Live data from Hacker News

Germany's Coronavirus Death Rate Is Lower Than in Other Countries

npr.org

21–30 of 100 posts

Re: Germany's Coronavirus Death Rate Is Lower Than in Other Countries

#21

So much contradictory information through this epedemic. CNN just ran an article highly critical of decentralized approaches. (They were advocating top-down, unified actions on a country-wide basis.) Here, NPR tells us Germany is doing well because the regions are able to act autonomously. Hard for us armchair quarterbacks.

The important claim in the article is that Germany started testing early and on a large scale. That can happen either top down or when disparate authorities agree to coordinate their response.

It's also worth noting that in the 5 days since that article, the number of deaths in Germany appears to have quadrupled. There's also:

https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-germany-to-centralize-supp...

Re: Germany's Coronavirus Death Rate Is Lower Than in Other Countries

#22
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the long-term it might also be important to look at the economy at least a few years down the line. It might be that some countries will find it very difficult to recover from the crisis because the lockdown hurt the economy too much. That has a cost in lives too.

> That has a cost in lives too. Four times as many people have already died from COVID-19 as are ever supposed to have died from great recession excess suicides, and we are just getting started with COVID-19. And the effect of recessions on overall mortality is much less clear (fewer die in commuting car accidents during recessions, for example). There's just no plausible way that a recession following this pandemic…

> There's just no plausible way that a recession following this pandemic will kill more folks than the pandemic itself will, not even close.

You're unfortunately very far off in that claim about risk as it pertains to economy. Suicides are a small component of economic risk factors.

For example, if you miscalculate what you're doing in India in managing people and the functioning of the economy through this, you could cause famine and kill millions of people.

A story from Bloomberg covering the food supply deprivation beginning in India:

> ‘We Will Starve Here’: India’s Poor Flee Cities in Mass Exodus

http://archive.is/rusMy

Re: Germany's Coronavirus Death Rate Is Lower Than in Other Countries

#23

Less fat people.

FWIW, a quick Google tells me that the obesity rate in Germany is higher than it is in the US.

I didn't down-vote you, though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_Germany

I suppose it's possible that the WHO and the CDC use different BMI thresholds, though.

Re: Germany's Coronavirus Death Rate Is Lower Than in Other Countries

#24
post #8

I think in the end the number I'll judge countries by is how low they held the death rate per population. A better number would be a population death rate weighted by demographics, but I don't think that'll be easy to construct. Increasing the denominator by testing lots and lots of people is important only if testing lots and lots of people helps you prevent more people from dying. Germany is doing pretty well on th…

Croatia also does well. Croatia has both land and maritime borders (also ferries running back and forth) with Italy. Croatia is ranked number one by Oxford for government responses to the epidemic: https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/research-projects/oxford-c... Note: HRV is Hrvatska which means Croatia in Croatian. It is the three letter ISO country code. The Croatian government website on coronavirus is: https://kor…

> Croatia is ranked number one by Oxford for government responses to the epidemic: https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/research-projects/oxford-c....

It's ranked as number one in stringency of response - they explicitly say it's not to be interpreted as a rating of the appropriateness or effectiveness of a country's response.

Re: Germany's Coronavirus Death Rate Is Lower Than in Other Countries

#25
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Croatia also does well. Croatia has both land and maritime borders (also ferries running back and forth) with Italy. Croatia is ranked number one by Oxford for government responses to the epidemic: https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/research-projects/oxford-c... Note: HRV is Hrvatska which means Croatia in Croatian. It is the three letter ISO country code. The Croatian government website on coronavirus is: https://kor…

> Croatia is ranked number one by Oxford for government responses to the epidemic: https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/research-projects/oxford-c... . It's ranked as number one in stringency of response - they explicitly say it's not to be interpreted as a rating of the appropriateness or effectiveness of a country's response.

[deleted]

Re: Germany's Coronavirus Death Rate Is Lower Than in Other Countries

#26
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the long-term it might also be important to look at the economy at least a few years down the line. It might be that some countries will find it very difficult to recover from the crisis because the lockdown hurt the economy too much. That has a cost in lives too.

> That has a cost in lives too. Four times as many people have already died from COVID-19 as are ever supposed to have died from great recession excess suicides, and we are just getting started with COVID-19. And the effect of recessions on overall mortality is much less clear (fewer die in commuting car accidents during recessions, for example). There's just no plausible way that a recession following this pandemic…

According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die per day due to poverty. That's over 8 million per year. And that's just children while poverty has been the lowest it has ever been. What do you think is going to happen in developing countries in the next few years? Absolute mortality will likely be around 1% or less once you take into account all those that are asymptomatic and much of this 1% would die in the next decade due to old age and co-morbidities.

If poverty doubles (very probable) and the number of children dying dies as a result, it will take 9.5 years just to reach the death toll in children alone. Once you factor adults as well, I wouldn't be surprised if the economic fallout causes more deaths than this flu in less than 5 years.

These countries will also never catch up to where they otherwise would have been, so the additional incremental deaths due to the economic fallout will persist in perpetuity.

Re: Germany's Coronavirus Death Rate Is Lower Than in Other Countries

#27

Worth noting this is from last week. What's Germany's rate now? Since Germany started testing extensively and early, and death is a lagging indicator, I wouldn't be surprised if this creeps up to the more expected ~1.5% we see in Korea or the Diamond Princess. I check the worldometers numbers everyday, and already Germany is up about half a percent from when that article was written, but I'm not totally sure that sit…

The latest I have is 1.08%. Johns Hopkins has it at 775 deaths on 71,808 cases. Their very low mortality rate has held throughout, and they currently have a very large number of recovered patients, implying it's holding through the progression (most countries with good mortality numbers lose that as the cases get worse; you can spot this delay by the very low recovery cases as a percentage). So far among nations in W…

They are doing well enough that they confidently use their excess ICU capacity to help other countries.

Re: Germany's Coronavirus Death Rate Is Lower Than in Other Countries

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That has a cost in lives too. Four times as many people have already died from COVID-19 as are ever supposed to have died from great recession excess suicides, and we are just getting started with COVID-19. And the effect of recessions on overall mortality is much less clear (fewer die in commuting car accidents during recessions, for example). There's just no plausible way that a recession following this pandemic…

> There's just no plausible way that a recession following this pandemic will kill more folks than the pandemic itself will, not even close. You're unfortunately very far off in that claim about risk as it pertains to economy. Suicides are a small component of economic risk factors. For example, if you miscalculate what you're doing in India in managing people and the functioning of the economy through this, you coul…

See also: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/worl...

Put together the suicides (which could be worse this time with so many people trapped at home), domestic abuse, drug addiction, and worldwide starvation, and it adds up to a lot of lives. That’s just what I’m halfway confident about so far.

Re: Germany's Coronavirus Death Rate Is Lower Than in Other Countries

#29
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the long-term it might also be important to look at the economy at least a few years down the line. It might be that some countries will find it very difficult to recover from the crisis because the lockdown hurt the economy too much. That has a cost in lives too.

> That has a cost in lives too. Four times as many people have already died from COVID-19 as are ever supposed to have died from great recession excess suicides, and we are just getting started with COVID-19. And the effect of recessions on overall mortality is much less clear (fewer die in commuting car accidents during recessions, for example). There's just no plausible way that a recession following this pandemic…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN