For example, Germany’s death rate has been higher than the UK’s recently, even before Omicron, yet their case counts have been similar and are now lower.
One of the differences between Germany and the UK is that we have in Germany three times the amount of ICU beds and are thus likely to put people into the ICU that wouldn’t get there in the UK.
It’s possible that people get put on ventilators that should not be on ventilators and die as a result?
Looking at cumulative numbers per population on OurWorldInData:
As of Nov 21, Germany had performed 1001 tests per thousand people, vs 4697 for the UK.
They’d found 64.6 cases per thousand vs 144.6 in the UK.
The cumulative CFR was 1.84% vs 1.46% in the UK. Checking 3 weeks later for lag effects, Dec 12 was 1.62% vs 1.35%.
My guess is that all else equal, the UK has had a similar or higher IFR, but is catching a larger fraction of infections. In general. I’m not going to try to tease apart the differences in the current or recent situations.
One of the differences between Germany and the UK is that we have in Germany three times the amount of ICU beds and are thus likely to put people into the ICU that wouldn’t get there in the UK.
It’s possible that people get put on ventilators that should not be on ventilators and die as a result?
I find the ‘ICU access is bad actually’ to this extent unlikely to be the explanation? Even if it’s bad, could it possibly be big enough?
I just wanted to offer it as one hypothesis.
A priori we would expect that the higher ICU beds help with reducing the number of deads, the fact that this doesn’t happen alone is remarkable.
Looking at cumulative numbers per population on OurWorldInData:
As of Nov 21, Germany had performed 1001 tests per thousand people, vs 4697 for the UK.
They’d found 64.6 cases per thousand vs 144.6 in the UK.
The cumulative CFR was 1.84% vs 1.46% in the UK. Checking 3 weeks later for lag effects, Dec 12 was 1.62% vs 1.35%.
My guess is that all else equal, the UK has had a similar or higher IFR, but is catching a larger fraction of infections. In general. I’m not going to try to tease apart the differences in the current or recent situations.