obvert
Posts: 14050
Joined: 1/17/2011 From: PDX (and now) London, UK Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: warspite1 quote:
ORIGINAL: obvert quote:
ORIGINAL: warspite1 Well I haven't been buying the comments re Germany. And suddenly their critical cases seem to have exploded from a consistently tiny figure (I don't believe the UK critical figure either - or the recovered number come to that). If the reasons given for such a low German death rate were to be believed, surely there is no reason - following even tighter lock down measures - that their deaths and criticals should suddenly start rising? Even for a country as efficient as Germany, those numbers (compared to all those around them) just didn't stack up. Or maybe this is just a blip. I watch this with interest. For the avoidance of doubt I don't think there is anything sinister here - I just think there may have been a difference in procedure (how deaths are checked for Corona) and reporting. It's been posted numerous times on this thread and there is abundant info on Germany available with a quick search. 1. Case age average up until about 3-4 days ago was 46 years old. Very low 2. This was caused mainly by skiing crowd picking it up and coming back, then partying at Carnival. 3. Older people told early on to isolate, no visits to care homes, etc. 4. Extensive testing and case tracking early. 5. Extensive testing finds more mild or asymptomatic cases bring the mortality rates down. There are a lot of reports that now it's finding a way into care homes and other vectors to the more vulneable, so as seen elsewhere, this would bring up critical cases and mortality. In the UK London is the centre of this so far and only 11% of Londoners are over 70, IIRC. There are obviously other risk factors though, and low testing means mortality rates will at least seem higher until we know more about who has or has had this. warspite1 Yes I know. I do take the time to read (most peoples) comments on here. The fact that explanations (which are often not fact but opinion and guesswork) have been given doesn't mean that I, or anyone else, has to agree with them. In particular the idea that Germany got the disease largely (though of course not entirely) as a result of fit and healthy young skiers coming back to Germany and then, apparently, not having any relatives, friends or work colleagues - old or young - to spread the virus too is to my mind absurd. Many won't have known they had the virus in the early days and besides, many, many people were not taking it seriously then - even now there are a great many who aren't. And as queried, if Germany has done such a fantastic job of containing the virus and protecting the elderly in the early days then why, in a climate where lock downs and awareness is even greater, does the virus only now start "finding its way into care homes and other vectors to the more vulnerable"? Knowing the German way of going about business I fully expect that they have been far more organised than say the British or French (to name just two) and had they not been, things could have been a whole lot worse. But despite this, I just think those numbers are too low given what we know about the voraciousness with which it spreads. I may be way off base, but my gut feel is that they've not been measuring the way others have - and as said I am not suggesting for one moment this is for any sinister reason. That may be true. Sure. The most important figure is number 1. The average age was 46, and is now climbing. It's not that those early cases didn't necessarily spread to other more vulnerable people, but it is clear that the early cases were younger than in many other places we have data from. The amount of testing being done would support that those numbers are pretty solid as well . Mortality is a lagging indicator, and if the early cases were younger that still could mean they did in fact pass them to some older people. I suspect though, like most people in their 20s or 30s, that they hang out mostly with people their own age. Especially in situations where spread is most likely. It is documented that they did some case isolation and tracking early, but I'm not sure how long those measures lasted. I think the high testing numbers are very important too, and show that in fact the case fatality rate will probably be a lot lower when we look in retrospect. South Korea looks very similar.
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"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill
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