Italy and Germany - why are their figures better?

[thereplycamefromanchorage]

Have been trying to find coverage of this in the news - why are Italy and Germany doing so much better than Spain and France in terms of new infections?

Since we now are in an up trajectory with the virus in the UK, why aren't we looking at what they are doing and trying to emulate this?

LilyPond2 in Bavaria primaries (to year 4) are as TheHoundsofLove describes. From year 5 they're wearing masks all the time atm but this is tied to local cases per per 100000 and subject to review. There's a 3 level plan which has been sent to all parents and can be looked up.

Primary children would wear masks all the time in school and classes in all school types would be halved and groups of no more than 15 taught alternate weeks in school and homeschooling if cases went over 50.

Also In Germany, many health services are privately contracted out, including testing. So it can work very successfully

Privatisation means a profit has to be made, so tell me how well dental and ophthalmics has turned out?

But rather than 5 centrally-run test labs like in the UK, Germany has hundreds and they are controlled at a regional level. This has proven to be more flexible and efficient in this pandemic

I ve a friend who works in an animal health lab, she says during F&M they processed millions of tests but the Govt decided, like with their app, to go their own way and not use existing public health labs/skills and knowledge.

We are governed by ideology, not best practice and when it all goes wrong... we get fined! not this shower of idiots or should be on trial.

I ve a friend who works in an animal health lab, she says during F&M they processed millions of tests but the Govt decided, like with their app, to go their own way and not use existing public health labs/skills and knowledge
I assume you mean in the UK? And F&M is foot and mouth disease?
I am very shocked at this information, but unfortunately not surprised.

What you are saying is that we had the lab capacity already (as evidenced during F&M) but the government decided to ignore it, not use it and start from scratch with their own system that then did not work. Wow, that's really incompetent.
And the companies they chose to use instead were heavily reliant on students who have now gone back to uni, so there are fewer people in those labs now.
I also heard that it was perfectly possible for the labs to introduce automation to speed up the processing of tests, but the labs set up by the government failed to do this.

Thank you @TheHoundsofLove and @UntilYourNextHairBrainedScheme for your replies re schools. So frustrating that our own government refuses to take a lead on masks. Grown adults are tucking masks under their chins on public transport and no one is enforcing the rules. I live in an area with an infection rate four times higher than the threshold for adding foreign countries to the quarantine list, but it's up to head teachers to decide whether to make masks compulsory. At my daughter's high school they are compulsory in communal areas, but at its partner high school almost no one is wearing masks because they're optional.

Am in Germany. DS1 is in secondary school. Masks in all areas of school except classrooms, where they are optional. I went to get him early from his class the other day and not one pupil nor the teacher in his class was wearing one.

To be honest the UK stuff we are hearing here sounds totally random and baffling. None of it makes any sense. We had our lockdown, but it was never as draconian, and it eased fairly quickly.

I don't know all the ins and outs of German healthcare, but everything is much more spread out and not centralised. For example I've had loads of ultrasound scans since coming here. My GP has checked my thyroid with her ultrasound machine. My gynecologist has done all my pregnancy scans with hers, plus checked my kidneys during pregnancy when I complained of aches there. She has two, both of them can do fancy 3D scanning. I was sent to another specialist gynecologist for a more detailed scan where I could have had amniocentesis. I had a different GP check my kidneys on one because I had repeated UTIs and they were concerned. I think DH had one when he broke his foot as well, but I can't remember.

In the UK for all of these instances I'd have had to be referred to radiology at the local hospital. That would have taken longer and IME a lot of the time you simply don't get the scan. The only scans I've had in the UK were the routine ones during pregnancy and then when I was hospitalised with a severe UTI I got one then, (This is probably what rendered my kidneys a bit dodgy in the first place, TBH) but any time I saw my GP for anything urinary related after that I didn't get referred for a scan, even when I was having pain in the kidney area. Here it seems to be "Well we have the machine here, may as well use it".

I would imagine it is much the same as testing. And while all the doctors/labs etc are private, there are plenty of them and they aren't trying to operate centrally, they just claim back their costs from the patient's health insurance. I don't think they can claim for the purchase of the ultrasound machine, but they can claim for each justified use of it, which goes towards offsetting the purchase cost. I know that during pregnancy, my health insurance paid for 3 scans, but my gynecologist just scanned me every time anyway - I must have had about 12.

The only thing I don't like is that if you need an MRI/operation/etc, rather than just being referred to whichever specialist has a space on their waiting list you have to phone around all the local places and find somebody who can fit you in and I find this very stressful and confusing.

With covid testing though it's been quite straightforward. I haven't had a test but from friends who have, you just call your GP, they tell you which test centre to go to and you go there.

Update from Puglia. Our schools were supposed to open on Thursday but it's been put back to Monday so the Covid inspectors can get round each one to make sure measures have been put properly into place ready.
DD is gutted!

Wow, Seeds, sorry for your dd, but that sounds incredibly thorough, and must be reassuring.

Yes, I guess so.
We've consoled her by saying they'll obviously finish later next summer to make up the days!

I can’t see any reason why Germany would be several weeks behind the U.K. in Covid terms. Schools have been back in my region since mid-August and were fully open before the summer holiday too. It’s been life as (nearly) normal for a long time now here.

Mask compliance is MUCH better here. I have never seen anyone over the age of 6 without a mask inside.

Update from Rome - ds started for 3 hours a day last week, closed mon and tues this week due to voting, in weds and thurs for 3 hrs then off fri as they deal with the newly identified rat problem....this is more like an Italy I recognize!

