On the day the Government torched 320,000 jobs (fewer than half of which will return), and sprayed another €18bn on the economy and services (one quarter of it on the national basket case), the General Register Office issued updated mortality numbers for the first nine months, alongside the comparable figures for 2015 to 2019. These figures are riveting reading for the citizen, but are evidently not the required kind for the State. If they were, those supposedly in charge of the Covid response could not, would not, in conscience, put upon the people as they are doing.
What’s clear is that the number of deaths from January to September is steady between 2015 and 2019, averaging just under 23,200, around 85 a day. There’s a noticeable rise in 2018 (+887), followed by a bigger fall in 2019 (-1,103), followed by an even bigger drop in 2020 (-2,634). The big rise in deaths this year occurs in April, and only in April. The total in every other month this year is lower than the average number for the same month over the period 2015-2019. April 2020 shows an increase of 624 deaths over March, while May 2020 shows a decrease of 996 compared to April.
In every month since April 2020, the number of deaths has fallen, with just 664 recorded in September. And the number of deaths so far this year is down 12% on last year.
Every death from Covid is a tragedy for a family, their loved one taken too soon, little or no chance to say goodbye, an empty chair where there used to be a smiling face. People are pinning their hopes on a vaccine that may never turn up, not least because enough volunteers have got sick enough to halt or delay some promising trials. And ministers and Nphet are fixated on cases, few of which, thankfully, end up in ICU and fewer again as fatalities.
Meanwhile, experts who predicted as many as 120,000 fatalities from Covid in Ireland continue to get free rein in the media, frightening the people and panicking the politicians, who defer to officials that don’t and won’t take any risk. Frankly, they don’t mind what you die of, but it won’t be Covid, not on their watch.
Amid the unprecedented and coordinated assault on our rights and freedoms, and the seductive promise of safety and security if only we entrust ourselves the State’s embrace, all sense of proportion and perspective is being lost. Anyone under 65, in good health, has as much chance of dying from Covid as being killed in a car crash going between Dublin and Cavan, or Cork and Waterford, or Galway and Limerick. We still make those journeys and most of us get there, in one piece, most of the time. Isn’t it time to end the madness, save the country and mind the people?
Kealan Flynn
Galway
Vaping report is misleading
The recent report on e-cigarettes from the Health Research Board (HRB) and its findings are troubling for a number of reasons. It is severely lacking in any real-world context in relation to vaping in Ireland and is yet another example of the misinformation that is being spread in regard to e-cigarettes, at a time when many smokers are looking for a viable alternative.
The report claimed that the industry in Ireland was unregulated, which is simply not true. E-cigarette sellers and manufacturers strictly abide by the EU’s Tobacco Directive, HSE guidelines and rigorous internal protocols.
Secondly, it claims that vaping is not as effective as nicotine replacement therapies (NRTs). This is also false. The most comprehensive study on this topic conducted by Queen Mary University found that vaping is twice as effective as nicotine replacement therapies such as patches or gum. In addition, 41% of people who successfully quit smoking in Ireland in 2018 used e-cigarettes to do so, thus making it Ireland’s most popular quitting tool.
Thirdly, the report completely disregards existing scientific studies that show that vaping is overwhelmingly less harmful than regular tobacco. In fact, a Public Health England (PHE) study showed that e-cigarettes were 95% less harmful than smoking regular cigarettes.
Lastly, the continuous attacks on Irish vapers could have very negative consequences. These misleading reports will push people back to smoking cigarettes, by discouraging people from accessing the most effective alternative there is.
Simon Carroll
Country manager, PJ Carroll & Co Ltd, Dublin
A welcome distraction
Outside a supermarket, a black Labrador wet dog was with his owner. People stopped to pat the wet dog and then looked at their hands, as if they had never seen water before. The wet dog was the centre of attention and responded to all bystanders. Soon a crowd gathered, all talking about the wet dog, as if it was a mystery. I hope he didn’t get a swelled head, being the protagonist, the star attraction. I suspect it was not the wet dog, but he was the excuse for people to engage in small talk, something they had given up for nearly one year due to the Covid virus.
