6 ms·

Many cases in SK and Germany have not resolved yet. I don’t think you can use those numbers so definitively.

411111111111111 7y ago
Actually South Korea is a perfect place to look for a nation which kept it under control. Germany just lost control last week, so I expect a lot more death starting next week. Hopefully Germany's plan of isolation will reduce the spread enough, but we will see...
- lankin 7y ago
  German here. Could you elaborate how we lost control last week? At least in Bavaria everything seems to be ok - considering the circumstances...
  - gindely 7y ago
    Isn't it the circumstances that are being considered, that are the problem? Germany "lost control" of the pandemic. (Germany didn't actually lose control last week, it's just the numbers stopped growing fast in the "ho hum" range and started growing fast in the "I'm scared" range. This is how exponential growth works. Germany lost control when they decided to do nothing for two weeks after noticing community spread.)
- gindely 7y ago
  Germany didn't lose control last week. A few days after they realised what happened at the Gangelt carnival, they gave up - that's when they lost control. The spread of cases took a couple weeks to be shockingly high, but this was locked in already in the first week of March. We must stop confusing the outbreak of diagnoses with the outbreak of cases. That's the mistake every government agency in the West has made, and it's why it spreads faster and better in the west than in South Korea or Taiwan.
jwhite 7y ago
I think SK's numbers are becoming more reliable by the day though. The new case rate has stabilised to a small number in the range of 50 to 150 per day and the active case count is dropping at a rate of over 200 per day. The daily death rate has been below 10 the whole time I believe. If that trend continues then SK's CFR will be well known soon and I would guess not dissimilar to current estimates. Though it's always possible a false sense of security will set in and people will relax their habits and send it higher again. Compare to Germany: weeks behind SK but already more than three times as many cases, new case rate in the last few days of 2500-4500 (SK's max: 851), daily deaths in the last few days 10-29 and heading north. Actually the death rate must reflect an amazing health care system given 30k cases, but it's early days for Germany. Their pipeline is very full, agreed I wouldn't want to make a prediction there. EDIT: sensitivity.
- cycrutchfield 7y ago
  OK, SK's new case rate is stabilizing, but they still have 5400 active cases. If even 1% of those active cases die (which is possible, since these longer-lasting cases are likely more severe), that's a total CFR of 2%. And this is for a country that everybody claims has been doing contact-tracing and testing asymptomatic people.
- mschuster91 7y ago
  > Their pipeline is very full, agreed I wouldn't want to make a prediction there. German here. I assume the recent hard lockdowns will work out pretty much for us... I'm more worried about the US, this is gonna be a mass die-off, and the Trump government's handling of the issue is... let's say abysmal.
  - gindely 7y ago
    German resident here. Why do you assume the recent hard lockdowns will work out? I have discovered in my time here that the German reputation for orderliness and rule following is exaggerated. South Korea coped with the outbreak by having a test early, test often strategy, but the German strategy seems to be test eventually, test perfectly. That means that there isn't any process to flag essential workers and others as needing a good proper test. Korea's showed it's better to do a test with a high false positive and even a significant false negative many times a day and get the person out of circulation awaiting an accurate test, than to wait for them to find the symptoms concerning and ask for a proper test. China coped with the outbreak by having actual curfews. Major lockdowns. The sort we couldn't reasonably expect. When I went to do my weekly/fortnightly shopping yesterday, I saw several police officers looking around into restaurants and on the local town square. Not hard to hide from. No-one cared what my business was. Italy still hasn't really peaked. They did this test-free lock down strategy that Germany is doing. Apparently the amount of intercourse required for viral transmission is ridiculously low. There's already tens of thousands of sick people here, and the government was very lethargic in their response. The peak will be huge. As I mentioned before, they gave up after Gangelt and seemed to act as if the whole thing would be minor. It took weeks after discovering a major problem existed that needed hard work before German authorities actually agreed to do hard work. Learning lessons seems to be really hard for authorities at the moment, and I'm genuinely worried. It's like even ideas are subject to the European protectionism - better import a bad idea from Italy than an effective one from South Korea. My goal is to not get ill before there's space in the hospitals again, because any other goal seems unrealistic.
rimliu 7y ago
Germany does not report resolved cases IIRC.

