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Map of usage of intensive care beds in Germany

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Re: Map of usage of intensive care beds in Germany

#111

Post by zwaps »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #17
microcolonel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think stating it as "ventilators are killing people" is wrong. It's an intervention because these people don't have enough oxygen in their blood, the intervention helps them put oxygen in their blood. It's all well and good to look at alternatives as you put it in your last sentence, but the way you put it at the outset sounds like you think ventilation is worse than nothing on the whole, which is probably not true…

That isn't what I said. You misquoted me and I posted my source. To reiterate: Some doctors are concerned the ventilators are actually killing people. They are concerned because the death rate is shockingly high for ventilator usage, much higher than is typical with ventilators. The evidence is mounting that use of ventilators should probably be an absolute last ditch treatment option for people with Coronavirus and…

The speculation is the issue here. You say "evidence is mounting", but I don't see this to be the case. In the article you quotes, the evidence is that "some doctors think" but even then, the article concludes that ventilators probably save lives.

No inference can be drawn from data points such as death rates with and without ventilators, since ventilators are not randomly assigned. This is just basic statistical inference and the reason why you don't have ANY official sources or guidelines following your directive.

It would still be likely that the people dying with ventilators would die without them, and there is indication that people that survive with ventilation would not have survived otherwise.

Consider, for example, the correlation of death rate for countries without enough ventilators and those (such as Germany) with enough ventilators available. The difference is very large.

Consider also that Chinese doctors recommend the exact opposite to what you say. A lot of people die from heart or organ failure because of the stress oxygen distress induces.

There are a lot of cases where recovery would be possible if it weren't for organ failure. In these cases, ventilation seems to help.

In that sense, there is clear evidence that ventilators are useful and, at least on a population level, outweigh the risks.

We can not (ethically) run experiments in these situations, so it would be wise to refrain from making questionable analyses based on anecdotal data.

Re: Map of usage of intensive care beds in Germany

#112

Post by zwaps »

k__ wrote: post #81

People from other countries are always hating "just wait, we laughed too, but then things got worse!" But I have the feeling, in Germany we are doing pretty good for ourselves. I don't think this will be over soon, but when I look at our numbers, I just can't see it getting much worse, let alone as bad as our neighbors or the US has it...

Death rates will rise and things will get worse, but if we are lucky not dramatically so.

In contrast to literally every other large European country, we did a lot of testing (compare for example CDR for France against Germany, we did ten times more tests especially early on). If you run the numbers on tests vs. infections, assuming that death rates are more accurate, you have to conclude that Italy, Spain and France likely have a magnitude more cases than tests would suggest.

Initial infections were mostly young people at the carnival events. This helps with the death rate.

Furthermore, Germany is more decentralized than any other country in the EU, and has "decent" capabilities spread.

We had a good start. Call it luck. However, it'll get worse, especially since people are itching for it to be over.

Here in Germany, we have the "weekend reporting" lull, where cases go down. Each time, people in big cities somehow take this as "peak reached" and go out. All actions have a two-week lag, so we don't really know anything about what works and what doesn't. Yet.

We NEED to be vigilant now, and you need to urge everyone you know to keep distancing and quarantining. Do your part. Yes, it's 27C and sunny outside, but we are not over the bump yet.

IF we keep going like this, we may be able to get over this crisis without ever having a health care catastrophe like France, Spain and Italy. But if we let our guard down too early, then we can get in trouble.

Yes, we were lucky with initial cases and our testing capability. But if we get to infection rates like other countries (10x more than current numbers suggest, at least), then our hospital system will also collapse.

It's best to ignore daily infection numbers, especially here where few cases are sent to RKI over week-ends and holidays. Let's celebrate when the death rate goes toward zero.

Re: Map of usage of intensive care beds in Germany

#113

Post by Dahoon »

chvid wrote: post #83
_ph_ wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree with the statement, that we have "too few sick" here in Germany. With the lockdown, we managed to just keep the health system from being completely overloaded in the most infected regions. But that already at the price of postponing non-urgent medical procedures. So yes, there are a few free beds in hospitals still, but we might still need them. What is not accounted for is, that supplies (masks..…

It is the same "problem" here in Denmark; massive lockdown and overcapacity for COVID19 treatment. The current level of lockdown is unmaintainable as this virus is probably going to be here for a year or two. However it is very hard for our politicians to say: It is too expensive to save these lives - other lives are cheaper to save. In a way the media coverage has been so effective that people actually do not want t…

You clearly live in a different Denmark than I do. Maybe you read too much Ekstra Bladet.

We are following the curve just as planned - not over and not under. There are no "overcapacity" and the lockdown isn't "massive" at all. Only a tiny percentage of shops are closed down and the rest isn't close to what a lot of other countries are doing.

Stop spreading FUD and try to appreciate we have a system that is working great in this crisis.

Re: Map of usage of intensive care beds in Germany

#114

Post by zwaps »

chvid wrote: post #33

Germany (like a few other countries) is in the situation "too much lockdown, too few sick". So it has to remove those lockdowns. This creates a fun political dynamic where the authorities who just spend a month scaring the population in doors now has to explain and justify why it is ok to go out and get a little sick.

I disagree. If we can push the R0 low enough such that active case numbers decline to be less than a thousand, we can implement aggressive test/trace measures that would allow us to lift restrictions altogether, hopefully forever. We need an infrastructure to test people rapidly and often, we need an infrastructure to develop rapid containment and quarantines and so forth. We need to act, as if we'd never get rid of this virus. As if this virus were now a fact of life.

