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TAOISEACH SIMON HARRIS has said the Government is committed to holding a Covid inquiry before the next general election.
Harris today said that the terms of reference for the inquiry will be published in the coming weeks.
The announcement comes after the publication of a report which found that there were an estimated 1,100 excess deaths in Ireland in the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021.
The study from the Society of Actuaries stated that lockdown restrictions potentially led to less excess deaths in 2020.
Harris today said that the research shows the benefits of “life-saving decisions that were made by the Irish Government” during the pandemic.
“The Government has made it clear, the three parties in Government, we want a review in relation to the pandemic, I think that is the sensible thing to do,” he said.
On the RTÉ News at One, Social Democrats spokesperson Roisin Shortall said that there has been a delay in getting a Covid inquiry up and running, and that neither the Taoiseach or Tánaiste has explained why this is the case.
“We know that in the UK, for example, and in Northern Ireland, that they’re very much ahead of us in terms of the timing of their inquiries,” she said.
Opposition parties made submissions that would inform Government as it began developing the terms of reference for a Covid review, but that progress seemed to stall beyond that point.
Shortall called for a fully independent chair to be put in place to head up the review, and for economic and social policy impacts to be fully assessed, as well as the role of nursing homes, and policy on nursing homes during the pandemic.
The Stormont Covid-19 inquiry has seen Michelle O’Neill criticised for deleting text messages, former First Minister Arlene Foster’s text messages heavily analysed, and the then-Health Minister Robin Swann speaking out about the amount of leaking that happened within the Stormont Executive following public health meetings.
It’s expected that Ministers here will be expected to hand over their messages and correspondence with colleagues, where it related to political decision making during the pandemic.
While Ireland had some excess deaths during the first two years of the pandemic, the analysis conducted by the Society of Actuaries in Ireland reveals “broadly no excess mortality in 2020″, but significantly more during the pandemic’s second year.
Excess mortality is defined as the difference between observed deaths and expected deaths.
Among various possible reasons why there was lower excess death in 2020, government-imposed restrictions stand out as one potential significant factor, the report suggests.
Linda Daly of the Society of Actuaries told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland that the introduction of the vaccine also “lessened the effects” of Covid-19 on mortality rates in 2021.
The report examines the level of excess all-cause mortality experienced in Ireland during the Covid-19 pandemic, offering some insights beyond the tally of reported fatalities.
The authors emphasise that, “whilst this report provides a numerical analysis of the deaths experienced in Ireland in 2020/2021, the Society is very much cognisant of the people behind these numbers and is mindful of those who suffered the loss of a loved one during this period”.
“It is important to note that there is not one definitive approach to calculating excess mortality – mainly because, whilst observed deaths will ultimately be a matter of record (i.e. they are objective), the calculation of expected deaths is dependent on the choice of methodology (i.e., it relies on professional judgement),” the authors warned.
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Why? What’s the point? What’s done is done. Yet more money for the legal profession.
@Patrice Ahern: To learn. What did we do well, what not so well. And findings should inform our response to any other such event
@Patrice Ahern: Correct a grave train from the legal profession at the expense of the taxpayers, and nothing will come out of it as such it all over. This money could be put to much better use hospital waiting list, homeless, transport, infrastructure etc. Will there be an enquirie into the most expensive hospital in the world
@Larry O Reilly: There probably will at some point, but, as Kevin has said, it’s important that any available lessons from the pandemic response be learned.
@SYaxJ2Ts: To learn what? It doesn’t take an inquiry or a genius level intellect to work out everyone was screwed over.
@Daniel Skelton: To learn actual objective facts, which are more important than your feelings and biases.
@Daniel Skelton: hopefully enquiry participants will have more of an open mind than you
@SYaxJ2Ts: separated our loved ones in nursing homes and dying alone
@SYaxJ2Ts: While I agree with you to some extend, we know these inquiries in Ireland are mostly a big talking shop.
We know already know that the response in regard to any care facility was too slow.
Why I still believe Tony Holohan did a good job at the time, given the circumstances, I don’t expect anything substantial to come from the likes of the HSE in the aftermath.
Almost every country in the EU implemented the same measures at the time and do or did already their inquiries and analysis.
Why not ask them for their findings and start there?
This should exclude the UK, since they made an absolute mess out of it anyway.
@Wolfgang Bonow: Yes, we don’t have a good record with this kind of thing, so terms of reference need to be clear. I wonder as well will witnesses by compelled to attend. With the care homes response, do you not think we should know why we made the decisions that we made? What was the context? Was there any other conflicting priorities? So much can be learnt from how we responded.
@Dave Barrett: I’m not sure that I understand your point
@Dave Barrett: So, you’re completely ignoring the (current) fact,
that these where the ones exactly been hit the hardest by covid?
@SYaxJ2Ts: I’m absolutely with you.
I just think that it will be a good idea to get the feedback\results from other EU countries, even if they might be at their own early stage.
Since pretty much every country was doing the same, at least the basics can be taken on board and therefore speed up the process.
@Wolfgang Bonow: Yep, agreed. We don’t know, of course, that they’re not doing this already
CHINA…CHINA…CHI-NA
@Paul: No No No!
Should have started the inquiry and finished it 18 months ago while details were still fresh
Pity they wouldn’t commit to having an inquiry into the Roman catholic church and its actions. Oh wait they hide Rome’s sins.
@Séamas Mac Cárthaigh: The Ryan Report, the Murphy report, the Ferns report. Thousands of pages of investigatons. What more do you want??
@Sean Hayes: Don’t mind him, that’s just the multiple jabs talking.
An inquiry into the Pfizer safety data.
More money pissed in.the wind
Whinge. Moan. Whinge. Moan.
@DCQ: Or the 5 million who survived covid! 9,000 deaths out of a population of 5.1 million is miniscule.
@Lilian Daly:
Nice… I take it nobody close to you died then.
@Sun Rise:
Tell us again how happy, wealthy and successful in life you are ? That was a great read earlier and I’m sure I’m not the only one in absolute awe of you.
@Lilian Daly: hopefully none of the 9000 were related to you, sad comment!
The personal journey of 3 decades to unravel the behaviour of the academic community in diverse topics, from the misadventures with clockwork solar system modelling to natural selection to climate change modelling, was as fascinating as it is dismaying.
When the NYT publishes articles on the virus’s origin in experimental research and the academic community’s response to this critical anomaly, it’s a response that, sadly, we’ve come to expect from both the academic community and society.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/03/opinion/covid-lab-leak.html
I pay no attention to the fuss directed towards me; after all, demonstrating academic misadventures requires better human faculties that few choose to use when they really should.
Millions died because of COVID-19, yet it is almost absent from the news or distracted by a Brexit politician; however, the ability of society to overlook that they were engineering a virus in level 2 lab conditions to be more infectious to humans can be a gruesome spectacle for the appearance of zero responsibility.
Millions died in WWII, yet afterwards, the academic community railroaded the invasion and extermination imperatives of Victorian natural selection into social darwinism as though hiding the original prejudice conviction behind the icon would change anything.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/social-darwinism
I imagine the experimental misadventure with the virus will go the same way. The distraction of a back-slapping inquiry is awful for the thousands who died here.
@Gerald Kelleher: millions died of covid or millions died and happened to have covid at the time of death. ?
@Gerald Kelleher: Them vaccines f****d you up big time Gerry boi. Did they inject them straight into your brain
@Des Daly: Millions died from Zyklon B, or millions died and happened to have Zyklon B when they died.
I have dealt with many misadventures as a result of experimental research, and the manufacturing of modified viruses (gain of function) to be more pathogenic to humans is another misadventure of biology, just as the Victorians imagined natural selection/eugenics was an endeavour to ‘improve’ humanity by extermination.
The attempt to downplay the deaths due to COVID precedes a self-aggrandising inquiry where society gets praised and distracts from dangerous convictions which created the virus in the first place.
