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Germany has suspiciously lower death rates, too... And that's down to the superior healthcare infrastructure there? I was wondering if something similar was hap

Germany has suspiciously lower death rates, too... And that's down to the superior healthcare infrastructure there? I was wondering if something similar was happening in India. I was expecting to read about it more from a therapeutic treatment point of view-- Is India doing anything differently that results in higher recovery and lower death rates?

MandieD 7y ago
Germany tested more heavily than neighbors earlier on, so probably discovered a higher proportion of "mild" cases. Also, Germany does have a superior healthcare infrastructure in some ways compared to the other big EU countries: in 2012, it had about 2.5 times as many ICU beds per capita as Italy, France and Spain, and 4.5 times that of the UK [1], along with more hospital beds overall [2]. The US had somewhat more ICU beds per capita than Germany, but only about a third of the hospital beds in general, so ICU beds are certainly not the only explanation for why it hasn't been quite as bad here. As important as healthcare infrastructure is, it's worthless to someone without financial access to it, either directly due to lacking insurance or indirectly due to fear of losing one's job due to absence. Extremely few people (but not zero) in Germany would be hesitant to seek treatment for Covid-19 due to either of those worries, compared with a large (and due to the unemployment situation, growing) portion of people in the US. Americans are being told that they won't get surprise bills for Covid-10 treatment, but I imagine more than a few have wondered how a visit to the emergency room would affect their finances if they turned out not to have it, and decided to tough it out a bit too long. So, if available healthcare infrastructure and individual financial access to that infrastructure are taken together, Germany looks to be ahead of both the other large EU countries and the US, all of which have suffered more deaths per capita these past few awful weeks. If some of the German states try to get "back to normal" too fast, though, this relatively good situation could change... [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2020/03/12/the-countries-with-the-most-critical-care-beds-per-capita-infographic/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2020/03/12/the-co... [2] https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/health_glance-2017-62-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/health_glance-2017-62-en https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/health_glance-2017-62-en...
rovolo 7y ago
The disease spreads exponentially. Germany's low death rate is probably due primarily to slowing the spread earlier. You don't need to treat infected people better to have fewer total deaths if there are fewer infected people. https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countries-normalized&highlight=Germany&show=highlight-only&trendline=default&y=fixed&scale=log&data=deaths&extra=United%20Kingdom#countries-normalized https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countr...

MandieD 7y ago

Germany tested more heavily than neighbors earlier on, so probably discovered a higher proportion of "mild" cases. Also, Germany does have a superior healthcare infrastructure in some ways compared to the other big EU countries: in 2012, it had about 2.5 times as many ICU beds per capita as Italy, France and Spain, and 4.5 times that of the UK [1], along with more hospital beds overall [2]. The US had somewhat more ICU beds per capita than Germany, but only about a third of the hospital beds in general, so ICU beds are certainly not the only explanation for why it hasn't been quite as bad here. As important as healthcare infrastructure is, it's worthless to someone without financial access to it, either directly due to lacking insurance or indirectly due to fear of losing one's job due to absence. Extremely few people (but not zero) in Germany would be hesitant to seek treatment for Covid-19 due to either of those worries, compared with a large (and due to the unemployment situation, growing) portion of people in the US. Americans are being told that they won't get surprise bills for Covid-10 treatment, but I imagine more than a few have wondered how a visit to the emergency room would affect their finances if they turned out not to have it, and decided to tough it out a bit too long. So, if available healthcare infrastructure and individual financial access to that infrastructure are taken together, Germany looks to be ahead of both the other large EU countries and the US, all of which have suffered more deaths per capita these past few awful weeks. If some of the German states try to get "back to normal" too fast, though, this relatively good situation could change... [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2020/03/12/the-countries-with-the-most-critical-care-beds-per-capita-infographic/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2020/03/12/the-co... [2] https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/health_glance-2017-62-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/health_glance-2017-62-en https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/health_glance-2017-62-en...

rovolo 7y ago

The disease spreads exponentially. Germany's low death rate is probably due primarily to slowing the spread earlier. You don't need to treat infected people better to have fewer total deaths if there are fewer infected people. https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countries-normalized&highlight=Germany&show=highlight-only&trendline=default&y=fixed&scale=log&data=deaths&extra=United%20Kingdom#countries-normalized https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countr...