Ask HN: Germans and Spaniards – Why the dramatic difference in death rates? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Germans and Spaniards – Why the dramatic difference in death rates?

25 pointspwned115 comments

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

Germany and Spain have roughly the same number of cases. Yet deaths in Germany are at 25 and in Spain they are 20x that 600. What is the difference?

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The German expert who worked on site in the German epicenter has explained that phenomenon that they went aggressively after all contacts, very early on. Italy and Spain did not.

German seniors also don't live at home with their families, and it hadn't hit their homes yet. Once it does and it's pretty close, the rates will jump up. The health system itself is not better than in Italy or Spain.

I think it's also geography. All the major epicenters are on the same latitude. Germany is more northern. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/45th_parallel_north

At-risk people in Germany are getting infected at a slower rate due to their living arrangements. For example, it is maybe more typical for Spanish people to have their grandparents living with them, or maybe old Spanish people live near big cities whereas in Germany they live in smaller towns. Germany population density is lower across the whole country so that definitely helps.

I'd say that there are several reasons:

- Spain's government celebrated the 8 of May parade against recommendations of EU and Madrid regional government [1]. In 1918 Philadelphia suffered from this mistake [2].

- Spains's government and journalists downplayed the fears to the COVID-19 of people during weeks while Italy was having more than 1k contagions. They also encouraged people to get out, go to bars, etc. Because, "it's only the flu" [3].

- Madrid Barajas Airport has the biggest flow of air traffic in country.

- Spain is depopulated but there are a great concentration of people living in Madrid [4] and Madrid hospitals have collapsed (they have a death each 16 minutes [5])

[1] https://www.elmundo.es/espana/2020/03/14/5e6bf851fc6c83330c8...

[2] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/15/us/philadelphia-1918-span...

[3] https://www.rtve.es/noticias/20200225/lorenzo-mila-tve-desde...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Spain

[5] https://elpais.com/sociedad/2020-03-18/lunes-un-muerto-cada-...

Don't know for Germany but 50% of the cases in Spain are in Madrid so hospitals are collapsed. That info is not in the link.

I would say we need more information per country to understand differences.

Some user has pointed out in some other corona HN post, that Italy has a very high antibiotic's resistance. And corona does not kill directly after all in most cases. Its the bacteria and other illness you might have, which gets you.

https://atlas.ecdc.europa.eu/public/index.aspx?Dataset=27&He...

Spain does not have that high resistance. But still wanted to point out this info

Propaganda, deaths are recorded under other medical conditions. The same reason German national TV broadcaster does this https://twitter.com/ThomasKycia/status/1239671652755091456 Translation: Bad Poland breaking union of EU, very next day strong Germany limiting access for the good of our people.

keine Grenzen, unless there is 3M distribution center full of face masks on our territory, then https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-09/germany-f...

Are you able to provide any evidence for your claim? You would know that how?

I also suspect that germany is not attributing death to coronavirus when the dead had other disease like cancer. But i lack source as well.

It's just that the number are so off with other countries that it is too good to be true, like the dieselgate.

This rumor is being debunked e.g. here:

https://old.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/fkp75t/coronavirus...

Have no source, only heard the story that in Italy (or Spain, or both) deceased who have not been testet for Covid-19 before their death, are being tested afterwards. This is not being done in Germany. Thus the difference in reported deaths from Covid-19.

Not sure whether this is true. Would be grateful to get a reference to an actual source to verify or falsify this.

https://apnews.com/ad9a6af47c3b55fd83080c9168afaaf4 claims it is a matter of testing more people, including younger ones, and using the outcomes of those tests to quarantine patients.

Spain probably has more cases but is doing less testing.

South korea is doing far more tests than Germany and still has 3+x the deaths

Awesome Conjecture! A load of experts in this thread.

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