Germany: 0.4% mortality of #COVID19 cases (27,300 diagnoses, 115 deaths).
Compare with 4% France, 5% UK, 6% Spain.
Germany, either share your secret weapon with the rest of the world or fix the data errors.
Good EU policy requires good data across EU.
worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Let's see some possible explanations for Germany's surprisingly low #COVID19 mortality:
1) Epidemic started later in Germany so fewer cases have resolved.
Unlikely because the epidemic started around the same time in Germany as in, say, France.
...
2) Germany has more hospital beds and ICUs per capita than other countries.
Unlikely because the deaths in the above calculations occurred before saturation of health systems in other countries.
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3) The proportion of older people in Germany is much lower than in other countries.
Actually, Germany has more people over age 65 (21%) than France (18%) and the UK (17%)
populationpyramid.net/hnp/population…
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4) Germany has more extensive testing than other European countries.
True, but South Korea had 3 times more tests per capita and 3 times more mortality (1.2%) than Germany. (Is Germany testing predominantly young people?)
ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid1…
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5) The mortality in the other countries is way too high because they are not testing enough.
True, but that doesn't explain Germany's astonishingly low mortality.
6) Germany is not doing post-mortem testing in pneumonia cases.
Is this true? Several people mentioned it but I can't confirm. Any references?
7) A combination of several of the above
The point is not that European countries, including Germany, should be able to correctly estimate #COVID19 mortality at this time.
In fact, estimating unbiased case fatality risks (CFRs) isn't possible at this stage of the epidemic, as we explain here:
journals.plos.org/plosntds/artic…
The point is that the EU needs a coordinated exit strategy for #COVID19 if it wants to preserve a union without borders and a sense of common purpose.
Making sure that data are collected in a consistent way would be a good first step towards a European solution.
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