Semi-OT: Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread V (Read Post 1 & FAQ)

[Dirk]

How in the world is Germany able to perform 500k tests a week? More than the rest of europe combined. More than the US and South Korea combined. Any poster from Germany that can explain the numbers?

https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/03/26/world/europe/26reuters-health-coronavirus-germany-tests.html

German industry is famed for its efficiency and isn't burdened by a process that prioritizes how new tech and IP can be capitalized on by large corporations. Not the whole answer, but a big part of it.

500K is most likely bogus

Google searching, gives me this,
https://www.alm-ev.de/pressemitteilung/alm-fuer-ressourcenorientierten-einsatz-der-coronavirus-sars-cov-2-tests-ueber-400000-tests-seit-anfang-maerz.html

Minister says 400K total since the beginning of March. So no way they are doing 500K a week. I think it says they have a max capacity of doing just over 58K a day.

They apparently do about 300K tests a week. Not 500K.

In this article,
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/25/820595489/why-germanys-coronavirus-death-rate-is-far-lower-than-in-other-countries
You can read this

"We have a culture here in Germany that is actually not supporting a centralized diagnostic system," said Drosten, "so Germany does not have a public health laboratory that would restrict other labs from doing the tests. So we had an open market from the beginning."

In other words, Germany's equivalent to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the Robert Koch Institute — makes recommendations but does not call the shots on testing for the entire country. Germany's 16 federal states make their own decisions on coronavirus testing because each of them is responsible for their own health care systems.

When Drosten's university medical center developed what became the test recommended by the World Health Organization, they rolled these tests out to their colleagues throughout Germany in January.

"And they of course rolled this out to labs they know in the periphery and to hospital labs in the area where they are situated," Drosten said. "This created a situation where, let's say, by the beginning or middle of February, testing was already in place, broadly."

Drosten said that has meant quicker, earlier and more widespread testing for COVID-19 in Germany than in other countries.

[BballIsLife11]

https://youtu.be/JnXzGB170GI
Long and somewhat boring but interesting perspective from factual data.

[LAKESHOW]

Spain
Nursing homes (there are some really horror stories)

517 dead
1.600 infected
390.000 people are in nursing homes in Spain

Health Workers
Almost 6000 infected
That's estimated to be 14% of the total positive cases

Those rapid tests referenced were to be used on health workers and in nursing homes.

Truly a sad situation in spain

[Badonkadonk]

How in the world is Germany able to perform 500k tests a week? More than the rest of europe combined. More than the US and South Korea combined. Any poster from Germany that can explain the numbers?

https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/03/26/world/europe/26reuters-health-coronavirus-germany-tests.html

German industry is famed for its efficiency and isn't burdened by a process that prioritizes how new tech and IP can be capitalized on by large corporations. Not the whole answer, but a big part of it.

500K is most likely bogus

Google searching, gives me this,
https://www.alm-ev.de/pressemitteilung/alm-fuer-ressourcenorientierten-einsatz-der-coronavirus-sars-cov-2-tests-ueber-400000-tests-seit-anfang-maerz.html

Minister says 400K total since the beginning of March. So no way they are doing 500K a week. I think it says they have a max capacity of doing just over 58K a day.

They apparently do about 300K tests a week. Not 500K.

In this article,
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/25/820595489/why-germanys-coronavirus-death-rate-is-far-lower-than-in-other-countries
You can read this

"We have a culture here in Germany that is actually not supporting a centralized diagnostic system," said Drosten, "so Germany does not have a public health laboratory that would restrict other labs from doing the tests. So we had an open market from the beginning."

In other words, Germany's equivalent to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the Robert Koch Institute — makes recommendations but does not call the shots on testing for the entire country. Germany's 16 federal states make their own decisions on coronavirus testing because each of them is responsible for their own health care systems.

When Drosten's university medical center developed what became the test recommended by the World Health Organization, they rolled these tests out to their colleagues throughout Germany in January.

"And they of course rolled this out to labs they know in the periphery and to hospital labs in the area where they are situated," Drosten said. "This created a situation where, let's say, by the beginning or middle of February, testing was already in place, broadly."

Drosten said that has meant quicker, earlier and more widespread testing for COVID-19 in Germany than in other countries.

300K puts it closer to the US, which executed ~330K over 8 days. It's still low on a tests-per-million basis, which normalizes for population:

https://khn.org/news/fact-check-trumps-boast-about-u-s-south-korea-coronavirus-testing-misses-the-mark/

South Korea still the masters of efficiency. The larger point in that article was this IMO:

In the entire month of February, American labs ran fewer than 1,000 coronavirus tests, per the volunteer COVID tracker. (Government health officials had begun sounding the alarm in January.)

If not for the early suppression and downplaying of the issue, it's not unreasonable that the US would have been testing as efficiently as other top nations by now.

