[Goose]

I pulled the data from the Oxford Stringency Index comparing the US (teal) versus the German (red) response:





You can see that until mid-March, Germany was ahead of the US in terms of response (the stringency index was higher in Germany than the US until March 15).  But you can also see that during this time, we are talking about sub-lockdown levels of stringency (the index is under 30% for both countries) and that is what seems to have made a difference.

It is certainly plausible that the German banning of large gatherings etc. made a big difference. Obviously no way to know, but it certainly couldn't have hurt.

  The numbers represent the number of cases and number of deaths on each day that the stringency index was increased.  Two things are pretty clear from the data: 1) Germany responded earlier and at an earlier stage in the pandemic than the United States and two, because of widespread testing, Germany saw its cases earlier (before deaths) in the course of the pandemic than the United States (they had identified 900+ cases before the first death), while at a similar number of cases, the United States had already recorded 28 deaths.


With testing as widespread as Germany had, we probably would have seen 5000 known cases by the middle of the first week in March, and I do think that our response might have been more vigorous.

As you probably know, there were and are significant issues with the German reports of COVID-19 deaths. Their methods are different than the ones used in the US and tend to understate those who died of COVID-19. The cause would be pneumonia even though that pneumonia was COVID-19 related. This makes the data harder to interpret. However, even allowing for that, I think the German response was more aggressive than ours because the German States were actually trying to contain the disease. There testing levels were higher because of contact tracing. Some of that was done in Washington State and I guess in retrospect turned out better than initially thought. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough. To find those 5000 cases in the US, we would have needed the same aggressive contact tracing that occurred in Germany. We didn't have the ability to do that, not necessarily because of the lack of the ability to test (although that may have become an issue) but rather because we lacked the ability/will to do the necessary tracing.

Obviously, it is easy to look at this in retrospect, and it is possible that the German experience would not have translated to the US.  However, my view at this data (and also comparing New York and California, and even the Bay Area to Los Angeles), makes me think the key was not necessarily getting the shelter-in-place order in, but instituting lower intensity restrictions like limiting large gatherings (that prevent super-spreader events) from happening.  And I think that seeing hundreds, if not thousands of cases in that critical first week in March might have been enough to prompt Cuomo and De Blasio to be more aggressive in New York (a little prompting from Trump and [especially] Faucci might have nudged them as well).  Remember, on March 3 there were still only 2 diagnosed cases and no deaths in New York, even though there were almost certainly hundreds of cases walking around.



BC

I certainly agree that instituting the lower intensity restrictions would have been a good idea. However, I think that actually finding the 5K cases nationwide would have been difficult. Even with hundreds of cases wandering around New York, we wouldn't even find those without contact tracing to one of the two known cases. A couple of weeks later, when they became sick, we would, but that is basically what actually happened. Germany is smaller than California in land area and has twice the population of California. That makes any given number of cases there much more important than in the much larger US. They were also trying to contain the outbreak, which requires earlier action. We never really had that option.

[Goose]

I pulled the data from the Oxford Stringency Index comparing the US (teal) versus the German (red) response:





You can see that until mid-March, Germany was ahead of the US in terms of response (the stringency index was higher in Germany than the US until March 15).  But you can also see that during this time, we are talking about sub-lockdown levels of stringency (the index is under 30% for both countries) and that is what seems to have made a difference.

It is certainly plausible that the German banning of large gatherings etc. made a big difference. Obviously no way to know, but it certainly couldn't have hurt.

  The numbers represent the number of cases and number of deaths on each day that the stringency index was increased.  Two things are pretty clear from the data: 1) Germany responded earlier and at an earlier stage in the pandemic than the United States and two, because of widespread testing, Germany saw its cases earlier (before deaths) in the course of the pandemic than the United States (they had identified 900+ cases before the first death), while at a similar number of cases, the United States had already recorded 28 deaths.


With testing as widespread as Germany had, we probably would have seen 5000 known cases by the middle of the first week in March, and I do think that our response might have been more vigorous.

As you probably know, there were and are significant issues with the German reports of COVID-19 deaths. Their methods are different than the ones used in the US and tend to understate those who died of COVID-19. The cause would be pneumonia even though that pneumonia was COVID-19 related. This makes the data harder to interpret. However, even allowing for that, I think the German response was more aggressive than ours because the German States were actually trying to contain the disease. There testing levels were higher because of contact tracing. Some of that was done in Washington State and I guess in retrospect turned out better than initially thought. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough. To find those 5000 cases in the US, we would have needed the same aggressive contact tracing that occurred in Germany. We didn't have the ability to do that, not necessarily because of the lack of the ability to test (although that may have become an issue) but rather because we lacked the ability/will to do the necessary tracing.

Obviously, it is easy to look at this in retrospect, and it is possible that the German experience would not have translated to the US.  However, my view at this data (and also comparing New York and California, and even the Bay Area to Los Angeles), makes me think the key was not necessarily getting the shelter-in-place order in, but instituting lower intensity restrictions like limiting large gatherings (that prevent super-spreader events) from happening.  And I think that seeing hundreds, if not thousands of cases in that critical first week in March might have been enough to prompt Cuomo and De Blasio to be more aggressive in New York (a little prompting from Trump and [especially] Faucci might have nudged them as well).  Remember, on March 3 there were still only 2 diagnosed cases and no deaths in New York, even though there were almost certainly hundreds of cases walking around.



BC

I certainly agree that instituting the lower intensity restrictions would have been a good idea. However, I think that actually finding the 5K cases nationwide would have been difficult. Even with hundreds of cases wandering around New York, we wouldn't even find those without contact tracing to one of the two known cases. A couple of weeks later, when they became sick, we would, but that is basically what actually happened. Germany is smaller than California in land area and has twice the population of California. That makes any given number of cases there much more important than in the much larger US. They were also trying to contain the outbreak, which requires earlier action. We never really had that option.