I actually think WHO need a wake up call, they did not call this when China first got the pox. These bureaucrats merrily earn loads of money safe in the knowledge that member states keep coughing up and Trump is one who calls their bluff. He has done it before.
Matt Hancock did a very moving briefing yesterday... I know not my 'religion'. But this whole thing is beyond politics... Now they must help care workers.... Too many people in care homes have died.. Shocking....
I haven't seen the details, just a headline that said, "All frontline care workers to receive a €1,500 bonus as a token of our thanks". A bit later as I watched Matt Hancock I felt really sorry for him as he held up the reward for the care workers in the UK. A badge! I am afraid that although he said the right things about people being able to be with their loved ones in their last moments, the reality of the situation is different. No way will you be allowed into a ICU, many of the care homes that I know of will not allow even deliveries of essential supplies to be carried into the building, so I am afraid it will not be easy. Just had an email from a friend out here to say that here brother has died from the virus. He had been in intensive care for 14 days in the UK, and was basically fit, although in his early seventies. Of course she has no way of going to be with the rest of her family, but has found it has really helped when someone here gave her a crash course on using a computer, and has been joining with her children and grandchildren by way of vidoe calls.
There is one thing that I am really struggling to get my head around and something that I would have thought the more thinking journo's would have explored. When you take a look at the stats on COVID-19, there is 1 number that is so glaringly different that I would have thought it be examined in more detail. This number is the death rate in Germany. Whenever the question over how well Germany has done in containing and managing the spread of the virus is raised, the standard answer is the volume of testing that Germany has and is doing, however this does not really impact the death rate and this is massively lower than any other country in Europe. If you test to the volumes that Germany has, you would expect to identify the volumes of cases that have been identified and this is quite consistent across Europe, but you would think that the death rate would be fairly similar, but in Germany this rate is so different I cannot understand why that would be. If you compare the Tests/Deaths ratio you see the other big European countries in the range 10%-13%, but Germany is 3%. Similarly if you compare the ratio of Deaths to Population the figures are again very different for Germany. So why would this be? Is it medical in that the health professionals in Germany are much more effective at treating patients? Do they use some medications in treatment that brings positive results? - there is a lot of internet discussions regarding Malaria and anti-viral's used in treating AID's. Could it be that Germany reports COVID related deaths differently to other countries? I would have thought that if there were lessons to be learnt from the numbers they should be shared!
Germany is not unique in this w_y. Of the large countries it has the lowest death rate but not when compared to some smaller countries the percentages of sufferers who have actually died in Germany is 2.82% (of registered cases) this compares to: Iceland 0.46% Luxembourg 2.04% Finland 2.13% Norway 2.2% Czech Rep. 2.63% Austria 2.72% Germany 2.82% Portugal 3.33% Switzerland 4.8% All of the above countries are known as high testing ones - at the other end of the scale the highest death rates are in Belgium, Italy and the UK. The lowest rates Worldwide are in Israel, the UAE, Australia and South Korea. One partial explanation for Germany's low death rates is that they have successfully protected their elder population - apparently the average age of victims in Germany is 42-45, whereas in Italy it is 61. Unfortunately the disease wasn't immediately diagnozed in Italy and had reached their old people's homes relatively quickly - which didn't happen in Germany. Rather than trying to explain Germany's low death rate it might be more appropriate to question Britain's high one - a figure of 12.7% is not normal. Early testing and tracing was the partial answer - for every test you do, you have to also trace as many as possible who have been in contact with that person - and test them as well. It has been the early breaking of infection chains which has helped Germany to succeed on this. Germany, Austria and Switzerland have all succeeded in bringing down the numbers of active cases (ie. there are more daily recoveries than new cases), so maybe you should be looking at how they have done this. Because the best way of keeping the death figures low is to cut down the rate of new infections.
I don't think there is one single answer to that w_y, but my thoughts are that it is not entirely down to the volume of testing so much as when the testing takes place. My daughter often tells me that if you catch a condition early enough it is much more likely to be successfully treated than if it gets a real hold. It is well known that Germany had the labs to carry out testing and the kits from an early date, in fact they may well have been the best prepared to deal with something like this for one of the larger population countries. While people in the UK were going to horse racing, testing was underway in Germany. Hospital beds were available in Germany to give non-invasive treatment, while the UK had only a quarter of that number, and you might be quite ill by the time you were admitted. I don't think that any country has a magic potion, in fact all of the information is that we will still be living under some restrictions until a vaccine is available, which they are still saying might be 18 months away.