[Dirk]

Damn these Czechoslovakians are ruining my business

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HLrm0pqBN_5bdyysOeoOBX4pt4oFDBhsC_jpblXpNtQ/edit#heading=h.9yzpxufkt5ow
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EWpWmyjzM4sNBF-7jp_1Y9a-pqiRg0wakGXy7kj11RA/preview?sle=true

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

[AdagioPace]

How in the world is Germany able to perform 500k tests a week? More than the rest of europe combined. More than the US and South Korea combined. Any poster from Germany that can explain the numbers?

https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/03/26/world/europe/26reuters-health-coronavirus-germany-tests.html

German industry is famed for its efficiency and isn't burdened by a process that prioritizes how new tech and IP can be capitalized on by large corporations. Not the whole answer, but a big part of it.

500K is most likely bogus

Google searching, gives me this,
https://www.alm-ev.de/pressemitteilung/alm-fuer-ressourcenorientierten-einsatz-der-coronavirus-sars-cov-2-tests-ueber-400000-tests-seit-anfang-maerz.html

Minister says 400K total since the beginning of March. So no way they are doing 500K a week. I think it says they have a max capacity of doing just over 58K a day.

They apparently do about 300K tests a week. Not 500K.

In this article,
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/25/820595489/why-germanys-coronavirus-death-rate-is-far-lower-than-in-other-countries
You can read this

"We have a culture here in Germany that is actually not supporting a centralized diagnostic system," said Drosten, "so Germany does not have a public health laboratory that would restrict other labs from doing the tests. So we had an open market from the beginning."

In other words, Germany's equivalent to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the Robert Koch Institute — makes recommendations but does not call the shots on testing for the entire country. Germany's 16 federal states make their own decisions on coronavirus testing because each of them is responsible for their own health care systems.

When Drosten's university medical center developed what became the test recommended by the World Health Organization, they rolled these tests out to their colleagues throughout Germany in January.

"And they of course rolled this out to labs they know in the periphery and to hospital labs in the area where they are situated," Drosten said. "This created a situation where, let's say, by the beginning or middle of February, testing was already in place, broadly."

Drosten said that has meant quicker, earlier and more widespread testing for COVID-19 in Germany than in other countries.

on the opposite side of the spectrum Italy's regional health care units do a lot of post-mortem tests and there seems to be a common line followed by regions. Diagnostic disagreement between countries doesn't help shed light on lethality.

[zonedefense]

How in the world is Germany able to perform 500k tests a week? More than the rest of europe combined. More than the US and South Korea combined. Any poster from Germany that can explain the numbers?

https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/03/26/world/europe/26reuters-health-coronavirus-germany-tests.html

German industry is famed for its efficiency and isn't burdened by a process that prioritizes how new tech and IP can be capitalized on by large corporations. Not the whole answer, but a big part of it.

500K is most likely bogus

Google searching, gives me this,
https://www.alm-ev.de/pressemitteilung/alm-fuer-ressourcenorientierten-einsatz-der-coronavirus-sars-cov-2-tests-ueber-400000-tests-seit-anfang-maerz.html

Minister says 400K total since the beginning of March. So no way they are doing 500K a week. I think it says they have a max capacity of doing just over 58K a day.

They apparently do about 300K tests a week. Not 500K.

In this article,
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/25/820595489/why-germanys-coronavirus-death-rate-is-far-lower-than-in-other-countries
You can read this

"We have a culture here in Germany that is actually not supporting a centralized diagnostic system," said Drosten, "so Germany does not have a public health laboratory that would restrict other labs from doing the tests. So we had an open market from the beginning."

In other words, Germany's equivalent to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the Robert Koch Institute — makes recommendations but does not call the shots on testing for the entire country. Germany's 16 federal states make their own decisions on coronavirus testing because each of them is responsible for their own health care systems.

When Drosten's university medical center developed what became the test recommended by the World Health Organization, they rolled these tests out to their colleagues throughout Germany in January.

"And they of course rolled this out to labs they know in the periphery and to hospital labs in the area where they are situated," Drosten said. "This created a situation where, let's say, by the beginning or middle of February, testing was already in place, broadly."

Drosten said that has meant quicker, earlier and more widespread testing for COVID-19 in Germany than in other countries.

The guy you quoted (Drosten) mentioned the number.

"Christian Drosten - a Berlin research virologist - said on Thursday that Germany was carrying out "extremely high numbers" of tests, averaging around 500,000 a week."

Just did some research and saw numbers from the Robert-Koch-Institut (basically the German version of the CDC). They mentioned 250k last week with the ability to increase to 350-400k within a week. RKI numbers do not include tests performed by private labs. Not really sure if Drosten knows more about the private test numbers and included them in his total.

