Germany is starting to open in a phased-in manner tomorrow. In the morning they will allow big stores to open with social distancing guidelines. Maybe for a change we can wait, watch and learn from other countries.
Germany is one of the largest countries in Western Europe and only the second one to start easing their way open from a lockdown.
Why do we care about Germany?
Germany was a case study on how a pandemic in 2020 should be handled.
With a population of 83 million people they had 4550 deaths. The first case showed up on March 3rd. They tested 200,000 people and did computerized contact tracing.
They developed a reliable test in January (the US got theirs in March). In addition to transparent communication and really good health infrastructure, they also have fancy digital health platforms and robots in the hospitals.
They also gave the people that wanted them a symptom tracker App. Their message was always clear so people understood and it didn’t change from day to day.
Italy on the other hand had 60 million people and 23,660 deaths (which of course is a fluid number). Likewise Spain has 46.75 million people and 20,453 deaths.
I am deliberately not giving you the number of cases so there are not so many numbers in this piece that we miss the forest for the trees.
Meanwhile in the US (329 Million people) we have 40,000 cases (please see my sincere apology below). So we have about 4 times more people but 9 times more deaths. And China has 1.4 Billion people and had 4,632 deaths.
What does this have to do with you? Actually a lot!
You see, we refused to learn from the countries that got the virus before us because we thought we were the biggest and baddest with the best toys but we can change!
Some countries have ideas that are worth emulating because life is precious.
Yours and mine and all the lives of the essential workers who are in harm’s way.
The current push to ‘open up the country’ is a political ploy and not based on sound science. Can we at least see how better prepared countries do it first and not again put our egos ahead of human life? We have had enough malignant manipulation of social media and revving people into irrational frenzies. Turn it off don’t watch it, your life depends on it!
On Tuesday my alma mater Harvard School of Public Health has a joint symposium with the New England Journal of Medicine to discuss where we go from here. I promise to give you up-to-date suggestions and if you have any questions please let me have them. I will put them to the panelists.
In the meantime I want my patients to please stay inside, wash your hands with soap, wear your mask and gloves and stay as far away from people as possible.
Anyone who thinks a ‘hoax’ can cause 40,000 deaths should have a chat with their doctor.
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