A quick thread looking at Germany's figures.

A lot has been made of their ability to test, track and trace at the start of the outbreak - could that be why their deaths are so low compared to the rest of Europe?

Let's have a think about that

All countries tried to test, track & trace early on, and Germany appear to have had the most success in that. The principle being that if you find infected people and isolate them, it reduces how many people they infect, and so reduces overall infections

So, do they have fewer confirmed cases than other countries? Yes. Although their figure is almost identical to France's total.

UK: 246,406
Italy: 225,886
Spain: 278,188
France: 179,927
Germany: 177,289

But how does this correlate to deaths?

How many confirmed cases does each country have per death?

UK: 7
Italy: 7
Spain: 10
France: 6
Germany: 22

(note UK figure includes deaths in all settings, the others don't)

The striking thing is not the smaller number of infections in Germany, it's the lower death rate

How are they having 1 death for every 22 infections, when other countries in Europe have between 6 and 10?

Tracing simply doesn't explain the better outcomes here. Once a case is confirmed, it's confirmed. Testing & tracing doesn't improve the outcome for the infected person

The only explanations I can think of are;

a) There is an underlying factor that increases death rate that doesn't apply to Germany as much as other countries
b) Germany has an effective treatment that other countries don't
c) Germany's death figures are wrong

So what's the conclusion?

Ah yes. Stop fetishising Germany's testing regime. It simply doesn't explain why they have so few deaths compared to the rest of Europe. Looking at the deaths-per-case, Germany is a massive outlier.

Why haven't our media looked into this?