Yesterday, Germany slipped to 6th place, having been overtaken by Mexico, Poland and Russia.
Germany had a surprisingly successful package of measures to stop the spread of the virus. They pay the price for it now. While Belgium can be relatively certain of herd immunity, and countries like France, Spain, Italy, UK and, possibly, Sweden aren’t far off, poor Germany has a vast population that hasn’t been infected with the Coronavirus just yet. Some of them will soon be, while, perhaps few others will benefit from the upcoming vaccine.
My guess, based on the 0.2% mortality rate, is that, given the current cumulative death of 0.025%, as little as 12% of Germans have been exposed to the virus. Perhaps that number is higher, but I find it hard to believe it’s above 20%. Nearly one million of these people had a positive test.
The most optimistic possibility would be that the German Covid-19 mortality would be comparable to Sweden’s. Sweden allowed the virus to run free in summer, perhaps infecting most of the population. They then allowed a 2nd wave in winter, which turned out to be much smaller than in summer. This suggests Sweden has reached herd immunity.
Sweden’s mortality rate is 0.0724% or about one third of the 0.2% I expected. This would be fantastic news, if true. The relatively swift ending of the 2nd wave supports the possibility that this is indeed true. Thus, Sweden would have conquered the virus with a minimum of life lost.
If we were to assume that Germany is as successful as Sweden, they’d still be only one third of the way into infecting the entire population.
Whichever way we turned it, with Christmas coming and the Christmas market opening, Germany is very far from herd immunity.
Thus, many of us will cough this Christmas.
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