Habeas Corpus [ hey-bee-uhs -kawr-puhs ] late Middle English: Latin, literally ‘you shall have the body’ – a writ requiring a person to be brought before a judge or court, especially for investigation of a restraint of the person’s liberty, used as a protection against illegal imprisonment. The official death figures for Ireland this year, so […]
Four newborn babies in Adelaide have died after being denied life-saving heart surgery because it wasn’t available locally and the stage-four lockdown in Victoria meant they couldn’t be transferred to Melbourne for surgery. Covid-19 travel restrictions meant that interstate transfers for the sick babies who needed life-saving cardiac surgery wasn’t possible. The surgery was not […]
By now, readers will be familiar with the single strongest argument against Ireland’s impending level five lockdown: Cases are rising, yes, but hospitalisations, and deaths, remain low, notwithstanding the thirteen fatalities reported yesterday. Is the low number of deaths and hospitalisations, as some argue, a glitch? Or is it part of a wider pattern that’s […]
Recently I addressed a group of Parliamentarians in London about assisted suicide and euthanasia. My talk, which coincided with World Suicide Prevention day, sought to address the unintended consequences of legalising assisted suicide and euthanasia in the Netherlands. One of the arguments we hear is that assisted dying will bring down the number of violent […]
Last week we learned that Ireland’s birth rate has fallen by almost 25% in the last five years. That includes all births registered here. Like most other European countries, we now have a birth rate well below the 2.1 births per woman needed to replace the population. In the more immediate term, we face the challenge […]
Care homes were told to impose a blanket ‘do not resuscitate’ order on all of their residents during the peak of the UK’s coronavirus outbreak, according to a major study. The survey, undertaken by the Queen’s Nursing Institute, found that while care homes were put under “constant” pressure to accept patients with Covid-19, they were […]
What is ‘Excess Deaths’? The Excess Deaths statistic estimates the total mortality impact of a disease on a society. Excess Deaths tells us how many people died in excess of the number we would normally have expected over the same time period. It’s like the ‘real’ metrics that remove the effect of inflation from the observed economic […]
The government has now introduced a return to many Covid-19 restrictions. But what do the numbers actually show about how deadly Coronavirus has been for Ireland? On July 3rd, the Health Information Quality Authority (HIQA) acknowledged that Coronavirus fatalities in Ireland were overestimated by 60%. A Central Statistics Office report published on the same day proved […]
My background is in investment risk management, particularly in the quantitative analysis of defined benefit pension scheme assets and liabilities. To put that in English: I’m a spreadsheet monkey. When I have a problem, and if I have enough time on my hands, I usually start with Microsoft Excel. Well, I’ve had a lot of […]
High death tolls have been one of great scandals of the Covid 19 pandemic. By May, a third (46,400) of all coronavirus deaths in the United States were among nursing/care home residents and workers. In New York state the toll was increased by thousands of recovering Covid cases being released from hospitals to nursing homes. In Britain, […]
Aontú Leader Peadar Tóibín has said the mismanagement of the covid-19 pandemic in nursing homes is a “national scandal” and called for a public invesigation into the matter. The Meath West TD also criticised the response of Tánaiste Leo Varadkar during Leaders Questions, and stated that the families of victims, and residents of nursing homes […]
I have written elsewhere about how the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in dangerous and unethical responses like ventilator rationing, unilateral DNRs, and some states ordering nursing homes and other long-term care facilities to accept coronavirus patients discharged from hospitals. But the Covid-19 crisis has also spawned new ideas such as the American Clinicians Academy On Medical Aid in Dying’s policy […]