At the onset Ireland and the rest of the world was in uncharted waters.
Nobody knew how the virus would progress and/or mutate. The previous MERS-CoV had mainly affected 41–60-year-old males.
The health protection measures were mainly to slow the progress of the virus so not to overwhelm the health service and to allow time to set up necessary tracing and treatments and also in the hope of an ameliorating vaccine.
The measures were not just to shield the elderly but also the thousands of younger people on the lengthy
vulnerable list.
In the absence of those measures, who can say what the fatality rates or the hospital and ICU admittance rates might have been.
The CSO Vital Statistics release for deaths in the 4 quarters of 2020 suggests that the measures introduced in March 2020 prevented many deaths:
Quarter | | 1990 | 2020 | |
1 | Jan-Mar | 8,618 | 8,674 | +56 |
2 | Apr-Jun | 7,519 | 8,582 | +1,063 |
3 | Jul-Sep | 7,358 | 7,111 | -247 |
4 | Oct-Dec | 7,639 | 7,398 | -241 |
Global research is ongoing concerning, inter alia, the short and long-term effect of Covid-19 on the immune system.
It is too soon to be conclusive about health protection measures.