Hmmm - you seem to have missed out all of the big European countries, including those that are considered as being "high testers". So on the numbers today, the rates are:- Spain - 10% Italy - 13% France - 12% Germany - 3% UK - 13% Italy and Spain are quite close to Germany in terms of testing, with France and the UK trailing behind. I understand that testing and tracing breaks down the chains and will limit the number of new cases, but if you compare the number of cases to deaths, then it's a different measure. Also Germany, apart from the UK, has the lowest number of cases of these countries, so their testing has not found that many cases as compared to the other countries. Maybe age is a factor in that younger people should have a better survival rate, but the difference i.e. 13% to 3% seems quite large. I think you are confusing deaths to death rates...
The problem is that the German death rate is closer to that of the World as a whole w_y - the World death rate from this is 6.47% of all registered cases, so why is the British rate over double this ? It appears to me that it is the 13.3% which needs explanation and not the German figure. Of course this is all pie in the sky because we have no idea what the unknown figure is - this is why we need blanket testing on the entire populations of some trial areas - which is exactly what is being done in Heinsberg (the most affected commune in Germany). Taking the results from this trial testing show that the actuall death rate (of all cases) is around 0.33% - another interesting result was that not one single under 10 year old tested positive - which raises doubts about the closure of schools for this age group. As regards testing, Britain is now playing catch up - the kits for this needed to be bought on the World market and demand now exceeds supply. Whilst Bojo was dithering believing in the myth of herd immunity other countries were stocking up.
Problem with comparing this number globally is you are comparing countries who are at completely different stages of this pandemic and vastly different demographics. For instance looking at today's numbers, Denmark and Pakistan have a very similar number of cases, whilst Denmark has a larger number of deaths. I don't think many people would expect Pakistan to maintain this low death rate. It's more helpful to compare against very similar countries in terms of size, population distribution and at what stage they are in this pandemic - so, it seems more applicable to compare the countries I listed above. Yes the UK was late in testing, but the others were not, but they have a very similar death rate to the UK. I was hoping that someone might have some positive suggestions like the age profile rather than saying "go check your own problem". Surely it's better to learn from someone that is considered as "best in class"..
Lockdown for another 3 weeks but they feel the spread is being contained although not quire as much as they want yet.
Demographics do play a large role here w_y. The first cases in Germany were people who had returned from skiing holidays in the South Tyrol - ie. young and fit. The contagion then spread rapidly as a result of the carnival - again a population group which was predominantly young or middle aged. Through course of time it has spread into different groups - which is why the earliest death rates in Germany were around 0.3% but have since increased. In Denmark the first cases may also have been brought back by tourists and then spread into other groups from there. The question is how quickly the infection reached those which are most vulnerable. Who would have been the first case in Pakistan ? A returning migrant, a businessman - a foreigner ? If it was a Pakistani then he/she was one that could afford to travel ie. one of the middle classes - and Pakistani society is not so fluid that diseases of the middle class would become 'democratic' very quickly. Denmark is different in this respect - also, Denmark has had it for longer and you would expect a time lapse before deaths start to occur. There is also the question of viral load - the more germs you are exposed to the higher the chances are that you will get a serious case, hence the high rate of care workers and nurses who have died in some countries. It could be that Pakistan has simply done a better job in protecting the old and vulnerable - because I cannot believe that their health system is better than that of Denmark.
I saw this pop up in response to the protests in Michigan... whatever our governments do, best they get it right...
I picked Pakistan because of the similarity to the current case volume, but also because it's high likely that this will not remain low for long. I heard that they were going to lift restrictions because people could not get food, particularly out in the country. The other risk here is that many manual and low skilled workers are losing their jobs in the cities and returning to the countryside and their villages where self-isolation is not likely, if they carry the virus with them it will like a biblical plague. Interesting on Carnival and it's parallel with Madi Gras in New Orleans in the US. This and the huge crowds at Summer Break are a significant contributor to the spread in the US.
