Cable Forum - View Single Post

**Hugh** · 13-04-2020, 08:23

Reasonably balanced article in the Times today.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/d...TM_1Imag_CR1_2

Quote:

Each day’s deaths represent infections from almost a month ago. Since a revolutionary treatment is not on the short-term horizon, it seems plausible that we will pass Italy and Spain in absolute numbers and possibly pass Italy in proportion, too.

That would not necessarily be proof that we had done the wrong thing. Each country is different. London is a global hub with a large, dense population: it was always going to risk a big outbreak. On the other hand, we are also an island. Germany, which isn’t, has managed to control the disease better than any large country in Europe.

Ultimately, it may be that the reason for our death toll is simple. The countries that have done the best, so far, engaged in massive testing and isolation early on. We tried to do that, but did not have the capacity.

Washington Post view

https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-r...m=4&linktot=78

Quote:

Haber pointed to a number of key factors that gave Germany an advantage in its preparations: the widespread mass testing program; a relatively young population that made up the initial bulk of covid-19 cases, and mostly survived; and the benefit of time to expand intensive care facilities and build up stockpiles of medical equipment.

“We were able to prepare because we were not the first country in Europe affected, and we saw and could analyze developments elsewhere,” Haber said, adding that the “well-oiled machinery” of the country’s universal health-care system and effective coordination between the federal government and local and state agencies helped. Germany’s hospitals still have a surfeit of available beds for coronavirus-positive patients and may not face the same pressures that buckled health-care systems in other European countries.

Compared with Britain, Germany gave itself a real head start in testing. “The people [they were in contact with] were also traced and tested repeatedly and they were isolated as well,” Evangelos Kotsopoulos, spokesman for the German Association of Accredited Laboratories, told the BBC, adding that it helped “flatten the curve a bit and slowed down the rate of infection.”

“Rather than following countries like South Korea in taking immediate draconian action to stop the disease — including the use of mass testing — Johnson’s team thought a more modulated approach would ultimately save more lives and cause less economic harm,” the Financial Times detailed in a piece on the government’s early missteps.

Now, Britain finds itself playing catch-up while lacking key German advantages: a sophisticated and sizable biotech industry that helped fast-track widespread testing, and a decentralized political structure that — unlike, say, its equivalent in the United States — effectively enabled private laboratories and local and state-level agencies to take the lead on implementing testing. “While Germany broadened its testing strategy to cover all those with mild symptoms — the core of a strategy to test, trace and isolate people infected with the virus — by March, Britain was struggling to scale up,” the FT noted.

“We have the best scientific labs in the world but we did not have the scale,” British Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the BBC. “My German counterpart, for instance, could call upon 100 testing labs ready and waiting when the crisis struck, thanks in large part to Roche, one of the biggest diagnostic companies in the world.”

At this time, I think the Government made decisions based on what they thought was best for the country at that time, then changed when evidence within and without the country showed differently - I hope we learn from this, but any witch hunt will only make that more difficult.