Germany's Coronavirus Death Rate Is Lower Than in Other Countries • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by woutgaze » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 9:28 AM UTC

yread wrote: post #80

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #5

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…

Death rate also has a lot of caveats. In the Netherlands for example (due to the euthanasia culture? or just NO CODE?) people highly at risk (everyone - even without symptoms or testing positive) are encouraged to think about whether they would even want to be ventilated (and take up valuable resources, spending weeks in coma and have decreased quality of life afterwards). Lots of people don't go to ICUs - only 10% o…

> Lots of people don't go to ICUs - only 10% of the deaths happened in an ICU. Do you perhaps have a citation for this?

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

#82

Post by mam2 » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 9:37 AM UTC

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #5

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…

Death rate ONLY dépends on thé testing.

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

#83

Post by MagnumOpus » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 9:56 AM UTC

amalik14 wrote: post #78

losvedir wrote: post #13

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…

I live in germany. German has not tested extensively or even early. In Germany, I have been trying to buy a mask since 3 weeks and you cant even buy it because its sold out. Germany has acted like a fail state here. I am suprised how germany has managed to keep such a low death rate because Merkels response to COVID has been worst than developing (so called 3rd world) countries.

Objectively speaking from outside Germany, Germany's response has been far better than that of other large EU countries (UK, France, Spain, Italy). Germany has done contact tracing and testing, Germany has done (and is doing) 3-10x as many tests per capita per day than most other countries, Germany has been rigorously enforcing quarantines as opposed to say the UK, which has not enforced them at all.

Yes, no mandatory masks, no temperature measurements of key workers -- it is still far worse than Korea or Taiwan -- but don't kid yourself, Merkel and her advisors have been far more competent here than Johnson, Macron let alone US authorities.

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

#84

Post by MagnumOpus » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 10:00 AM UTC

hacker089 wrote: post #65

losvedir wrote: post #13

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…

>> Since Germany started testing extensivel I do not know where you got this bullshit from; as someone living here, it makes me wonder, how anybody could call the Merkel Passiveness to "having startet extensively" ??? Source, please.

Read the wikipedia article and be less agressive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_testing#National_stat...

Note that the German numbers are a week out of date compared to other countries and Germany has been doing 200,000 tests in addition last week.

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

#85

Post by rurban » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 10:01 AM UTC

Semaphor wrote: post #15

rurban wrote: post #2

NPR did better reporting on this phenomenon than German media, well done!

They did? There was literally nothing in there that hasn’t been said several times and the structure of this pretty short article was "1. Official data and official analysis; 2. A single anecdote as counterpoint; 3. Meaningless official opinion on the anecdote that’s meaningless as it’s nothing but a single anecdote". I like NPR, but highlighting this as "better reporting"?

So far I only read the Welt interview with the 2nd German expert who is on site. The famous one, who dominates the media, is only sitting in his lab in Berlin and looks at the numbers. He always talks about fantastic the testing goes, but only in this article you'll see why.

Whilst on site you see nothing much, as you won't get tested if you cannot prove contact and risk or symptoms. Only symptoms will not get you tested, even in Germany. Only Korea is able to do that. So anecdotes are appreciated.

Maybe manifacturing and PCR sequencer availability and how these tests are now prepared automatically should have been mentioned also. But nobody went that far. Only the recent Atlantic article on Quest touches that a bit.

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

#86

Post by Schaulustiger » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 10:42 AM UTC

amalik14 wrote: post #78

losvedir wrote: post #13

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…

I live in germany. German has not tested extensively or even early. In Germany, I have been trying to buy a mask since 3 weeks and you cant even buy it because its sold out. Germany has acted like a fail state here. I am suprised how germany has managed to keep such a low death rate because Merkels response to COVID has been worst than developing (so called 3rd world) countries.

What are you talking about? Ever since the first big Munich cohort, Germany has done extensive testing and scientists like Dr. Drosten have confirmed multiple times that we've been testing from a very early point on and are probably closer to the number of actual infections than many of our neighboring countries.

Mask shortage is a global problem and will remain so for some time since we'll have to limit making them available to where they are actually needed (hospitals, doctors, nursing homes).

All in all, I think Germany has dealt with SARS-CoV-2 in a responsible way, and the numbers so far seem to agree.