@Gerald Kelleher: you mention downplaying the deaths “caused” by covid but what about any exaggeration of deaths that were ultimately nothing to do with covid being the CAUSE of death ?
“The study from the Society of Actuaries stated that lockdown restrictions potentially led to less excess deaths in 2020.”
We did very well, compared to other countries. On the other hand, England had 68,000 excess deaths, Italy had 112,000 excess deaths and Spain had 69,000 excess deaths in 2020. If we were hit as hard as the England we would have had c. 6,000 excess deaths in 2020, nearly 1 in 5 deaths in 2020 would have been a COVID-19 death (and 1 in 4 if we did as bad as Italy).
Most of the England’s COVID-19 deaths in 2020 happened in the first wave, in March-April 2020, whereas deaths resurged in Italy and Spain in a 2nd wave in the autumn, they had a double peak.
Italy’s outbreak started early and quickly span out of control, they were caught off guard. Spain resisted imposing lockdowns, instead their government heald its annual party conference on March 8th as usual, at the beginning of their first wave and delayed lockdowns.
Excess deaths began to rise rapidly in England in the 2nd week of March 2020, but deaths lag infections by 3 weeks, so the outbreak really began in the last week of February. The UK government imposed its first lockdown on March 23rd, a month late.
Instead, the 4-day-long Cheltenham Horse Racing festival was held as usual, ending in March 13th. 250,0000 people across the UK and Ireland attended, and they inadvertently helped spread the virus (a neighbour of my parents caught the virus from her son after he returned from the festival, where he worked in security. She almost died).
This is a good paper, includes detailed maps of England, Spain, Italy, Switzerland and Greece. It shows how COVID-19 (traced by excess deaths) spread though England like a forest fire, fanning out from an origin in Inner London.
Konstantinoudis, et al., 2022. Regional excess mortality during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic in five European countries. Nature communications, 13(1), p.482. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28157-3.pdf
Over 400,000 humans died in the gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau from May to July 80 years ago because academics went on another misadventure with the Earth science of biology called natural selection. Do you want to call these excess deaths also?
“Under proper guidance, in the course of the final solution, the Jews..in the course of which [labour] action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes. The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as the seed of a new Jewish revival” Holocaust Planning, Jan 1942
Has society not seen enough misadventures with experimental convictions?
Obviously not.
@David Jordan: How many excess deaths did Sweden have?
@Athena: Sweden’s excess deaths for 2020 to 2021 is 3.5 times worse than us.
Sweden had 8,090 excess deaths in 2020-21, we had 1,100 during the same period.
Since they have a population slight more than twice ours, 10.3 million v 4.95 million, it means they would have had 3,900 excess deaths if they had the same population as us i.e. 3.5 times worse.
3,900 / 1,100 = 3.5x worse.
Sweden’s excess death figures are found here:
“Following the definitions, total excess mortality for the years 2020–2022 was 11,897 individuals in Sweden and, 6089 in Norway. However, the distributions of excess mortality across the 3 years strongly differed. In Sweden, 60% of excess mortality was observed in 2020, 8% in 2021 and 32% in 2022.”
Lindström, M., 2024. Sweden’s excess mortality in 2020–2022 and reporting in the media. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, p.14034948241239353. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14034948241239353
How about effect of lockdowns on young people, the economy and in particular vaccine injuries? I was forced to get a booster (despite getting my initial shot only six months before, got covid with no symptoms and recovered, being a young healthy adult) and within a few weeks I was rushed to hospital with a medical incident that left me unable to drive for nine months, which I strongly suspect was directly linked to this rushed vaccine that was forced on everyone.
Please don’t say I wasn’t forced – if I hadn’t gotten the vaccine I wouldn’t be able to go to the gym which was critical for my mental health, not to mind socialise and see my friends in an indoor environment.
How many people have been adversely affected by these vaccines that we’re just going to sweep under the carpet while big pharma made billions?
@Emma Meehan:
What a load of selfish nonsense, I wouldn’t know where to start.
A nice bit of distraction so
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