Sweden vs Germany…..a Covid year later

Last year this time we were being told how irresponsible Sweden is and how brilliantly Germany had done with it’s contact tracing and Merkel nanny measures. So here are the numbers today: 

Cases  per million population: 

Germany 79706

Sweden 122339

Deaths per million population:

Germany 1285

Sweden 1491

……

On the surface it looks like Germany’s nanny approach beat the Swedish approach of keeping life normal. But Germany’s death rate per million pop was once a quarter of Sweden’s and is swelling rapidly.  Current trends suggest they may soon pass the Swedes…..but here’s the crucial thing, on a much lower case rate.

A German case is clearly a more dangerous illness than a Swedish case….and the Swedes are likely in much better shape on immunity.

So this looks like a classic tortoise and the hare story. The vilified Swedes have maintained a more normal society where the young and low risk groups kept functioning. Germany’s lock down approach by contrast appears to have left them particularly vulnerable to variant changes.

The point is getting immunity is the key thing, whether by exposure or vaccination….avoiding exposure is a great strategy for the high risk groups, not for countries.

Compare that to the South African approach...we basically had a 6 week hard lockdown and then a gradual opening of the rest of the economy...with hard restrictions only when the healthcare system was under pressure...basically restricting alcohol and hospitality...I bet our figures are even better...not because we did things better, but rather because we couldn't really do anything but have the virus run it's cause, trying to cope with fallout the best we can.

Vaccination is a necessary part of getting immunity levels up….if Africa had been aggressively vaccinated this Omicron variant may not have emerged, killing the good life once again.

Vaccinate everybody, get them back to work…..shelter the vulnerable during high infection periods like right now.

Now that everyone has been offered a vaccine, cases translate into much fewer deaths. 
So, countries are just letting it go rife because of the lower death rate. 

Some countries have more anti-vaxxers than others, so they will continue to have higher deaths for a longer time. Germany appears to have less of its population that are vaccinated than Sweden. 

"if Africa had been aggressively vaccinated this Omicron variant may not have emerged, killing the good life once again."

Omicron is not necessarily a bad thing...it's very mild and might give us herd immunity without having to risk  having the whole population vaccinated...there are some serious issues with having youths vaccinated. 

Another little data quirk which shows  how carefully you have to parse the data….covid hospitalizations are way up New York this week. But on examination most patients are being admitted for other maladies, but more of them have Covid because of Omicron spreading.

So in this case Covid hospitalizations aren’t reflecting the severity of the disease, just it’s prevalence among otherwise sick patients.

But no doubt we will see screaming headlines about NY’s Covid hospitalization rate.

"South African hospitals reported having slightly fewer Covid-19 patients than yesterday, the first decline in weeks.

Still, the National Institute of Communicable Diseases, does caution that figures can be skewed by late reporting of admissions.

Even so the number could be taken as more evidence that the wave of infections caused by the omicron variant may be slowing. On Friday the South African Medical Research Council said that wastewater analyses showed a decreasing incidence of the virus in Pretoria, the South African capital.

The hospitals have 7,915 Covid-19 patients of which 6.7% are in intensive care units, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases said in a report on Saturday. Of the 532 people in ICU, 209 are on ventilators, the institute said. Of the admissions 3,285 are in Gauteng, the province that includes Johannesburg and Pretoria. KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape are the next worst-affected provinces.