Straightforward question, really, and one worth talking about a little bit. Fans of football will have tuned in, last night, to the European Championship clash between Denmark and Belgium in Copenhagen, and seen the host nation lose 2-1. They will also have seen a live, in person, outdoor attendance of some 40,000 football fans. Why, then, are such things permitted in Denmark, but not in Ireland?
There are really only one or two obvious possibilities.
The first, of course, is that Denmark simply has better public health experts, a better Government, and flat out has done a better job than Ireland in managing the pandemic. Is that true?
Well, on the raw numbers, yes it is. Demark has had a recorded 2,527 deaths out of a population of about six million. Ireland has had a recorded 4,941 deaths out of a population just under five million. In other words, in terms of preventing deaths, Denmark has done more than twice as well as Ireland, at least on the official numbers.
Of course, and people might have forgotten this, when those figures suggesting Ireland had a comparatively high death rate were discussed in 2020, the green jersey brigade were quick to pooh-pooh them, suggesting that Ireland’s recording system – which, infamously, records anybody who dies while infected as a “covid death”, even if their death was unrelated to the infection – might be artificially inflating our death numbers. And, indeed, the CSO numbers showing a much lower number of Covid deaths might bear that out. On recorded cases of covid, Denmark and Ireland are actually fairly close: 291k cases for the Danes, 255k for Ireland. If you make the assumption that Ireland has over-zealously recorded deaths and inflated its own death rate, then you might conclude that actually, there is not a vast difference between the two countries.
That’s over the whole pandemic, of course. What about what is happening right now? Well, Denmark yesterday recorded 353 new covid cases. Ireland’s most recent daily figure was…. 420. Again, not a huge difference, but slight advantage to the Danes, who appear to have an open society, and a marginally better case count.
What about vaccines? Well, again, it’s very tight between the two countries. Denmark, according to the most recent figures, has fully vaccinated about 1.54million of its 6million population. Ireland’s figures are hard to come by, or be completely accurate about, but the best estimate is that we have about 1million fully vaccinated people out of a population of 4.9million. If – and it is an “if” – those figures are accurate, then again, very slight advantage to Denmark, but both countries are at a very similar point.
So what, then, is the basis for 40,000 fans in Denmark, while the Irish Government simply would not dream of such a thing?
Well, the only other possibility is an entirely different approach to risk. The Danish Government seems content to follow the science which says that the virus is simply not very transmissible, out of doors. The Irish Government, despite possessing that science for themselves, has persistently ignored it.
But these are not two equal, and equally valid, approaches. Government has a responsibility to allow people and organisations and businesses to get on with their normal life, and normal activities, like attending sporting events. If bans on doing things like that are not very strictly necessary, then they should not be in place. In fact, the barrier to banning things like attending a football match should be extraordinarily high. Governments should have to have real, expert, indisputable science on their side in order to justify it. The Irish Government, very simply, does not have that.
What we have, in the end, is two societies with entirely different attitudes about the role and power of the Government. The Danes simply would not accept this kind of restriction on their freedom, you suspect, were it not strictly, and obviously, necessary. The Irish, far more deferential towards authority, despite our “rebel” reputation, are content to sit and wait for the Government to give us back our rights.
There’s not much to be done, unfortunately, but keep pointing this stuff out. The bottom line is this: If attending a football game is safe in Denmark, it is safe in Ireland. There is no substantive difference, in terms of covid, between the two countries. The only difference is that they are erring on the side of freedom and personal liberty, while Ireland, as usual, errs on the side of the nanny state.
It won’t end until voters demand it does.