Comment by hef19898 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hef19898 | Hacker News Reader

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As someone who has quite some experience in running operations based on data, numbers and metrics the German approach to COVID on that front alone really puzzled me from the beginning. First the incidence of 50 that they pulled out of their ass for contact tracing, which was ignored basically the next day. Then the fact that resources weren't really increased to improve contract traceability. Then the decision to use a backward looking KPI, ICU occupation, to tackle a highly dynamic situation. Which also meant to ignore the incidence, the only real predictive metric we have. And it is good at predicting ICU occupation and severe cases when combined with vaccination levels.

That's simply amateurish, and means all measures, not all of which are bad, are usually a couple of weeks late. Even better, the 7-day average incidence is based on the daily numbers. Those numbers are, what a surprise, limited to the testing capacities of laboratories, so the incidence is reported based on the day the test was analyzed, not when the sample was taken. This flattens the 7-day average curve. Well, until the new numbers are reported once labs git through their backlog. Thing is, the 7-day average is not changed once published. Again just amateurish.

It tells you a lot of the level of expertise in a country, if a physicist like Viola Priesemann previously not involved in any kind of disease modelling is able to be a significant voice in the national conversation. The 'experts' that are listened to are either numerically illiterate like Drosten or non-experts in disease control like Priesemann. Moreover the actual tools and quality of code that is used to model the situation are so far away from what would be ideal it is laughable.

You really think Drosten and Priesemann decide measures? That's politicians, the government decided on it. If I remember well, scientists were worried when hospitalization was declared the only truth.

And the RKI predicted the forth basically down to a T, they were a couple of weeks of so. Doesn't matter because they predicted, along with Drosten, already during summer.

I think there is an expert vacuum that was filled by opportunists and enabled politicians to decide non-sensical measures. Compare that to the situation in Taiwan, where the vice-prime Minister is an epidemiologist.

Yes, it's been really frustrating to see RKI predict this for weeks and just ... nothing happening. And then you still get headlines of "incidence fell slightly!" - from 392,4 to 392,2 (or sth like that), when testing labs are hitting capacity. We somehow lucked into a relatively good first wave and ever since then... so much unnecessary mess.

The drop in incidence is the same BS when reporting in DAX or S&P moving by 0.2 % day-to-day. That's noice, no signal.

EDIT: That's also noise for HF traders, because day-to-day numbers are pointless when you worry about milliseconds.

Also the "honor system" for quarantine. Also the closure of museums (airy, 25% capacity, everyone masked) but not department stores (crowded, many ignoring mask rules). Also the fact that my art-supply store in Berlin had to cordon off the half of its inventory that wasn't on the "essential" list, so some paint yes, some paint no. Also the refusal to confront the anti-vaxxers (police complicity, etc). Also the very public promises they knew they probably couldn't keep (Christmas is big in Germany).

I had a pretty high opinion of German government competence, Berlin-specific dramas notwithstanding, before the pandemic. I now have a very, very low one.

Yes an authoritarian police state enforcing quarantine in Germany sounds like a great idea. I'm sure there are historical examples they can follow.

Or, you could be honest with the public and call it voluntary.

In many countries, compulsory quarantine was enforced. In Germany it never was, but they still presented it as compulsory and held out the possibility that it might be enforced.

I don’t wish they had enforced it, I wish they had been honest about the arrangement.

Well, this is the issue you have with a lot of these lockdown, mask laws. Are they enforceable? No, unless you have a compliant population and in that case no law is probably necessary.

Almost all western governments did a piss poor job of preventing facts which why we're in the situation we are now. They appear untrustworthy because they've presented partial truths or completely changed their stance throughout.

German government staff is as un-digital as you can get. They have no idea how a small modeling group would have helped. Maybe the incoming government will do better, but I am not holding my breath.

Access to modeling isn't even the issue, given RKI, Charité, ... Asking those resources the right questions and turning their results into policy and communicating it is the problem, which is even more fundamental "that's what a government is for" skills...

Being digital doesn't necessarily improve decision make. All the necessary data was there. RKI the German equivalent to the CDC in the US predicted the current wave rather accurately in summer, but politicians ignored it, because they wanted to win the election.

It's not modelling, just having a basic understanding of your metrics and the ability to choose the right ones. German officials showed none of that. Well, I'm not holding my breath on that neither.

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