Comment by disgruntledphd2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by disgruntledphd2 | Hacker News Reader

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disgruntledphd2

So, one of the interesting things about Ireland is that part of the Island is still managed by the UK.

So in some sense, we actually have an appropriate control for your assertion that its down to population density.

In general, the data does not support your assertion around population density, as the Republic of Ireland has (post lockdown) a rate of 88.5 per 100k, whereas Northern Ireland has a rate of 2788 per 100k.

Source 1: https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/cases-2019-ncov-eueea Northern ireland: https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/covid-19-statistics

So, in this particular case, it seems unlikely that population density is driving the differences.

I do agree that raw country comparisons can often mislead, but i stand by my original points.

Source 1 is showing a sum for the trailing 14 days. Source 2 is showing cumulative statistics for the entire pandemic. Your source 1 even says the UK as a whole is 372.1 per 100k.

Northern Ireland has a rate of 133 per 100k, for the last 7 days.

The figure you've quoted is close to the total for all of Northern Ireland (2,505) for the last 7 days.

I thought that was too high, cheers for correcting me.

I think the general point is still valid though, as there's a substantial difference between the two regions.

Northern Ireland government is an utter mess, the two useless cretans in Stormont couldn't tell their arse from their elbow. McGuinness and Paisley got on better than those other two and they had every reason to hate each other.

Northern Ireland also has loads of inter UK travel every day, I know people who were at some points commuting from London to N.Ireland.

There's more flights (and capacity) between London and Dublin than between London and Belfast.

Yeah, agreed.

I didn't want to get into a whole explanation for someone, just to make a point about density not being the primary driver in this case (although it definitely has an impact).

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