This is the way to go, because developing this capability will be useful for the future as well. If, instead, our hospitals are at the limits and everyone is on full lock down, no such capabilities will be developed. The health care system will just struggle to keep people from dying and we may have the same situation when this or another virus returns.

There are other considerations for this, of course. First, fewer people will die. Second, it's not clear how immune a population can be to this virus. And even if herd immunity turns out to be viable, having a low R0 puts us into a waiting position where we can let the virus infect young and healthy people if that's a wise decision.

Re: Map of usage of intensive care beds in Germany

#115

Post by [deleted] »

zwaps wrote: post #112
k__ wrote: post #81

People from other countries are always hating "just wait, we laughed too, but then things got worse!" But I have the feeling, in Germany we are doing pretty good for ourselves. I don't think this will be over soon, but when I look at our numbers, I just can't see it getting much worse, let alone as bad as our neighbors or the US has it...

Death rates will rise and things will get worse, but if we are lucky not dramatically so. In contrast to literally every other large European country, we did a lot of testing (compare for example CDR for France against Germany, we did ten times more tests especially early on). If you run the numbers on tests vs. infections, assuming that death rates are more accurate, you have to conclude that Italy, Spain and France…

[deleted]

Re: Map of usage of intensive care beds in Germany

#116

Post by k__ »

zwaps wrote: post #112
k__ wrote: post #81

People from other countries are always hating "just wait, we laughed too, but then things got worse!" But I have the feeling, in Germany we are doing pretty good for ourselves. I don't think this will be over soon, but when I look at our numbers, I just can't see it getting much worse, let alone as bad as our neighbors or the US has it...

Death rates will rise and things will get worse, but if we are lucky not dramatically so. In contrast to literally every other large European country, we did a lot of testing (compare for example CDR for France against Germany, we did ten times more tests especially early on). If you run the numbers on tests vs. infections, assuming that death rates are more accurate, you have to conclude that Italy, Spain and France…

Sure, the rate changes didn't drop constanly every day, but overall there is a downwards trend.

Re: Map of usage of intensive care beds in Germany

#117

Post by hadrien01 »

bsaul wrote: post #105
evaneykelen wrote: post #103

Germany has also accepted patients from Italy, France, and The Netherlands. For the latter the university hospital in Münster is coordinating the distribution of Dutch patients who require ICU care across Germany. Great to see neighboring/close by countries cooperate in this way.

Do you have more infos on that ?? I live in france and the general message we keep hearing is that every nation is dealing with the crisis alone and that the european union project may die because of that.

That's absolutely not what we're hearing in France... Here's a news article from three weeks ago talking about 31 cases transferred to Germany: https://www.franceinfo.fr/sante/maladie/coronavirus/grand-es...

Re: Map of usage of intensive care beds in Germany

#118

Post by lnsru »

k__ wrote: post #99
lnsru wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait few days after Eastern celebration, parks in Munich are full, people around houses are celebrating in packs. Even deep in woods 30 miles away isn’t that empty as it was few days ago. 4000+ new cases alone yesterday. So another 200 intensive care beds needed. I am really worried about all this careless “we are doing well”.

The problem are the people who don't follow the rules, not the ones who say we're doing well. I think we're doing well and still don't meet friends or go out often.

The ones say “we’re doing great”, covidiots believe that and don’t follow rules, because “we’re doing great”. I would say “we’re doing great” when daily infection rate drops from current 4000+ to 500.

Re: Map of usage of intensive care beds in Germany

#119

Post by sakisv »

quonn wrote: post #107
bsaul wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have more infos on that ?? I live in france and the general message we keep hearing is that every nation is dealing with the crisis alone and that the european union project may die because of that.

Alone? Like with the 500 billion euro EU emergency fund that was agreed yesterday?

These 500bn are loans from the ESM. The part of that will go to support public healthcare will be without conditions, but the rest that will go to support the other parts of the economies will be given on conditions of austerity.

This agreement comes on the heels of the rejection of what 9 Eurozone countries including France had asked initially: A Eurobond, or coronabond as it made some headlines. That would have allowed the EU as an entity to borrow money instead of individual counties, but the governments of Germany and Netherlands seems that were against it.

Re: Map of usage of intensive care beds in Germany

#120

Post by ygra »

zwaps wrote: post #114
chvid wrote: post #33

Germany (like a few other countries) is in the situation "too much lockdown, too few sick". So it has to remove those lockdowns. This creates a fun political dynamic where the authorities who just spend a month scaring the population in doors now has to explain and justify why it is ok to go out and get a little sick.

I disagree. If we can push the R0 low enough such that active case numbers decline to be less than a thousand, we can implement aggressive test/trace measures that would allow us to lift restrictions altogether, hopefully forever. We need an infrastructure to test people rapidly and often, we need an infrastructure to develop rapid containment and quarantines and so forth. We need to act, as if we'd never get rid of…

As far as I'm aware, contact tracing has never really stopped in Germany, despite the lockdown. Since both tracing (via local Gesundheitsämter) and testing (via lots of local labs) is distributed and not centralized, you can still effectively implement contact tracing in places where you're not overwhelmed. And there's lots of such places, despite the growing numbers. Unlike Italy, Spain, or the US, Germany wasn't hit that hard in a single area (except Heinsberg, but that happened to be right in the middle of a gigantic metropolitan area, so there's plenty of infrastructure to deal with that). Cases are spread out all over the country and so is testing and tracing capacity.
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