Another aspect of Germany's case is that it is an extremely decentralized country - which allowed for localized solutions where necessary. So the lockdown has been far more extensive in Bavaria than in NRW, where I live. There are minimum lockdown rules now in place for the whole of the country but there is nothing to stop any of the Bundesländer from going further than this, eg. the city of Jena has brought in the compulsory wearing of masks in all public places. Also questions of financial compensation have been organized on the state level here - if you are going to tell people to stay at home then you have to reward them for doing so ! I come under the category freelancer/solo self employed and faced a massive loss in income - but then the state of NRW offered a help package which I applied for online on the Saturday, received authorization for it on the following monday, and it was on my account by the following Thursday. Such speed and efficiency would have been impossible had it been done via central government. If you want to stop people's mobility and close down cafes, pubs restaurants etc. then you have to cover their loss of income without unnecessary bureaucracy - if you want them to comply with regulations. I have to say that the majority of the people here are fully in favour of the lockdown being in place for as long as it takes. .
I watched some of the Health and Social Care select committee virtual meeting this morning. One of the medical witnesses said that anyone who had been in intensive care for treatment of the disease would likely be off work for 12 - 18 months. Johnson to go on sick pay? Prof Anthony Costello, professor of global health and sustainable development at UCL Institute for Global Health, says the UK seems to be facing the highest death rates in Europe. He says the UK was too slow to introduce testing. Hancock said that mass testing of the population was the plan before lifting the restrictions. He was asked if that meant that the local councils that have public health duties would be involved. He didn't think so, but it was a part of the plan. Would this mass testing begin in the next three weeks. He didn't know, but said it would start as soon as possible. Why had the advice from the WHO been ignored several weeks ago, but then the policy was changed to accept the advice. The expert advice received from the UK medics was wrong. Any notion that the lockdown is likely to be for only another three weeks seems fanciful.
In some ways it works very well w_y. I read recently that only 30% of all public spending in Germany comes directly from central government - the acquivalent figure in the UK is between 70 and 80%. The disadvantage is that some German states can afford more than others. What's important is that there is a written constitution which establishes exactly what the competencies are of the state governments and the federal one in Berlin. Education is a state matter and so Bavaria closed their schools much earlier than some other states - who basically followed the cue of Bavaria - which had, in turn, followed the cue of Austria. What has been noticeable here is how much Angela Merkel has stayed in the background through this crisis, and how little direct influence she has had. In theory the decentralized model should also work well for the USA but it doesn't because Donald Trump appears to believe he has to control everything single handed.
It's not what it seems in the US Cologne. There is very much that the States control that the Federal Government cannot control. It may be one of the issues with loosening off some of the lock-down, whilst Trump talks about it, if this involved the States doing it piecemeal, they would have the control and it could be very dangerous and lead to another ramp up in cases.
Looking at the figures that have been updated this evening. Germany new deaths: 141 Tests per 1M of population: 20,629 New cases: 1,343 France new deaths: 761 Tests per 1M of population: 7,103 New cases: 1,909 Spain new deaths: 298 Tests per 1 M of population: 19,896 New cases: 3,145 Italy new deaths : 575 Tests per 1 M of population 20, 579 New cases: 3,493 UK new deaths : 847 Tests per 1 M of population 6,464 New cases: 5,599 France was slow to start the testing but has now overtaken the UK, but is still way behind Germany, Spain and Italy. The UK figures are for deaths in hospital only, while the others are from care homes also. I think that this shows just how bad it was for the UK to stop, then start again the testing program.
