05-27-2020, 11:29 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-27-2020, 11:47 PM by BostonCard.)
The difference is that Germany’s rising case load was being detected in the community. As Goose mentioned, Charité developed the German test before our CDC developed the one in the US. Moreover, they were able to implement it widespread enough that they could test anyone with a flu-like illness, and thus were able to find the first case of community spread in Berlin early.
In contrast, the US had very few tests and was restricting testing only to people who had traveled from China. This missed a early community transmission, and it was only after a hospital in the Bay Area begged the CDC to test a critically ill patient with COVID-19 (and were denied several times before the CDC relented) that we finally saw that there had been community transmission. The other example happened when a cluster of deaths from an influenza like illness was identified in a nursing home in Washington.
So, while early case counts were similar, it’s because in Germany they actually were testing enough that they had a good handle of where the disease was spreading and how fast. In the US, the dearth of testing meant we were flying blind, and we took the absence of diagnosed Covid-19 cases as evidence that everything was hunky dory. In fact, Covid-19 was undoubtably spreading and it was only by mid-March, when those patients were showing up in hospitals that we recognized the gravity of the crisis. Had tests been available and been implemented, we would have seen many more cases in the US in late February, and might have implemented in early March measures we waited until mid to late March to put into place. That couple week delay led directly to thousands of lives being lost and trillions of dollars in economic damage.
BC
Spahn is still the health minister.
The health ministers of Italy and Iran have been in office since before the COvId-19 crisis.
The health minister of France (Agnes Buzyn) resigned in Mid-February to run to be mayor of Paris. (https://www.france24.com/en/20200216-fre...-candidate).
I didn’t look up the health minister of Rumania; you can do your own fact checking.
BC
In contrast, the US had very few tests and was restricting testing only to people who had traveled from China. This missed a early community transmission, and it was only after a hospital in the Bay Area begged the CDC to test a critically ill patient with COVID-19 (and were denied several times before the CDC relented) that we finally saw that there had been community transmission. The other example happened when a cluster of deaths from an influenza like illness was identified in a nursing home in Washington.
So, while early case counts were similar, it’s because in Germany they actually were testing enough that they had a good handle of where the disease was spreading and how fast. In the US, the dearth of testing meant we were flying blind, and we took the absence of diagnosed Covid-19 cases as evidence that everything was hunky dory. In fact, Covid-19 was undoubtably spreading and it was only by mid-March, when those patients were showing up in hospitals that we recognized the gravity of the crisis. Had tests been available and been implemented, we would have seen many more cases in the US in late February, and might have implemented in early March measures we waited until mid to late March to put into place. That couple week delay led directly to thousands of lives being lost and trillions of dollars in economic damage.
BC
Spahn is still the health minister.
The health ministers of Italy and Iran have been in office since before the COvId-19 crisis.
The health minister of France (Agnes Buzyn) resigned in Mid-February to run to be mayor of Paris. (https://www.france24.com/en/20200216-fre...-candidate).
I didn’t look up the health minister of Rumania; you can do your own fact checking.
BC