So Trump is a jerk. Got it. Merkel is not and Germany has about the same deaths per day per capita right now. Is that her fault?
I would not blame Merkel for anything (at least, not in the same way) if she's not intentionally tried to mislead people on COVID or sabotage Germany's attempts at safety, bdsimon. For me, blame can come from:
-intentional sabotage
-incompetence
-gross negligence
There may be other causes of blame I'm not thinking of, but those are the first that come to mind. Case counts and deaths don't always reflect blame. Sometimes, a population has better demographics (India, for example, has one of the best demographics when it come to age - being very young - but not so much when it comes to poverty). Asian countries have low rates of obesity, while the U.S. is high on that list. Sometimes policymakers and leaders do the right things, but the citizens themselves disobey rules. In California, for example, leaders locked down and had the right message early on, but the residents themselves grew tired of the restrictions and went out and without masks in July. They were a top surge state this summer, along with Texas, Florida, and Arizona - the latter three having looser restrictions and pro-business GOP leaders pushing for reopening at all costs. CA's leaders had some good responses, but the people themselves did not take to it. It's also the case that CA is overcrowded in many areas as well.
I'm not that familiar with everything done in Germany this past year, so cannot comment too much. I mainly recall they had a 10K euros fine for those not wearing masks. I see that Germany has a population of 83 million and the U.S. has one of 328 million. We have 4x their population size. For the past two weeks we've had 200,000 cases and 2,200 deaths/day on average. Germany, in the past two weeks has had cases in the 20,000 range and deaths at about 500/day. So, we've had 10x as many cases and 4x as many deaths. We are blowing them away on case counts, but are similar when it comes to per capita deaths. I'm not sure why that is? Is it that more elderly are being infected in Germany possibly?
Germany had one of the lowest death rates and a very flat case count for most of this year until a fall/winter surge. WSJ had this to say re: Germany's winning COVID strategy that's recently fallen apart: https://www.wsj.com/articles/germanys-winning-covid-strategy-has-stopped-working-11608206996
So what happened?
Scientists, politicians and psychologists say many Germans, including some in the government, made a fatal error of judgment after Germany emerged comparatively unscathed this summer: They thought they were safe.
This assumption, combined with the government’s imposition of a moderate lockdown in November that left all shops, offices and factories open, meant Germans didn’t cut down on social contacts nearly enough as the virus began spreading again rapidly through the country, scientists say.
Things have definitely changed dramatically for them the past few months. I know Merkel has been visible and empathetic with her commentary in recent days. I cannot compare her to Trump from what I've seen when it comes to COVID. The U.S. has 11.8x the total case count that Germany does (while being 4x their size in population) and 12.2x the total death count. Trump's intentionally misled us and tried to sabotage efforts to protect Americans, whereas Merkel - as far as I know - has done no such thing.
-AF
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formerly: wlcgeek; keegclw; and GodLovesU - Hopefully, fourth time's a charm when it comes to remembering login info.!
