-bars-in-bid-to-slow-coronavirus-spread.html

When you look throughout Europe, very few countries have open pubs in a pre-pandemic sense.

The restrictions vary from small limited capacity, to needing to buy food, to only-outdoor pubs open, to early closing times.

In that sense, we are as open here as some of them.

Some countries opted for regional pub closures based on infection levels, and the areas covered by those regional closures in the likes of Spain can be as large as half the country here.

It's wildly misleading to make out all pubs are open in Europe. They're not.

The other thing to bear in mind with European comparisons, it's not the watertight argument for pubs that some people think it is.

14-day incidence per 100,000:

Ireland: 31.1
EU/EEA average: 50.2

14-day cumulative deaths per million:

Ireland: 1
EU/EEA average: 5

Cases in Europe approaching double that of Ireland, and deaths are 5 times higher.

Both of these are at low levels compared to April, but saying "well pubs are open in Europe" would be a stronger argument if they were doing better than us overall, which they're not.