A leading business figure who led the effort to support frontline health staff during the spring Covid surge is predicting that the total number of deaths from the coronavirus could hit 3,500 by March 2021.

If correct, that would mean the virus will claim as many lives in 12 months as the conflict on the streets did over 30 years of warfare here.

"It's not lost on me that the 3,500 estimate is just above the total number of deaths in The Troubles between 1968 and 1998," says Options CEO Danny Moore. "The Assembly and the DUP in particular are playing very high stakes poker, especially as the death rate in the South is so much lower."

When the pandemic struck in March 2021, Danny Moore spearheaded the Robin Hood Appeal which raised £250,000, mainly in donations from technology businesses, to provide immediate aid to hard-pressed hospital staff in the form of PPE, meals, taxi fares and accommodation. 

According to the NISRA Covid dashboard, 1,649 people here had died from complications arising from the coronavirus up to 18 December - 80 alone had lost their lives in the previous seven days. 

Writing on 21 December, just before the Executive reversed course and announced a six-week lockdown, including this week's curfew, Danny Moore warned that "in Northern Ireland, we’ve gotten ourselves into a sticky spot".

"We’d a half hearted lockdown through the autumn - the net of which was we reached an equilibrium with circa 500 positive tests a day which was just enough to fill the hospitals to capacity with a CV death rate of circa 10 per day. Then ten days ago the Executive — presumably after sustained lobbying by retail and hospitality — decided to take the brakes off for the last two weeks up to Christmas."

MINEFIELD AHEAD: Options CEO Danny Moore
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MINEFIELD AHEAD: Options CEO Danny Moore

The Covid variant, which has sparked bans and additional restrictions on travellers from the UK by many countries, was "a wild card", adds the Options chief.

"The variant has the potential to make things ten times worse. Its almost as if we tempted fate who had a little giggle and said 'fair enough, try this on for size'."

A high community base infection rate by the time the new restrictions started at midnight on St Stephen's Day meant there were already "a lot of mines" when the Executive lifted the lockdown, he argues. "It's inevitable that that number is about to shoot through the ceiling." 

A strong advocate of a hard lockdown, allied to aggressive financial support packages from government for impacted small businesses, Danny Moore says the evidence shows that restricting all movement will reduce community infection levels. 

"From a psychology standpoint the trap has probably sprung. COVID apathy is sitting at highs and that’s unlikely to change. When the lockdown lifted many (if not most) people saw what they wanted to see and interpreted it as the government saying everything was safe. While a few anxious and paranoid folks saw mathematical inevitability and gasped, many more took the opportunity to book that catch-up appointment at the hairdressers. The psychological genie is out of the bottle at the worst possible moment. Everyone who hasn’t already had the virus believes they're bullet-proof so no need to sweat the precautions. They also rightly assume that the personal risk of serious illness in the immediate is probably low, but significantly underestimate the impact of the ripple effect on an already flooded health service (or someone else’s granny) if everyone else were to take the same view."

And while the current NISRA death figure from Covid-19 stands at 1,649, Danny Moore says 3,500 deaths by April 2021 can't be ruled out. 
 
"At the start of December, my quick math was forecasting the CV deaths in NI by the end of April 2021 to be circa 2,500. We hit 1,500 a week or so ago, add 10 a day for the next 100 days tapering off through mid March and April. So, ballpark, another 1,000 deaths. This didn’t factor in either the lockdown lifting before Christmas or a new even more contagious strain. That had pushed my forecast number up to 3,500, so 2000 more, or 20 deaths a day beginning in January for a 100 days, tapering off in the spring. That wasn’t factoring in the new virulent strain."

Danny Moore says he believes politicians had a "WTF moment" when they realised infection figures were shooting up and made a U-turn on their plans to allow a five-day mixing dispensation from 23-27 December.

He says he now hopes the six-down lockdown will prove his predictions of 3,500 deaths - slightly above the number of deaths in the 30 years of conflict from 1968-1998 — wrong. 

In a memo to Options staff around the globe, Danny Moore, who but a block on company travel in January 2020 when word of the virus first emerged from China, says this is a time for careful risk management when it comes to battling the coronavirus. As for best practice examples the Executive could follow, he says they need look no further than Dublin where a hard lockdown right through the autumn means their figure of infections and deaths lag behind the North. 
 
He adds: "My advice to everyone is to take care of yourself over the holidays. The analogy of a minefield when it comes to the coronavirus may help some people realise the gravity of our situation. Imagine your local shop is at the other side of a minefield. Every morning when you walk across the minefield to get the paper the probability of standing on a mine is just one per cent.

 
"The first morning you walk across the odds of not standing on a mine are 99 per cent, chances are you’ll be just fine, almost guaranteed. However, the nerds appreciate that if you walk across the minefield every day for a year inevitability sets in. The odds of triggering a mine before the year is out rise to 97.5 per cent on 365 trips. Walk across every morning and eventually you’ll lose a leg.
 
"Moral hazard is the term bandied about in finance to describe this situation, or for a visual metaphor, in this case its like climbing El Cap free solo, but if you fall your granny ends up on the rocks at the bottom, not you."