Actually South Korea is a perfect place to look for a nation which kept it under control. Germany just lost control last week, so I expect a lot more death starting next week. Hopefully Germany's plan of isolation will reduce the spread enough, but we will see...

lankin 7y ago
German here. Could you elaborate how we lost control last week? At least in Bavaria everything seems to be ok - considering the circumstances...
- gindely 7y ago
  Isn't it the circumstances that are being considered, that are the problem? Germany "lost control" of the pandemic. (Germany didn't actually lose control last week, it's just the numbers stopped growing fast in the "ho hum" range and started growing fast in the "I'm scared" range. This is how exponential growth works. Germany lost control when they decided to do nothing for two weeks after noticing community spread.)
gindely 7y ago
Germany didn't lose control last week. A few days after they realised what happened at the Gangelt carnival, they gave up - that's when they lost control. The spread of cases took a couple weeks to be shockingly high, but this was locked in already in the first week of March. We must stop confusing the outbreak of diagnoses with the outbreak of cases. That's the mistake every government agency in the West has made, and it's why it spreads faster and better in the west than in South Korea or Taiwan.

jwhite 7y ago

I think SK's numbers are becoming more reliable by the day though. The new case rate has stabilised to a small number in the range of 50 to 150 per day and the active case count is dropping at a rate of over 200 per day. The daily death rate has been below 10 the whole time I believe. If that trend continues then SK's CFR will be well known soon and I would guess not dissimilar to current estimates. Though it's always possible a false sense of security will set in and people will relax their habits and send it higher again. Compare to Germany: weeks behind SK but already more than three times as many cases, new case rate in the last few days of 2500-4500 (SK's max: 851), daily deaths in the last few days 10-29 and heading north. Actually the death rate must reflect an amazing health care system given 30k cases, but it's early days for Germany. Their pipeline is very full, agreed I wouldn't want to make a prediction there. EDIT: sensitivity.

cycrutchfield 7y ago
OK, SK's new case rate is stabilizing, but they still have 5400 active cases. If even 1% of those active cases die (which is possible, since these longer-lasting cases are likely more severe), that's a total CFR of 2%. And this is for a country that everybody claims has been doing contact-tracing and testing asymptomatic people.
mschuster91 7y ago
> Their pipeline is very full, agreed I wouldn't want to make a prediction there. German here. I assume the recent hard lockdowns will work out pretty much for us... I'm more worried about the US, this is gonna be a mass die-off, and the Trump government's handling of the issue is... let's say abysmal.
- gindely 7y ago
  German resident here. Why do you assume the recent hard lockdowns will work out? I have discovered in my time here that the German reputation for orderliness and rule following is exaggerated. South Korea coped with the outbreak by having a test early, test often strategy, but the German strategy seems to be test eventually, test perfectly. That means that there isn't any process to flag essential workers and others as needing a good proper test. Korea's showed it's better to do a test with a high false positive and even a significant false negative many times a day and get the person out of circulation awaiting an accurate test, than to wait for them to find the symptoms concerning and ask for a proper test. China coped with the outbreak by having actual curfews. Major lockdowns. The sort we couldn't reasonably expect. When I went to do my weekly/fortnightly shopping yesterday, I saw several police officers looking around into restaurants and on the local town square. Not hard to hide from. No-one cared what my business was. Italy still hasn't really peaked. They did this test-free lock down strategy that Germany is doing. Apparently the amount of intercourse required for viral transmission is ridiculously low. There's already tens of thousands of sick people here, and the government was very lethargic in their response. The peak will be huge. As I mentioned before, they gave up after Gangelt and seemed to act as if the whole thing would be minor. It took weeks after discovering a major problem existed that needed hard work before German authorities actually agreed to do hard work. Learning lessons seems to be really hard for authorities at the moment, and I'm genuinely worried. It's like even ideas are subject to the European protectionism - better import a bad idea from Italy than an effective one from South Korea. My goal is to not get ill before there's space in the hospitals again, because any other goal seems unrealistic.

rimliu 7y ago

Germany does not report resolved cases IIRC.