
How Europe sleepwalked into the coronavirus crisis - chewz
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-eu-prevention-excl/exclusive-things-under-control-how-europe-sleepwalked-into-the-coronavirus-crisis-idUSKBN21J6FF
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kasperni
There is a huge difference countries in between in Europe. On one hand, you
have Spain/Italy and on another, you have Denmark which is starting to plan a
controlled opening in the coming weeks [1]. Denmark being the second European
country to impose lockdown after Italy. But did so much earlier in the curve
than Italy.

Going forward it will be very interesting to compare the 3 Scandinavian
countries Denmark/Norway and Sweden. Very similar countries cultural,
political, and economical but have chosen two very different paths. With
Sweden being the last European country holding out against lockdown.

Edit: While the countries have very different population/area ratio their
capitals Copenhagen/Oslo/Stockholm are comparable. And I'm not only talking
about the actual number of cases/deaths. But also how the economy is going to
be effected in the long run.

[1] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-
denmar...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-
denmark/denmark-eyes-gradual-reopening-after-easter-if-coronavirus-numbers-
stabilize-idUSKBN21H2LY)

~~~
fabianmg
As the other comment already said you're comparing apples and oranges. If you
take some regions of Spain that has around the same population of Denmark for
example they're more or less at the same level of Denmark. Most of the
contagions in Spain are in Madrid.

~~~
k__
Germany also does better than Italy and Spain and it has a bigger population.

~~~
Thimothy
I keep hearing from friends in Germany that the death numbers reported are
completely bollocks. They say the people who die with pre-existing conditions
aggravated with the coronavirus are not counted, nor the people who are not
tested after deceasing. Whereas in Italy seems everything that dies in the
medical system these days is being counted.

Would love to see someone confirming or disproving this...

~~~
k__
I read this the other way around.

The death numbers from Italy were completly insane, because they counted in
people who would have died anyway and just happened to be infected by the
virus at the time of death.

Don't know which is true.

~~~
thu2111
Both countries are counting all infected.

[https://swprs.org/rki-relativiert-corona-todesfaelle/](https://swprs.org/rki-
relativiert-corona-todesfaelle/)

 _The President of the German Robert Koch Institute confirmed on March 20,
2020 that test-positive deceased are counted as "corona deaths" regardless of
the real cause of death: "We consider a corona death to be someone who has
been diagnosed with a coronavirus infection was, «said the RKI President when
asked a journalist (see video below)._

 _According to experts, the number of deaths is severely relativized, since
the patients die in many cases from their previous illnesses and not from the
virus. Data from Italy show that over 99% of the deceased had one or more
chronic medical conditions, including cancer and heart problems, and only 12%
mentioned the coronavirus on the death certificate as a cofactor._

 _A look at the statistics of the German test-positive deaths shows that the
median age of the deceased, similar to Italy, is over 80 years and that there
were usually one or more serious previous illnesses._

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Juliate
So, the short story here would be: EU proposed to help & coordinate action but
individual governments failed to acknowledge/assess how unprepared they were
(going to be), as they did not assess the threat properly. And their joint
reports provided a false sense of security to the whole.

That there's a deep coordination/collaboration failure here is clear.

But how could several many governments/states all assess that much wrongly on
their own capacity to face the epidemics?

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Merrill
The root cause failure was not complacency about medical supplies.

The root cause failure was complacency about the contagiousness and mortality
rate and the failure to contain Covid-19 to China by stopping all
international travel.

~~~
Juliate
Containment at the source should have started at least in early December 2019
to be effective. And even then, that would likely not have been effective
(because the severity of the epidemic was not asserted widely & seriously
enough by then).

So the issue is realistically not there.

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b0rsuk
China did its best to keep the epidemic secret for at least several weeks,
while buying medical supplies from Europe and other areas, draining them of
their own reserves.

~~~
jhanschoo
Sure, peddle a conspiracy rather than incompetence in the face of a new
outbreak that when it started nobody knew how serious it was going to be.

~~~
b0rsuk
It was both malice on the part of Chinese and incompetence of Europeans. But
the punchline is the contrast between the hyper-competent, serious image of US
healthcare in the movie Contagion and how it turned out in practice.

------
kgabis
Surprisingly former Eastern Bloc countries are doing quite well thanks to
early lockdowns. I think it's largely due to people not trusting public health
systems.

------
jansan
What I would like to know: Given the huge number of infected health workers,
are ffp2/ffp3 masks with valve still commonly used in hospitals?

~~~
Arnt
I think you mean: In institutions where health care workers work, which is
much more than hospitals. Many of them work in practices or in various kinds
of nursing homes. The masks you may see often in an ICU aren't ones you'll see
often in a nursing home or a physiotherapist practice.

~~~
DoingIsLearning
I think specifically in Spain, there were a particularly high infection rate
of frontline hospital staff.

Spain like the majority of European countries does not have issues like lack
of staff training or not following state-of-the-art protocols. So it begs the
question, are the infection control protocols that we currently have, safe
enough to deal with this virus?

An interesting case-study is Cotugno Hospital, an infectious disease hospital
in Naples, Italy. It has so far reported zero staff infections. Perhaps their
'over-the-top' protocol is what is required for all Hospitals when dealing
with SARS-COV2?

~~~
Arnt
This virus is a strange one. Apparently there's no single symptom that affects
even a small majority of the infected patients. That's a strange, unusual
problem to handle for a system that assumes that illnesses make people ill.

A hospital is self-selecting, in that it doesn't have 50% patients that feel
well and show no symptoms. The people who work at a hospital take the
precautions that are considered appropriate for the disease they've diagnosed.
This means that to some degree, they're not ambushed by asymptomatic infected
people.

