That's certainly part of it but you're STILL doing better than us per capita right now.

You’re allowed some fuck ups along the way and even with those duck ups your healthcare is still not at risk of saturation. Your successful response in spring is not luck. It gave you ground to fuck up, which is of course still unfortunate, but still superior to the majority of western countries

Our lockdown's effectiveness is debatable, with caseloads rising across the country again now, so much so that the government are reviewing their Christmas plans which are currently something along the lines of 'go and see all your friends, get smashed, and make sure you visit your parents and nan shortly thereafter'.

It has got to change unfortunately.

This post was edited by dro94 on Dec 15 2020 03:23pm

The US is a total shitshow, not really the standard I want to compare my country with when it comes to covid.


That's not true. Our government just imposed a new lockdown starting tomorrow, in the middle of christmas season, which will obviously be devastating for the retailers who have to close down one week before christmas - and the reasoning is that our healthcare system "is dangerously close to saturation right now, and with case numbers going up again and the typical 2 week delay, it would be overwhelmed soon if we dont act now." So at least according to our own government and health experts, we already are a saturation right now. Needless to say, our weekly incidence is at about the same level as many of our neighbors, or even better. Among them the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Poland, Czechia, Italy and the UK. None of these countries went into lockdown in spite of having comparable or worse numbers.

Our successful response in spring is NOT the reason why we had some room to fuck up. Most of Europe got its case numbers down to a very managable, comfortable level in early summer, even those who performed poorly during the first wave, like Spain or France. Then, tourism was allowed again and people got careless in general. All of Europe had some room for error going into the cold season. Didnt last long and now, everyone is struggling one way or the other. At the moment, Germany is catching up to other Western countries in terms of deaths, and we dont even have an open economy to show for it; instead, we're purportedly having to go into lockdown again at the most inopportune moment. For the longest time, we managed to strike a good balance, comparatively mild restrictions and comparatively low numbers. In recent weeks, this has flipped completely and we now have the worst of both worlds, high numbers and economically crippling restrictions.

@ bold - welcome to America

@ rest - i see. I don’t follow your country too closely just from time
To time and for the vast majority of the pandemic your country has been superior to all or the vast majority of western countries. I don’t believe in luck

It’s too early to know exactly how you performed to your European colleagues even if it feels restrictions are in place. Wait until 1st quarter gdp data 2021 and also look at hospitalization/mortality rate at that time to make proper /accurate comparisons

This post was edited by Bazi on Dec 15 2020 03:48pm

You often imply a false equivalence between the US and Europe when we are performing significantly worse. At least that's the way I see it.

Large parts of the U.S. never had many crippling restrictions.


When Italy got blindsided by the first wave - do you think that was incompetence? Or was it just bad luck?




That was mostly during summer. Both during the first wave in spring, and during the current winter wave, Europe as a whole is not really doing much better than the U.S. Remember when France (pop: 67m) had 80k cases in late fall? Or when Czechia (pop: 10m) had over 11k cases?
Anyway, my main point was that your (and Bazi's) impression of Germany's performance is outdated. We're not doing well at all as of late, neither in terms of infections/deaths nor in terms of keeping the economy open.

Italy to Europe is like NY to the US. Both of these get a pass. I was referring to the rest of Europe which you guys have also performed superior to. Italy and NY were bad boys and No presents from Santa.

I’m hearing you that you don’t think you’re performing superior now. I still thing have to give it some time to properly evaluate it because UK is about to go through a shit storm here soon

This post was edited by Bazi on Dec 15 2020 11:59pm

Let's put some data behind our discussion. Here's a chart of the 7-day incidence per 1m pop for selected countries:

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-09-15..latest&country=DEU~USA~GBR~ITA~FRA~POL~ESP&region=World&casesMetric=true&interval=smoothed&perCapita=true&smoothing=7&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc

As you can see, the UK, France, Italy, Spain and Poland (combined population: around 278million, the U.S. have 330m) all had huge incidences in late October and early November. The U.S. only pulled "ahead" over the past 2 or so weeks to again be in a class of its own.

You can also see that Germany currently neither has a particularly huge incidence, nor a dramatic surge, relative to its neighbors, which is why I disagree so vehemently with our lockdown a week before christmas. I also struggle to see how our healthcare system is supposed to be near its breaking point like our politicians and experts claim, considering the fact that we have a more well-equiped and resilient healthcare than our neighbors and had lower numbers throughout October and November.

Which brings me back to my original gripe: our government should either have taken precautions back in October to keep our numbers really low, or it should let things fly for one more week until after Christmas, so that our retailers and inner cities dont get devastated. Imho, it would have sufficed to do the lockdown during the two weeks after christmas, where schools are closed and most businesses are going through a lull anyway.

Were your hospitals at saturation points during the early November spike depicted ? I don’t know anything about German hospital saturation or heard about it during that time?

Aka if all those numbers are accurate don’t know why EXTREME measures need to be taken now in Germany? Lockdowns should only be when hospital saturation is an honest threat

This post was edited by Bazi on Dec 16 2020 01:28am