Why does Ireland seem to be doing better than the UK?

This is a great site in looking at where every country is on this ,unwanted, table. It is not too long ago that Ireland and Denmark were neck and neck. Ireland are now 19th but will rise one or two places when todays figures are released. Denmark are now 31st. This is always assuming that the figures are accurate and genuine.
 
joer said:
This is a great site in looking at where every country is on this ,unwanted, table. It is not too long ago that Ireland and Denmark were neck and neck. Ireland are now 19th but will rise one or two places when todays figures are released. Denmark are now 31st. This is always assuming that the figures are accurate and genuine.
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Considering that we are one of the few countries who seem to be including deaths in care facilities as well as hospital settings I would be sceptical of how high we are up the list in reality. I’m good news we are rather high up the test per million of population list and climbing swiftly.
 
Belgium have counted every death outside hospitals and also every probable covid death (ones not yet tested showing all sythoms and cases tested but no results back) .They are looking at remodeling to be more like the rest. Personally I'd prefer to go their route .The UK are not counting deaths outside hospitals,hard to compare anyone to them.
 
seamus m said:
Belgium have counted every death outside hospitals and also every probable covid death (ones not yet tested showing all sythoms and cases tested but no results back) .They are looking at remodeling to be more like the rest. Personally I'd prefer to go their route .The UK are not counting deaths outside hospitals,hard to compare anyone to them.
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This is the exact reason that it’s pointless comparing and contrasting almost any country. The differences in population density, testing rates, criteria for declaring a death Covid related etc make comparison an interesting approach but are pointless if looking for an accurate representation.
 
You would have to ask why is the testing methods , test results and information that is coming out not the same for every country. What is there to be gained otherwise.
 
joer said:
You would have to ask why is the testing methods , test results and information that is coming out not the same for every country. What is there to be gained otherwise.
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A variety of reasons from each country following their own internal medical advice which will differ in the best approach to fighting the pandemic to some countries with less democratic oversight wanting to artificially reduce the figures to avoid backlash from the population.
 
"Learn from" is a different concept to "becoming" them and while seven countries lie partially or wholly within the Arctic circle i.e. Norway, Finland, Sweden, Russia, the United States, Denmark and Canada, you should note that Greenland is not one of them.

I take it then you no opportunities for our health services to learn from others, even those with a 100% recovery record, during a pandemic where the state of the art is to "make it up as we go along", to paraphrase the experts?
 
mathepac said:
while seven countries lie partially or wholly within the Arctic circle i.e. Norway, Finland, Sweden, Russia, the United States, Denmark and Canada, you should note that Greenland is not one of them.
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Denmark inside the Artic circle? You do realise that Greenland is the part of Denmark that's within the Artic circle??... Have a look at a map.
 
mathepac said:
"Learn from" is a different concept to "becoming" them and while seven countries lie partially or wholly within the Arctic circle i.e. Norway, Finland, Sweden, Russia, the United States, Denmark and Canada, you should note that Greenland is not one of them.

I take it then you no opportunities for our health services to learn from others, even those with a 100% recovery record, during a pandemic where the state of the art is to "make it up as we go along", to paraphrase the experts?
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Greenland is nearly entirely within the arctic circle. It also has a similar population to Waterford City. Its geography and demography renders it a totally pointless comparison.
 
There's a very interesting thread on Twitter comparing how the different countries are recording the death rates.
It suggests that we are reporting them in accordance with WHO guideline's and currently have approx. 141 deaths/m Pop.
If we were to report them as the UK are (counting hospital deaths only) our rate drops to 43.94/m.
If we were to report them as Austria and other countries are (omitting nursing homes and comorbidity) our rate drops to 7.91 /m.

This suggests that other countries have significantly higher death rates than they are reporting.
 
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Another interesting thread on Twitter from Dr Gabriel Scally shows that the number of testing centres in the UK is vastly less than we have here. 46 test centres or 9 per million of population here. 27 test centres of 0.4 per million of population in the UK. That's some difference! I don't know how they expect to ever relax restrictions there with so little testing.
Of course this does only focus on the number of test centres. What is the testing volume being carried out in the UK daily compared to Ireland? According to the BBC it is 21000 a day. Here there is capacity for 7000 a day. So even there, the capacity in the UK is way short of what it is here. Really it should be closer to 100000 per day.
 
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Another point about comparisons is that countries don't always make it clear whether reported tests refer to the number of tests carried out or the number of people tested. Some counties, such as the UK, report both.

For instance, the UK test figures as at 9am April 22 show cumulative total tests = 559,935. People tested = 411,192.
 
Seagull said:
Getting back on topic - it could simply be linked into the testing strategies. The initial plan here was that anyone showing cold/flu-like symptoms should go for testing. Then that was tightened to only if you had significant fever. How does the rate of positive tests here compare to the UK?

Given the change to the testing strategy, one thing you can be sure of is that there is significant under-reporting of the number of infected people.
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6% positive initially, reduced to about 25-35% once testing restricted. Hard to imagine what it might look like now with expanded case definition.

And as this is an ongoing scenario data is incomplete and judging on numbers alone might not give a complete picture.
 
We are currently using tests to confirm that people who seem to have it actually have it.
In time, particularly as antibody tests become more readily available, we will move to testing populations to see what the rate of infection is. At the moment our testing tells us nothing from an epidemiological perspective.
 
Purple said:
We are currently using tests to confirm that people who seem to have it actually have it.
In time, particularly as antibody tests become more readily available, we will move to testing populations to see what the rate of infection is. At the moment our testing tells us nothing from an epidemiological perspective.
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Yes. The vast majority I hear about in Dublin as having had it haven’t been tested.
 
Yet another reason why comparisons between ourselves and the UK are a bad idea. The UK now heads the European table for deaths from the Coronavirus, despite the fact that their numbers exclude deaths in care homes for England and perhaps even Wales. England has passed Italy in numbers of COVID-19 deaths. Both countries have similar populations and various parts of the Brit establishment still insist their numbers are better despite acknowledging that the numbers in the UK and many other European countries are merely estimates, underestimates in the UK's case.

Switzerland appears to be doing well, but who knows? Lies, damned lies and statistics. https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2020/0505/1136552-coronavirus-uk/
 
Lies, damned lies and statistics indeed.
The UK has been including care homes deaths in their daily figures since last Wednesday.Italy doesn't include all these figures.
The UK also include deaths in the wider community, i.e. deaths at home, which many other countries don't.
But you're right, comparisons at this stage are worthless.
 
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