People from other countries are always hating "just wait, we laughed too, but then things got worse!"
But I have the feeling, in Germany we are doing pretty good for ourselves.
I don't think this will be over soon, but when I look at our numbers, I just can't see it getting much worse, let alone as bad as our neighbors or the US has it...
Death rates will rise and things will get worse, but if we are lucky not dramatically so.
In contrast to literally every other large European country, we did a lot of testing (compare for example CDR for France against Germany, we did ten times more tests especially early on). If you run the numbers on tests vs. infections, assuming that death rates are more accurate, you have to conclude that Italy, Spain and France likely have a magnitude more cases than tests would suggest.
Initial infections were mostly young people at the carnival events. This helps with the death rate.
Furthermore, Germany is more decentralized than any other country in the EU, and has "decent" capabilities spread.
We had a good start. Call it luck. However, it'll get worse, especially since people are itching for it to be over.
Here in Germany, we have the "weekend reporting" lull, where cases go down. Each time, people in big cities somehow take this as "peak reached" and go out. All actions have a two-week lag, so we don't really know anything about what works and what doesn't. Yet.
We NEED to be vigilant now, and you need to urge everyone you know to keep distancing and quarantining. Do your part.
Yes, it's 27C and sunny outside, but we are not over the bump yet.
IF we keep going like this, we may be able to get over this crisis without ever having a health care catastrophe like France, Spain and Italy.
But if we let our guard down too early, then we can get in trouble.
Yes, we were lucky with initial cases and our testing capability. But if we get to infection rates like other countries (10x more than current numbers suggest, at least), then our hospital system will also collapse.
It's best to ignore daily infection numbers, especially here where few cases are sent to RKI over week-ends and holidays.
Let's celebrate when the death rate goes toward zero.
The peak of the last weekly cycle was April 2nd, and was the highest peak yet.
The current cycle is still in progress. Cases get added to previous days of the week retroactively. For example, there were days when it looked like case would go down, and then the next day several thousand cases were added to prior days and we went back to the weekly cycle.
We need to wait until next week to make any judgement about what is going on right now.
Up until now, there seems to be a linear increase if we ignore the cyclic component. At least for two weeks, people have been fantasizing about a decline that did not occur.
I agree that it looks like as if we'll have less cases this week. However, since it's holiday, this may be deceptive.
We will not know for certain until next week, perhaps week after next week.
It's too early to celebrate.
Obviously I share the hope.
Wait few days after Eastern celebration, parks in Munich are full, people around houses are celebrating in packs. Even deep in woods 30 miles away isn’t that empty as it was few days ago. 4000+ new cases alone yesterday. So another 200 intensive care beds needed. I am really worried about all this careless “we are doing well”.
The ones say “we’re doing great”, covidiots believe that and don’t follow rules, because “we’re doing great”. I would say “we’re doing great” when daily infection rate drops from current 4000+ to 500.
We reacted late, but not as late as for example Italy. And at least where I live, many people tried to reduce social contacts. Not all obviously, but streets got emptier. But probably the most relevant thing to do was closing schools and especially kindergartens.
It may just work out fine, I think it also depends on whether people get their shit together during the Easter weekend regarding family visits. Good weather also helps making things look less grim.
We acted later than Italy, in temporal terms. Maybe earlier in terms of the infection curve.
At some point there wasn't anything to act on. Cases where far and few between and have been individually isolated for a time. There was no way to find community spread because there was no way to identify other cases without testing millions. And the official incidence rate is still about one in a thousand people.
But I have the feeling, in Germany we are doing pretty good for ourselves.
I don't think this will be over soon, but when I look at our numbers, I just can't see it getting much worse, let alone as bad as our neighbors or the US has it...