If less people are dying in Germany of this....

[jobhunter7]

Should we not be thinking of looking at what they are doing over there that is working and seeing if it would work in the UK, also?

edition.cnn.com/2020/03/24/opinions/germany-low-death-rate-for-coronavirus-sepkowitz/index.html

Not sure how it would work if I could only go outside with the dog once a day, living in a flat with no garden.

The rumors about Germany attributing most of the Covid-19 fatalities to other illnesses are not correct. Do you really think, that the German media and medical teams at the frontline would tolerate to keep the „official Covid-19 death rate“ low, while there are carrying out numerous corpses through the back doors?! Do you really believe the families of the deceased would tolerate this? There would be a huge uproar on social media already. Germany has by far the most ICU beds per head in Europe. They even started to take on Covid-19 patients from Italy, Spain and France for treatment for goodness sake. So obviously they are doing something right so far - without needing to skew the figures.

@Absentwomen City and Hackney are counted together - for all health stats not just this - as they have one CCG.

*they are... sorry, typo.

Yes, but if death rates do vary per country (as they probably will, due to underlying demographics like age and health) then they are less reliable as indicators for a starting point. We just don't know yet.

@dreamingbohemian Yes, it will take a while before we can really work it out. I'm not convinced there willl be such a huge difference in the end, though.

In the UK it should be easier in some ways for people to self-isolate. 85% live in detached or semi-detached homes, compared to 42% in Germany. When you live in a flat, every time you leave home you run the risk of accidentally coming within 2m of another resident. Many people are entirely reliant on using lifts, for example.

There's been a whole long thread on this previously, OP - basically it was summarised as Germans take better care of their health and are encouraged to go to the doctor much sooner, rather than when they're at death's door. They can do this as they have about 8 times the number of intensive care beds.

Also, they may be recording deaths differently. But frankly I don't trust our stats in the UK either.

That's very true raven, there are all sorts of reasons why everything might even out in the end!

Berlin is very polluted, for example, and they think pollution leads to more cases (because residents have more vulnerable lungs).

effing makes a good point that it's not just about having more hospital beds but it's much easier to access your GP here too, which may help in steering people to getting tested and telling people to stay home.

I do hope when all this is over, people in the UK will demand that the government properly fund the NHS again.

I lived in the UK for a long time, have lived in France and Germany since, and when I read threads here on MN about how people cannot get desperately needed healthcare, it is so distressing. It doesn't have to be like that. The government needs to wake up and take better care of its citizens (sorry, rant over).

@Effzeh yes this is true but the level of disobedience is broadly much lower the press coverage is only similar because the German tolerance of socially unacceptable behaviour and what they would consider unsacceptable is much lower than in the uk.

Germany were accused of hogging all the face masks a few weeks ago (towels on sunbeds!);

"9 March A diplomatic spat has erupted between Germany and neighbours Switzerland and Austria over a decision last week by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to ban most exports of protective medical equipment."

“It can’t be that Germany is holding back products for Austria just because they happen to be stored in a German location,” Austrian Economy Minister Margarete Schramboeck told reporters in Vienna."
...

"Switzerland has called in the German ambassador to complain about the decision to block a shipment of 240,000 face masks, while Austria’s economy minister demanded her German counterpart order the release of supplies destined for her country."

"The [Swiss] government has sought high-level talks with ministries in Berlin after summoning Germany’s ambassador on Friday."

"The Neue Zuercher Zeitung newspaper reported that a Swiss truck carrying 240,000 face masks had been stopped at the border as the country faces a rapidly declining stock of masks. It also said hospital doctors had been advised to use their masks for eight hours instead of replacing them after two."

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-09/germany-faces-backlash-from-neighbors-over-mask-export-ban

effing makes a good point that it's not just about having more hospital beds but it's much easier to access your GP here too

And they're much less bureaucratic, as well - DH works in Switzerland and usually goes to the GP there, but as we're now on lockdown he registered with my GP in Germany. They just took his details over email and registered him provisionally without seeing him, no need to see him or his insurance card unless he gets ill. I find, this is just my own experience, that in Germany, officialdom tends to work on the assumption that you're telling the truth, while in the UK they always seem to be looking to you to prove that you're not lying.