They felt free again, and chatted away like in old times, but tried to keep their distance, and remain masked.
Social interaction has disappeared since the grim reaper made his own appearance. People have been living like hermits now for months on end, giving each other a wide berth. The wet dog was a welcome relief, if only a temporary one for many scared folk.
Holly Barrett
Mallow, Co Cork
Greyhound funds leave ugly stain
While there’s much to welcome in the Government’s 2021 budget, I object to the allocation of €19.2m to the beleaguered greyhound industry, nearly €2.5m more than last year’s handout.
This is an industry weighed down with animal cruelty scandals and that displays a reckless attitude to the welfare of the dogs on which it depends to make a profit.
An RTÉ Investigates programme last year exposed widespread malpractice in the industry, including massive over-breeding of greyhounds, the casual killing of unwanted dogs, and the export of dogs to jurisdictions where they can end up being boiled alive for the meat markets.
Animal rescue groups nationwide routinely cater for abandoned greyhounds, some half starving or covered in sores. Shallow graves have been unearthed all over Ireland containing the carcasses of greyhounds whose thanks for months or years of running was a bullet in the brain or the whack of a shovel.
This industry should not receive one cent of taxpayer’s money, let alone the generous funding that has keep it afloat as attendances at tracks fall and commercial sponsorship diminishes.
The budget may have a Green tinge this year, but the support for greyhound racing is an ugly stain on the document that shames the two large parties, and detracts from the credibility of the smaller party that pledged to fight tooth and nail against “recreational” animal cruelty.
John Fitzgerald
Callan, Co Kilkenny
Good intentions are not enough
The Examiner’s October 14 editorial rightly draws attention to the bizarre election to the United Nations Human Rights Council of countries with
appalling human rights records. However this theatre of the absurd is not a new feature of the UNHRC. Since its establishment in 2006, authoritarian, human rights abusing nations including Angola, Libya, Sudan, and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq have held seats on the UNHRC.
One result of this has been the unjust singling out of Israel for condemnation. From the UNHRC’s founding through 2019, there have been nine resolutions each on Eritrea and Iran, 12 on North Korea, 32 on Syria — and 85 on Israel. There have been none on human rights violations in China, Russia, Turkey, Cuba, Pakistan or Qatar.
Israel remains the only country to be listed as a permanent agenda item at UNHRC meetings. Given that Ireland has never made a stand about the composition of the UNHRC, its biased focus on Israel or its failure to uphold its founding principles, Ireland’s intentions may “noble”, but good intentions are not enough when international institutions designed to fight human rights abuses are failing the victims they are meant to protect.
Teresa Trainor
Dublin 16
Differing opinions on state borrowing
Reading Eddie Hobb’s and Gerard Howlin’s takes on the massive increase in government borrowing announced in Budget 2021 to fund the humanitarian crisis that is unfolding around us due to Covid-19, one is reminded that inducing “guilt” is still a very quintessentially Irish and indeed Catholic trait that lives among us.
Hobbs states unequivocally that “the latest surge in excess global debt cannot be serviced, except by crushing interest rates for up to a decade or longer”, while Howlin warns us “how will a permanently larger State be paid for from a narrow tax base already unequal to the task?”
Chris Johns, an economist of some repute who has worked at the highest levels of finance both here and in the UK, took an altogether different approach in his column in the Irish Times when he says (Paschal) “Donohue signals Ireland will do whatever it rakes to overcome Covid”.
Critically though, he adds every time a political or economic commentator is heard “moaning” that “the debt will have to be paid back” they should be reminded that “Government debt does not have to be paid back, particularly the kind that sits minding its own business in the vaults of the ECB”.
Opinions it is said are like grey hairs, everyone has them so tread carefully before accepting them as fact and particularly by those that are paid to give them.
Tom McElligott
Listowel, Co Kerry
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