Lee Marshall
@leenelmezzo
·
8h
Rome Fiumicino airport. I landed from Athens at 16:40. Did free Covid test at 17.10. Got results at 17.40 (negative). No Boris, the reason the UK’s infection rates are worse than Italy’s isn’t because Brits are “freedom-loving”. It’s because you and your government are shite.

. I work with people with disabilities and weve worked very hard with each individual to help them cope with and understand about mask wearing and social distance, to ensure they can continue to go out and about while protecting one another as many have comorbidities which make them high risk. Not all of them can manage but the vast majority can and are now (having been using masks, hand washing more often especially when returning to the house, and social distancing since March) very well adapted.

This.

In Japan where I live, mask-wearing is the normal indoors and very widespread outdoors as well. It is unusual to see someone without a mask in a shop and if I do see it I assume there is a real and serious reason why they are not wearing one.

Masks are common though not universal even on people with obvious learning disabilities. With care and patience, it's very often possible to help people with LD to wear a mask.

Here in Japan masks have always been worn by a lot of people, like when they have a cold or cold sore, or in crowded spaces during flu season etc. So most people are used to wearing them. I never did wear one until COVID19, and when I first started I found it very uncomfortable and odd feeling, but because I was surrounded by other people wearing masks, I persisted and pretty soon got used to it.

In the UK, people who are trying on masks for the first time and finding it uncomfortable are being way too quick to ascribe this to some sort of disability/condition, and then give up, claiming that it's impossible for them. I'm sure there is a small % of people who genuinely cannot wear a mask, but no way can this account for the huge numbers of mask refusers that are being seen in the UK.

This article pretty much explains it for Italy

Some of my colleagues have started returning to the office. One had been working from his family home in Sicily, as he returned to Rome he got tested at the airport, results in 30 mins. Another got tested because her SIL had been exposed to someone who had tested positive at work. She got a test the same day simply by turning up at a centre and had her results in under an hour.

Friends of mine were contacted and tested because someone at a christening was found to be positive, so they traced all attendees and tested them within 48 hrs and results were available later the same day. All different areas of the country, north and south.

That is a system which is working, unlike the one in the UK.

I would like to add that Germany having a scientist as their chancellor is a big advantage. Merkel isn’t perfect but if you need trust in your leadership during a pandemic then a quantum physicist who had also gained 17 honorary degrees throughout her career is a good start.

Slightly more reassuring than Boris’s classic literature and ancient philosophy.

Ireland have a Tanaiste who is a physician, and he is thought to have done well also.

@herecomesthsun, didn’t he actually go and work on the front line at one point too?

@Kokeshi123, there is another thread espousing Japan's approach but simplifying it to "they didn't lockdown yet are doing better than us" without really considering the differences in social norms. I work with Japanese students and whilst undoubtedly reductive, at our training, we are told "please don't hug the Japanese students or stand too close to them" and of course, masks are completely normal.

In other news, dd's school will be half online and half at school which I am pretty incandescent about. Not because I don't appreciate the measures being taken, (classes have been halved) but because at our school it's only the third and fourth years affected. Which risks Serie A and Serie B to use an Italian analogy.

Are Germany doing more testing? No, less- because they never lost control in the first place.

When we shut down track and trace they were ramping it up- letting regions control how best to trace people and leaning on local police expertise. They built the data collection and processing ability as they went, rather than starting with a grand plan.

They were asking every suitable lab in the country to convert to Covid testing and then building up quality control as they went. We requisitioned all the precusors so even labs which could do it weren't allowed and (as mentioned above) all tests had to be sent to just 5 labs. It was months before the government reversed that batshit position.

They started a very similar app to ours around the same time, but quickly realised it would take far too long to build from scratch and so switched to the apple/google one. We were the last country in the world to make that decision after months of insisting ours would be ready 'soon'.

When we finally did decide that track and trace was quite important we had another grand plan to recruit and train thousands of people from scratch. When that didn't work we outsourced to companies like Hayes travel agency (I'm not kidding).

Germany are now able to target random testing at outbreak regions and track those who come into contact with cases- so they don't need to do as many tests as us to keep on top of it.

They can keep ticking over with bearable precautions while we have to lock down and hope that this time the Government will sort tracing and testing so that we might get on top of it for next summer.

A German friend said 'is because we actially do what we are told' a Romanian friend says 'figures are lower there because we are used to being told what to do - but they probably lie anyway'.

We have more BAME communities and an obesity problem

@Remmy123

We have more BAME communities and an obesity problem

Today there was research published that BAME are not at more risk due to genetic factors, but more down to environmental factors and pre-existing conditions: www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8767793/BAME-Genetic-variation-unlikely-influence-Covid-19-mortality.html (apologies for Fail link, here is the journal link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567134820303385) IMHO I don't think the difference is figures is particularly related to the population, I think posters above pointing to management of the pandemic in other countries are more accurate.

Actually we have tested more than Germany . So perhaps they are following the rules more .

The reason the tests like they use in Italy are not used is because they are less accurate . But in the bigger scheme it is probably better to have a faster less accurate test even if it does produce some false results .

Hopefully the Cambridge one will happen soon

Mandatory masks and social distancing in schools and much more compliance with the rules.

I think it's travel, overseas travel is what caused this world wide pandemic to begin with. The UK, France and Spain are highly travelled to destinations in and out of. Spain had a very strict lockdown and have had the mask rule in all areas for a long time, but they've had an influx of visitors.