This is down to a number of factors.

The primary one may be how statistics are recorded. So for example in the Uk, Italy etc, if someone sadly dies and they had corona, then it is listed as a corona death, we test post mortem, irrelevant of how chronic or whatever other underlying health issues there were with that patient,.

In Germany If someone sadly dies, and say for example they were an end stage cancer victim them Germany record it as a cancer death. Even if the person had corona.

Scientists are keen to understand the differential between who dies with Corona versus who dies because of it. They are two very different statistics.

The chief scientific officer in the uk has stated at one of Boris’s press conference, that there is indeed an overlap in our numbers. People who were chronically ill and terminal and dies with it and not necessarily because of it. What they don’t know is the size of that overlap, and will only look back and decide when they have this resolved.

Italy is the same, it has a huge amount of elderly deaths annually with respiratory problems, because of their age of their population and having the worst air quality in Europe. Year on year, the amount of deaths in Italy has not spiked, it is within the parameters they would expect.

The issue with corona is not about how many people die as such, that’s a red herring as a stand alone statistic that people are misunderstanding , it’s about how many need hospitalisation because of it, estimated at up to twenty percent of people who get it.

And if those twenty percent who needed hospitalisation, how many would die if they didn’t get it. Hence why they need to flatten the curve. To allow anyone who needs it the chance of care they need. If they are unable to provide it, then the death rate will escalate, potentially massively.

So the death rate in any country as a stand alone statistic needs to be put into context, but also an understanding of how many people need hospitalisation because of corona, and how many would actually die if they didn’t get it became the nhs couldn’t cope and ran out of beds.

Most cases in Germany to date have been among men in the 35 to 59 year bracket.

www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/2020-03-24-en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile

Germany were accused of hogging all the face masks a few weeks ago (towels on sunbeds!);
Ah right, sure, that'll be it 🥱

In Germany If someone sadly dies, and say for example they were an end stage cancer victim them Germany record it as a cancer death. Even if the person had corona.
Read the thread.

Bluntness can you please stop repeating this myth that Germany are not including deaths when people have other conditions. As we've stated several times on this thread alone, the government has been very clear that this is not true.

As a previous poster said, there is no incentive for the government to downplay the number of deaths. They are desperate for people to stay home.

@Elbbob

Ah. That's what has thrown me. Listed separately on the area checker tool.

@Clavinova
Why do you push your anti- German/ EU propaganda here? This thread is about the death rate in Germany, not face masks or „towels on sunbeds“! And btw: Germany ended up NOT hogging the face-masks b/c of the criticism in Europe. Unlike the UK, they learn from their mistakes and try to be better.

The UK already cut back on medical exports last year, due to Brexit. A bit rich to point fingers when Germany does the same thing.

Yes. Germany is also taking overflow ICU patients from France and Italy.

I think we will see more help among countries as people get organised and the panic abates a bit.

The EU is taking measures to ensure that no-one hogs anything due to Corona:
ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_20_458
quote "According to the Withdrawal Agreement, the CPR applies to the UK until programme closure"
Whew, eh?

Clavinova always pushes Daily Mail style Brexit propoganda on mumsnet. Just ignore.

@ravenmum
Germans do as they’re told. Staying indoors means staying indoors not a picnic in the park or walking the dog 3 times a day and then going for a run.
This is not true - and in any case, we're allowed to walk the dog and go for a run as often as we want!

Did you actually listen to the PMs speech or read a newspaper? No? Just for you then
www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-address-to-the-nation-on-coronavirus-23-march-2020

one form of exercise a day - for example a run, walk, or cycle - alone or with members of your household. Just one. Not as often as we want. It's not difficult to understand.

raven is in Germany

We do not have a once a day limit here, for anything. They sort of expect people to be sensible. Putting a number limit on it just leads to a million questions and confusion.