JazzG wrote:
If the above thread is true we can rule out the theory of Germany recording deaths differently to other countries.
I'm not sure if you followed the discussion in this thread earlier (as in your referring to a theory) but that twitter thread doesn't really clear anything up. I'm not sure what Andrew Neil thinks he has "investigated" but half of what he says is obvious and/or public knowledge and key points such as the one Klaus pointed out about post-mortem testing simply aren't true, most German hospitals do not test the dead. It can't be the only explanation for the low figures to be fair though.
I've read German researchers suggesting the reason for the vast delta between Germany and mediterranean countries being the different makeup of families, ie German households consisting largely of nuclear families, couples living together or just one person per home, but intuitively I'd say it feels like a pseudo scientific claim. Not saying it's not true, but this implies that the only way of getting infected if you're old (or young for what it's worth) is by people living in your household. It also obviously ignores the fact that the death rate is a lot higher in other non-mediterranean countries too. I think it's very possible the family way of living plays a role though for what it's worth.
It's not like this hasn't occupied other more serious researchers though. From all I've seen however there are two main problems that any attempt at explaining the differences will succumb to at this point. First is the vastly different methods to testing - German or Australian officials might claim they test the most per capita but compared to Iceland, Norway or the rich Gulf countries they lag far behind. Same with the US which does very selective testing compared to say South Korea. The second massive issue to any resilient claim about lethality/mortality is the ridiculous spread in how stats are being recorded. The Robert Koch Institut which Neil mentions is notorious for this, despite it being a federal government agency reporting directly to the ministry of health its official figures lag behind the Johns Hopkins University in the US. It also for some reason keeps arbitrarily chosen age columns which are wildly different to other countries, and finally it doesn't test nearly as many old people. Just this week it made national news here that in a retirement home twelve people died within three days of each other, and now after the fact they started testing the whole building and found 70 infected of 130 tenants. And additionally as Klaus pointed out it's way too early to be making any kind of sweeping statements anyway.
