So Germany, which is right next door to the Netherlands/France/Italy, is experiencing no excess mortality. What did they do right and how can we have some of that.
The numbers I read in two different sources: Germany has about 20,000 ventilator places, while France, Italy, Spain, and UK have about 5,000 each.
So in Germany, we didn't hit the "no more ventilators" situation and people didn't die.
Edit: Here a recent article confirming it: "Germany still has 10,000 free ICU beds" (in German: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/coronavirus-in-deutschla...)
Edit 2: Pretty sick, considering that in Italy and France thousands are dying because there are no ICU beds, and here in Germany they are just empty and unused.
Had this virus affected the kidneys instead of the lungs, the outcome would have been way different.
Also, over the last week, mortality has been increasing here as well. So better "den Tag nicht vor dem Abend loben".
And if my aunt had wheels and pedals, she'd be a bicycle.
They didn't stock up on ventilators by throwing darts at a dartboard to choose what type of medical equipment to buy. They stocked up on ventilators because a pandemic centering on a respiratory illness was statistically much more likely to occur than one centering on the kidneys.
But that would not make your aunt a deadly virus, would it?
> statistically much more likely
Maybe. Just like the US did. Or maybe it was some other reason. I believe you don't have any source?
Kidney infections don't tend to spread easily.
Maybe Germany has 4x as much ventilators as France, but also k times as much of many other things that matter?
I wonder if countries like France will realize they have to improve and become more like Germany instead of doubling down on their downwards spiral.
Then the US should be much better off, because they have about ten times more ventilators than Germany has. But only four times the population.
But, the US was unlucky to have 50% of cases in only one city. So they ran out of ventilators in that one place, while having a surplus elsewhere.
They reacted quickly and correctly by sending hospital ships (much quicker than trying to put ICU beds on trucks).
Of course, compared to the EU, the US is still handling the situation way better.
https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/04/06/coronavirus-update-u...
Incompetency kills.
In reality, we had just four times more ventilators available than any of the larger countries around us, so we never hit the "no treatment possible" situation.
Testing in Germany started very late, but was then increased rapidly.
As of today, Germany has done 1,317,887 tests. The US: 3,029,979 tests, Italy: 1,073,689 tests. (Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/) So not exceptionally more than others.