Rob Arnott: "This Too Shall Pass"
And then we sit down and investigate what happened at the CDC.
You know, the place that calls itself The Centers for DISEASE CONTROL and PREVENTION....
From National Public Radio:
As confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Germany soared past 10,000 last week, hundreds of Berliners crowded Volkspark am Friedrichshain to play soccer and basketball, and to let their kids loose on the park's many jungle gyms.
The conditions seemed ideal for the spread of a virus that has killed thousands. Indeed, as of Wednesday, Germany had the fifth-highest number of cases.
Yet Germany's fatality rate so far — just 0.5% — is the world's lowest, by a long shot.
"I believe that we are just testing much more than in other countries, and we are detecting our outbreak early," said Christian Drosten, director of the institute of virology at Berlin's Charité hospital.
As Europe has become the epicenter of the global coronavirus pandemic, Italy's fatality rate hovers around 10%. France's is around 5%. Yet Germany's fatality rate from COVID-19 has remained remarkably low since cases started showing up there more than a month ago. As of March 25, there were 175 deaths and 34,055 cases.
Drosten, whose team of researchers developed the first COVID-19 test used in the public domain, said Germany's low fatality rate is because of his country's ability to test early and often. He estimates Germany has been testing around 120,000 people a week for COVID-19 during the monthlong period from late February to now, when it's reached epidemic proportions in the country, the most extensive testing regimen in the world.
And that means Germany is more likely to have a lower number of undetected cases than other countries where testing is less prevalent, which raises the question: Why is Germany testing so much?
"We have a culture here in Germany that is actually not supporting a centralized diagnostic system," said Drosten, "so Germany does not have a public health laboratory that would restrict other labs from doing the tests. So we had an open market from the beginning."
In other words, Germany's equivalent to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the Robert Koch Institute — makes recommendations but does not call the shots on testing for the entire country. Germany's 16 federal states make their own decisions on coronavirus testing because each of them is responsible for their own health care systems....MORE
