Thread by @GrahamNeary

According to TheJournal, it's a "far-right conspiracy theory" that "Covid-19 death rates are being inflated as a way of justifying continued restrictions on the public."

TheJournal says "Covid-19 was a factor in all of those 1,806 deaths".

Time for a factcheck by Leo Varadkar.

Varadkar:

"In Ireland we counted all deaths, in all settings, suspected cases even when no lab test was done, and included people with underlying terminal illnesses who died with Covid but not of it."

The death count includes people who died with Covid, not of it. Got that?

Varadkar:

"This was right approach but skewed the numbers. Priority is to save lives not look good in league tables."

Is that clear enough? They skewed the numbers to "save lives", by frightening people into accepting restrictions.

Leo is now a right-wing conspiracy theorist.

TheJournal also says HIQA acknowledged only a "slight overestimation of deaths".

It's true that HIQA is generally supportive of the government narrative.

But their July report found that the official Covid-19 death toll was 40% higher than excess deaths. A slight overestimate?

Reminder that despite the media-induced hysteria, the mortality rate is nothing special this year, and not even as high as 2018. It turns out that the badly disrupted health service plus the arrival of Covid-19 were less dangerous than the cold weather and bad flu of 2018.

If you exclude all so-called Covid-19 deaths, you find that Ireland would have had record low mortality this year. This is simply preposterous, given the disruption to healthcare and the seasonally mild 2019. Low mortality is more likely to follow a season of higher mortality.

The claim that c. 1800 people died "of Covid" in Ireland is one of the most damaging mistruths. In combination with the false and misleading case data, constantly amplified by media and government, it's sadly no surprise the country is in such a mess.