Just to strengthen that argument Frenchie - Iceland has tested at the rate of 115,859 for every million (ok. I know they don't actually have a million people there !) but it's nonetheless impressive. They have also halved the number of active cases - currently having the most impressive downward curve in the West. The most important statistic is still the reproductive ratio ie. how many does the average sufferer infect - get this below 1:1 and the disease will disappear - currently the estimated ratio in Germany is 1:0.7 meaning that, on average 10 sufferers are only infecting 7 others. Close to the start of this crisis it was 1:3. There are 7 other European countries which have falling numbers of active cases ie. there are more daily recoveries than new cases. The first to reach this stage was Austria from around the third of April, and consistently ever since, followed by Switzerland and then Germany. The other countries in this stage are Denmark, the Czech Republic, Finland and Iceland (dare I suggest to Aku that they are European ?) - the surprise is that Albania have also managed this without the testing but with the military on the streets
There seems to be two parts to the problem about testing people. The UK government has been saying today that people have not been taking up the testing that is now available. As some people have pointed out, if you are working in a hospital in the north west of Cumbria, the nearest testing place is a two hour drive away in Liverpool, followed by another two hour drive to get home. Certainly many people on minimum wages working as porters, cleaners etc in hospitals don't even have cars, and you can forget public transport in rural areas. For some reason this has passed the understanding of the government. The second point seems to be that although there is a greater testing ability, there is now a shortage of the swabs and testing kits to carry them out. Today I watched Hancock being asked if there was enough PPE to last the weekend, and he very carefully avoided answering the question. Tonight we find out that the answer should have been, no, we don't have enough. A very direct question was asked about why the government had reduced emergency stocks of PPE equipment over the past three years, and he didn't deny it, but said that didn't happen on his watch. The whole structure of government in the UK is broken. When asked if local government could carry out testing he didn't know. Certainly Northamptonshire would not be able to as they have put everything out to private contractors, and as you will well know have become bankrupt because of it.
Trump continues to post divisive and inciting tweets and messages against some US states.. I am aghast and think he is dicing with death for his own political gains.. Any views?
A well researched article here from the FT. https://www.ft.com/content/5f393d77-8e5b-4a85-b647-416efbc575ec
Shame it's behind a paywall. If you have a subscription, could you try running it through archive.is?
I can reinforce the argument about takeup. Our son (GP) has the symptoms, - well some of them - and to get tested he would have to drive on his own, feeling awful for 90 minutes to the nearest site and then back again. He chose not to. Depressing though it is to observe this, the Uk govt. has been on the back foot at every turn. Whereas it's blindingly obvious that the NHS was/is illequipped, and the govt CHOSE to leave it exposed, knowing from 2016 that these problems would occur, an interesting side issue relates to repatriation. I believe our FCO is the most expensive in the world (proportional to population and GDP). Our response to repatriation has been pathetic. Dismal. Hopeless. Embarrassing. But hey ho, maybe just maybe, the aftermath will bring a real change in the direction we are headed. It's the only hope I've got. (And the hope that I live long enough to see it!)
The man is dangerous....... If he has miscaluclated this leads to 1) Civil unrest 2) Many deaths He has no respect for the contstitutuonal processes of his own country...... a shocking example....
Shame that it has now gone behind the paywall. You can get quite a good feel from it though by following this twitter feed.
Would be interesting to see some numbers regarding repatriation and how they stack up. Do you have a link to the numbers and any comparisons? For instance, I know that BA was chartered to supply 4 777's a day to bring back Brit's from India - this has been extended to smaller Indian cities like Goa and Chennai. This was been going on for weeks. I also read that there were over 200K Brit's in Spain that could request to come back and over 15K in Egypt. So it would be good to see some numbers as to how other countries are coping with their volumes - or is this anecdotal?
I don't like to appear too hard on this but anyone who knowingly travelled abroad for reasons of holiday after the beginning of March, when it was obvious that we had a pandemic on our hands, is now in a problem of their own making. If there really are 15,000 British holidaymakers currently in Egypt then it shows the scale of the problem - it was this kind of unnecessary mobility which caused the problem in the first place.
31 st March Air France announced that it had repatriated 240,000 nationals. As far as I know that operation has continued, but I have not seen any later figures.
This is not holidaymakers are you describe Cologne. This would be people either living aboard or being on extended stays - so they may have been abroad for months before COVID was even known about. Anyone on organised or package holidays were brought back by the companies they booked with. Of course like most situations it is not very black & white and there are lots of different situations. For example, there are many Brit's that live in warmer climes during the UK winter and this will include Egypt which is relatively cheap because it has only just opened up for Brits after the last terrorist attacks - other North African countries now open and Turkey are also very popular for this. In India, there will also be many Brits of Indian heritage that would have been in India on extended stays with family - I know and work with many Indians and some had family in India and after the lock-down started they were rushing to get them back to the UK (their home). Then there is the situation in Peru with a couple of hundred Brit's stuck in remote towns, they cannot get back to Lima to get a flight back because they are locked down and are blocked from travelling. So it's a messy situation with in some cases very large numbers of people to get to airports to lift them back. I would imagine that Germany had similar issues in Thailand as many Germans visit that country. But I don't think you are being very hard, it's the tough reality that life can throw at you.
