Also feel the supermarkets should be able to work this out for themselves. They really aren't helping with anything at the moment.
Saw an interesting chart today showing daily cases vs daily tests. We aren't actually doing that bad. About 10% of our tests are turning up positive whereas it is 20% or more for Germany, US, Italy, Netherlands and a few others.
I don't know why are death rates are so high compared to other countries. Even if you look at the number of people in ICU per million compared to other countries. We are the same compared to most European countries. Germany and the US are 70% higher.
But when you look at deaths per million we are at 13.8 and are about 50% higher than anyone else and the same for our case fatality rate.
I don't understand. Why are more of our people dying when we don't actually look bad on lots of the other factors?
Some factors which may not be evident, note none of this is to excuse the government from dropping the ball frequently:
- young people are far more likely to get tested, whereas the elderly group may turn up with covid symptoms and treated as covid positive. Seeing a huge testing spike pre-Xmas may to do with young healthy people getting tests before heading to see family for Xmas (or indeed testing positive en-masse and choosing not to go). It's important to remember a negative test can still represent a false negative.
- Germany has a far higher ICU capacity (near double vs the UK) even if the people per million in ICU is similar
- USA seem to have been under-counting Covid deaths
- Unhealthier population/diet and a disease which makes obese people and diabetics especially vulnerable.
- we are in a different stage of the pandemic. USA are going to be in a similar position in probably mid February.
- Germany had a different population cohort infected during their 1st wave (less nursing home issues, more younger people infected)
- once you hit healthcare capacity more people die.