[LKN]

Damn these Czechoslovakians are ruining my business

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HLrm0pqBN_5bdyysOeoOBX4pt4oFDBhsC_jpblXpNtQ/edit#heading=h.9yzpxufkt5ow
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EWpWmyjzM4sNBF-7jp_1Y9a-pqiRg0wakGXy7kj11RA/preview?sle=true

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

I mean even if wearing a mask only helps a little.... it's not like it hurts!

[Paija]

Our small corner of the world.
Latvia 244 positives from 10613 tested (daily increases last days +41 +17+24+23), 16 in hospitals, 0 deaths, 0 critically ill (yet).

Estonia 538 positives from 7090 tested (last increase +134, but is the result of two days), 1 death, 6 critical condition.

Lithuania 290 positives from 4320 tested (+16 last day), 4 deaths, 1 critical.

In Latvia they announced that in 5 cases there is community spread, because it is not clear how they got it. So for the weekend the shopping malls will be closed except food, pharmacies, pet stores (will be reopened next week). No ban on going outside etc. yet, but people are encouraged to keep distance.

Employees of most affected industries (restaurants, tourism, entertainment) will get benefits. If the company's turnover this March is 30% less than last March they can apply and the employees will receive 75% of their salaries (but up to 700 eur/mo) paid by the state so as to keep them employed for duration of the emergency situations. As the average wage was about 1000 eur, it will be close to the average income for those lower salaried people. it is not clear yet what would be the solution for self-employed people unfortunately.

[ken6199]

Damn these Czechoslovakians are ruining my business

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HLrm0pqBN_5bdyysOeoOBX4pt4oFDBhsC_jpblXpNtQ/edit#heading=h.9yzpxufkt5ow
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EWpWmyjzM4sNBF-7jp_1Y9a-pqiRg0wakGXy7kj11RA/preview?sle=true

Spoiler:

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

Haha, amazing stuff. Bookmarked. They can crush my soul, but they will never ruin my business!

(I thought very hard where my original quote came from maybe I had a wasted night after a bottle of nice scotch and posted that? )

[Paija]

I do not know if this is too OT for this thread. If you have children, there are often situations where you KNOW exactly what will happen and you try to warn them about it ... only to have a satisfaction of "I told you so". So this is probably how Italians now look at other countries, especially those like UK (who wanted to be different) or US (who had more time to prepare, but...)

[ken6199]

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/how-will-coronavirus-end/608719/

A little long but I recommend everyone to read it. A good, objective article with zero personal emotions mixed in it which is hard to find these days. It highlighted 3 possible scenarios
1) Every country win the battle at the same time
2) Herd immunity (with very big cost)
3) With corrected social behavior we buy the time and wait for the vaccine. The silver lining of that is after this whole thing our social behavior can be changed for good and with that we will be better prepared for future epidemics like this. Just like how we discovered, suffered, and now better prepared against HIV.

[LKN]

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/how-will-coronavirus-end/608719/

A little long but I recommend everyone to read it. A good, objective article with zero personal emotions mixed in it which is hard to find these days. It highlighted 3 possible scenarios
1) Every country win the battle at the same time
2) Herd immunity (with very big cost)
3) With corrected social behavior we buy the time and wait for the vaccine. The silver lining of that is after this whole thing our social behavior can be changed for good and with that we will be better prepared for future epidemics like this. Just like how we discovered, suffered, and now better prepared against HIV.

I'll second this - that article is a really good read

[LKN]

This is something I'm concerned about (and not just for the US).

Read on Twitter

?s=20

[zimpy27]

Damn these Czechoslovakians are ruining my business

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HLrm0pqBN_5bdyysOeoOBX4pt4oFDBhsC_jpblXpNtQ/edit#heading=h.9yzpxufkt5ow
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EWpWmyjzM4sNBF-7jp_1Y9a-pqiRg0wakGXy7kj11RA/preview?sle=true

Spoiler:

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

Haha, amazing stuff. Bookmarked. They can crush my soul, but they will never ruin my business!

(I thought very hard where my original quote came from maybe I had a wasted night after a bottle of nice scotch and posted that? )

Tissue paper and kitchen towel may be rarer than actual masks at this point

[Paija]

Up to some 20 years ago surgical masks were made from gauze and washed in high temperatures and later sterilized and reused many times.

[zimpy27]

This is something I'm concerned about (and not just for the US).

Read on Twitter

?s=20

I was speaking to some doctors and nurses in Australia and the differences seem quite stark to the US.

Most of their job is risk assessment, they are the most valuable resource in the healthcare system and the system knows it (still not perfect). A hospital is a building, you can make one in a few days. It takes a decade nearly to create a doctor, decades for specialists. It's just completely bizarre you'd risk that for saving costs on PPE.

[bisme37]

Read on Twitter

[Triples333]

USA just passed Italy in total cases and passes China (officially) on the next update for the most in the world. Sigh. This is like watching the Devil's Olympics.

[OkcSinceSGA]

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