Look at the total cases / deaths ratio.
Germany: 5813 / 11
South Korea: 8236 / 75
In comparison to Italy, China and Iran, they are (currently) doing better. Why?
I haven’t looked into it much, but apparently the high numbers for Korea are due to one cult that had huge gatherings and therefore a lot of infected people. They’re also very insular and kept to themselves, so those aren’t general-population numbers. Once they started isolating themselves (even more than they already were), that would keep the number of new infections down.
South Korea has tested an absolute shitload of people. So they will catch many more mild or asymptomatic cases, as well as catching cases earlier. Also, because they are now on top of the pandemic (new cases per day are going right down) their health system is not overwhelmed with cases.
I’m not sure what Germany’s situation is. Are they also doing lots of testing? Or do they just have a very good health system?
In the German page you cite (at the time I read it), the number of “closed” cases is only 59, with 13 deaths, giving a 22% death rate. This is no doubt an overestimate of the actual mortality rate, because the cases identified and closed earliest are going to be the more serious ones. But a comparison of “active” cases to deaths is likely an underestimate because some of the active cases will turn fatal.
On the other side, South Korea is famously doing a lot of testing, even on seemingly healthy people, so they are identifying a lot of asymptomatic or mild cases that other countries don’t see (of course, if the test has a significant false positive rate and the actual infection rate is rare, some of those “asymptomatic cases” are really just false positives).
Long story short, it is hard to do proper statistics on these things and a variations in measurement methodology mean a lot.
I really don’t - here in Israel, we’ve had around around 250 identified cases, but no deaths yet (touch wood). I don’t think there’s been a particularly high level of testing, either. Maybe the health system is somehow still working.
The question about Germany asked in Euronews -
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Yes they are testing more than only the very sickest so will end up getting a better sense of the true infection mortality rate.
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“Will” is an operative word there. Cases are fairly new and it death rates lag new infection rate. Recovery rate lags much farther yet. It’s just too early, on too steep a section of the curve to take either mortality rate, let alone deaths/“resolved cases” rate as very meaningful.
South Korea is farther along with new case numbers dropping and their numbers are more believable as representing closer to true infection mortality rate (still missing many infections but also some yet to die). They are running currently a confirmed case mortality rate of 0.9%.
The question about Germany asked in Euronews -
-
Yes they are testing more than only the very sickest so will end up getting a better sense of the true infection mortality rate.
-
“Will” is an operative word there. Cases are fairly new and it death rates lag new infection rate. Recovery rate lags much farther yet. It’s just too early, on too steep a section of the curve to take either mortality rate, let alone deaths/“resolved cases” rate as very meaningful.
South Korea is farther along with new case numbers dropping and their numbers are more believable as representing closer to true infection mortality rate (still missing many infections but also some yet to die). They are running currently a confirmed case mortality rate of 0.9%.
Wouldn’t you have to know how much of their respective populations are a) over 80 and b) have COPD or other risk factors?
A country with a lot of “healthy” elders would presumably have a lower fatality rate.
I read an article in today’s paper that from our (the Netherlands) ~60 casualties only 15 got to the IC. Others were judged to be better of in a normal bed. These cases were already very old and poorly and dokters estimated their chances of a meaningful recovery slim.
As this point, the variance in death rates is likely going to be as much a matter of measurement and sampling as it is health outcomes. Statistically speaking, comparing mortality rates between countries is jkust not a thing you can reliably do right now unless (and maybe even if) you have a huge amount of underlyong data to take noise out of the system and you’re a professional statistician who and can put together a pretty slicks statistical analysis plan.
As this point, the variance in death rates is likely going to be as much a matter of measurement and sampling as it is health outcomes. Statistically speaking, comparing mortality rates between countries is jkust not a thing you can reliably do right now unless (and maybe even if) you have a huge amount of underlyong data to take noise out of the system and you’re a professional statistician who and can put together a pretty slicks statistical analysis plan.
In consultation with family, as far as I have understood. Not just doctors deciding when it is worth the “hassle” and when not.
Eta… trying to quote librarian here
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I’ve said many times before, that the truly relevant measure is not deaths per infected or infected per population, but deaths per population. If your deaths per population is low, then that might mean that you’re preventing the spread so few get infected, or it might mean that you’re giving good care to those who are infected so they’re less likely to die, or it might mean a combination of those… but the bottom line is that it doesn’t matter, because whatever it is you’re doing, you’re doing it right. And as an added bonus, calculating deaths per population only requires easily-known numbers, without any guesses needed as to the difficult-to-determine number of infected.
It matters, because if some places are doing it right, other places need to know what “doing it right” is so that they can do that too.
Unfortunately, as others have said, a lot of the information really isn’t available yet.
Although this Science article addresses it well.
Although this Science article addresses it well.
Another thing for South Korea is that (a) it has a very good and modern health care system, (b) its national health insurance scheme is also very good, and © the general population there, along with the government, is taking this issue incredibly seriously.