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

#87

Post by thu2111 » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 11:21 AM UTC

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #10

Mirioron wrote: 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…

Four times as many people have already died from COVID-19

Died with SARS-CoV-2, not because of it. As far as I know died "because of" isn't tracked or published by any country. And "died with" doesn't mean much (anything?) because coronaviruses of all kinds are so frequently co-present in natural deaths of old age anyway.

For example in 2006 there was what appeared to be an outbreak of SARS in an old people's home in Canada:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2095096/

It turned out to be false positives on the kits and the real coronavirus was a fairly ordinary strain. Nonetheless the measured death rate was 5%.

When you see things like this it becomes apparent how carefully statistics like death rate must be used (or not used). We have literally no solid data in this epidemic. Every piece of evidence, every anecdote turns out on investigation to have enormous caveats or be misleading.

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

#88

Post by yread » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 12:36 PM UTC

woutgaze wrote: post #81

yread wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Death rate also has a lot of caveats. In the Netherlands for example (due to the euthanasia culture? or just NO CODE?) people highly at risk (everyone - even without symptoms or testing positive) are encouraged to think about whether they would even want to be ventilated (and take up valuable resources, spending weeks in coma and have decreased quality of life afterwards). Lots of people don't go to ICUs - only 10% o…

> Lots of people don't go to ICUs - only 10% of the deaths happened in an ICU. Do you perhaps have a citation for this?

Of course:

From https://nos.nl/artikel/2328827-ic-arts-gommers-binnen-een-we...

(by the end)

In totaal zijn 1200 patiënten opgenomen geweest op de intensive care, van wie er 140 zijn overleden. 19 IC-patiënten zijn uit het ziekenhuis ontslagen, meldt Gommers.

Dead yesterday 1039 https://www.rivm.nl/actuele-informatie-over-coronavirus

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

#89

Post by sgc » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 2:17 PM UTC

s9w wrote: post #67

sgc wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree we don't know yet, it could be worse or better. But I think it will take a year or two to know based on how long it takes to do a post mortem on an influenza season. Certainly failure to quarantine would be devastating so whatever the final numbers are is irrelevant. We already have overwhelmed health systems around the world, and the fatality rate would be a whole different level if that was more widespread.

I can't follow along with that. We're in peace times.. banning people from going out of their home is something I would not have believed possible until russian tanks are at the gates of Berlin again, or the day of reckoning is coming after all. The mortality is not increased [1], the number of acute respiratory illnesses is not increased [2]. German hospitals are not overwhelmed, indeed we gave away hundreds of resp…

I would not be surprised if fatalities overall remain flat due to lowered activity. That doesn't mean they would not explode without them. Germany is an outlier, not the norm as basically all statistics we have at this point indicate. I agree that Germany needs a different course of action than other countries, but I don't think that is widely applicable.

Milan was not overwhelmed by influenza, that is just an Italian title, which is full of energy/exaggeration as usual. The article talks of 48 cases, which is a far cry from the 40,000+ they have in that region now.

Frankly, anybody peddling that a crushing blow to the world economy is conspiracy to get a little more funding for one sector should be discredited whoever they are. That is ludicrous. There is far to much avarice in too many competing sectors, just for starters. And scientists are not that cutthroat as a group.

I think you misinterpret the last link you posted. He does not advocate for doing nothing, but for quickly gathering data and changing our tactics as new information comes in, since there are risks both in quarantine and in not quarantining. I think everyone agrees with this and it is actually what all countries are doing. Even Italy is reevaluating their quarantine measures weekly, etc.

I do agree with you that the economic risk is enormous, and I am unconvinced that my business will exist when I can work again. But at the same time there is nothing to say what we did in the face of illness before this quarantine was human or correct. I think we are too callous about "normal" annual deaths from other causes and if anything comes from this massive effort, I hope it is an awareness of these other causes of death and funding and concrete action going towards them. It's no conspiracy to recognize that investing in better health of the population by effective, concrete steps to guarantee and promote diet, exercise, etc would be a worthwhile item to invest far more resources to than we currently do.

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

#90

Post by sgc » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 2:22 PM UTC

Exmoor wrote: post #46

sgc wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Americans have never had a month off work in their lives. It will probably help mental health for for them at least.

This comment is mind boggling to me. There is a incredible difference between "I'm taking a month off of work" and "I'm being forced to stay in my home, physically isolated from my friends and forced to be around those I share a home with 24/7, with the possibility of financial hardship in the near or far term." One is a vacation, the other is prison.

It's obviously not vacation, nor is it prison. But the weight of the American rat race is undoubtedly crushing to many.