[Goose]

Furthermore, when they did start getting hit harder by the virus they saw many more cases in the younger patients than Italy and Spain did. That kept their death rate down.

The Spanish seroprevalence study: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lance...5/fulltext shows that broadly speaking the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies was similar among adults of all age categories (it did seem a bit lower in children).  Seroprevalence by immunoassay, which is the more reliable test of the two, ranged from 5% in 20 - 34 year olds to 4.5% in ≥ 65 year olds (with overlapping confidence intervals).  To me, that suggests that the virus wasn't hitting older people in Spain so much as older people were being tested in Spain, because when the testing infrastructure is poor, you only test really sick patients, who tended to be older.  Germany, who had their testing act together, was able to test more broadly, so it tested people with milder symptoms (plus asymptomatic contacts) and thus while the tested population was younger in Germany, I would guess that the infected population was broadly similar between the two countries (in fact, if anything, the median age of the population is older in Germany than Spain).

Well BC, you may be correct, but that conclusion isn't mine. It is the conclusion of the Bavarian Health Minister. The cases that finally pushed the Germans into lockdown were lots of skiers returning to North Rhine-Westphalia. Up to that point the Health Ministers couldn't agree to do so. Needless to say, the skiers were not "old guys". I would guess we will need a seroprevalence study from Germany to really know. It may be they protected their older population better than Spain (and certainly Italy) did.

To me, that's not luck, that's having your sh*t together.

On this we agree. My point was that Germany made use of their "luck", and we did not.

[Goose]

Furthermore, when they did start getting hit harder by the virus they saw many more cases in the younger patients than Italy and Spain did. That kept their death rate down.

The Spanish seroprevalence study: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lance...5/fulltext shows that broadly speaking the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies was similar among adults of all age categories (it did seem a bit lower in children).  Seroprevalence by immunoassay, which is the more reliable test of the two, ranged from 5% in 20 - 34 year olds to 4.5% in ≥ 65 year olds (with overlapping confidence intervals).  To me, that suggests that the virus wasn't hitting older people in Spain so much as older people were being tested in Spain, because when the testing infrastructure is poor, you only test really sick patients, who tended to be older.  Germany, who had their testing act together, was able to test more broadly, so it tested people with milder symptoms (plus asymptomatic contacts) and thus while the tested population was younger in Germany, I would guess that the infected population was broadly similar between the two countries (in fact, if anything, the median age of the population is older in Germany than Spain).

Well BC, you may be correct, but that conclusion isn't mine. It is the conclusion of the Bavarian Health Minister. The cases that finally pushed the Germans into lockdown were lots of skiers returning to North Rhine-Westphalia. Up to that point the Health Ministers couldn't agree to do so. Needless to say, the skiers were not "old guys". I would guess we will need a seroprevalence study from Germany to really know. It may be they protected their older population better than Spain (and certainly Italy) did.

To me, that's not luck, that's having your sh*t together.

On this we agree. My point was that Germany made use of their "luck", and we did not.