
Coronavirus revealed the unexpected strengths of Germany’s model of government - mpweiher
https://www.newstatesman.com/2020/07/how-coronavirus-has-revealed-unexpected-strengths-germany-s-model-government
======
amai
Germany has more than three times more hospital beds per inhabitant than the
UK: [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/hospital-beds-vs-
gdp?coun...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/hospital-beds-vs-
gdp?country=DEU~GBR) It also has 70% more medical doctors per inhabitant:
[https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/medical-doctors-
per-1000-...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/medical-doctors-
per-1000-people-vs-gdp-per-capita?country=DEU~GBR) All this comes in handy in
case of a pandemic.

~~~
rurban
With an average utilization of 10% of ICU's during this flu season this
argument is moot.

More likely is that they did better nursing homes protections, or just had
less dangerous Virus variants than in the west. I don't see any other
advantages of the German system affecting this year's flu pandemic. It's
better of course. But mostly irrelevant.

------
Daishiman
Organized societies with high levels of trust backed by effective
bureaucracies from a tradition of discipline and rigor are actually good at
solving things, who would have known.

Whenever Libertarians claim that governments don't work, I point them to the
success stories of the German state.

The issues generally never lie with private vs public initiatives (although
the incentive structures count), but rather with effective vs ineffective
institutions.

~~~
373923636
Libertarians are usually talking about markets when they refer to that and the
people who disagree with them usually aren't economists. Germany is no more
impressive than Singapore or Korea, you can accomplish a lot of impressive
looking feats when you're operating at a miniscule scale and your culture is
mostly homogenous. I'll be more impressed when they start surpassing
modernized SEA region nations or when they manage the same feats under an
atmosphere of diversity.

~~~
mnky9800n
Thinking Germany is homogenous just makes it obvious you've never been there.
Germans in Germany are barely homogenous between east and west Germany not to
mention the influx of immigrants from different time periods.

~~~
amadeuspagel
Thinking Germany isn't homogenous (relative to the US) just makes it obvious
you've never been to the US.

~~~
mnky9800n
I'm American. Lol.

