Since the start of the pandemic, Germany has seen the lowest level of excess mortality of any major European country – just 4% according to the World Mortality Dataset. Is this because the country effectively suppressed the virus using lockdowns? A new research note suggests not.
Annika Hoyer, Lara Rad and Ralph Brinks – three researchers at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich – sought to compare the epidemic’s trajectory to the timing of lockdown measures. (Their paper is written in German, but you can translate it using Google.)
Hoyer and colleagues begin by noting that, due to changes in testing, case numbers are unsatisfactory for tracing the epidemic over time. They note, “Varying test behaviour should be understood here as the fact that in the course of the epidemic… the execution of tests has changed and changed very strongly, both temporally and regionally.”
They argue that the R number (the average number of people an infected individual transmits the virus to) provides a better guide to the epidemic’s trajectory. According to the authors, “The estimation of the R-value also involves some statistical difficulties, such as the necessary nowcasting, but the main disadvantage of the dependency on test behavior, which can imply large fluctuations, does not apply.”
Hence they plotted the R number over time, and looked for major changes or “breaks” in the series – as shown in the chart below:
The R number decreased dramatically in March of 2020. It rose slowly over the following six months (the apparent spike in the summer may be a random fluctuation due to the small number of cases at the time). It then rose more quickly in September, only to fall again in October. It fluctuated around 1 during the winter months, and has fallen since the start of April.
Given that Germany’s first lockdowns (which varied from state to state) were imposed around March 22nd, it’s clear that the initial decline in infections preceded them. (The statistician Simon Wood has argued that the same thing happened in Britain – i.e., infections were already declining when lockdowns came into force.)
Hoyer and colleagues point out that changes in the R number don’t seem to be correlated with the timing of winter lockdowns either. They note, “there has been no direct connection with the measures taken since September – neither with the lockdown light on November 2nd and the tightening on December 16, 2020, still with the ‘Federal Emergency Brake’, which was decided at the end of April 2021”.
Their research note provides further evidence that lockdowns have little impact on the epidemic’s trajectory beyond the effects of voluntary social distancing and restrictions on large gatherings.
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R number is bollocks? Who knew?
” case numbers are unsatisfactory”
Of course they are. The term is now meaningless, given that it conflates everything from random RNA to actual infection. WHY is it being used here, instead of the accurate term ‘PCR+ test results’??????
THen we have the ‘R’ number – a purely theoretical modeller’s plaything : dodgy data based on dodgy data.
C’mon – get a grip.
Even someone like me who has a very unscientific mind knew from the start that the ‘r’ number was a complete work of fiction. It certainly alerted me to the SCAM early on. So well done modellers.
Time for one of our super – modeller “scientists” to pop up and make the obvious point that this research was done in Germany and it would be wrong to make a direct comparison etc, etc, etc and anyway you can’t trust the Germans.
As you were.
How many seriously covvill?
How many covvicorpses?
Nothing else matters.
charts, statistics and numbers.. people show what they want to show and people see what they want to see
I’ve been saying it all along – the viral spread determines R, not the other way round. Hence, it has little relation to lockdowns which tend to be reactive and have only marginal effect on spread. I think it’s much more likely that mutations and immunity are the key factors influencing viral spread. We see that the viral spread doesn’t take place uniformly across the country but surges in localities and regions – probably related to mutations finding more success among a particular population, so creating a surge in cases. Sometimes of course the mutations will have travelled from other localities. It’s basically all out war between the virus and our immune systems but on a level of complexity that no one human being could ever track (not that will stop Prof Ferguson from thinking he can). I suspect also with Germany that there might be hygiene issues. Germans are very big on hygiene so this might be a factor in determining how easily the virus spreads
Copious (if “off limits” and ignored) evidence shows that this virus was “spreading” in America and other countries as early as November 2019. “Cases” probably were declining by the end of March 2020 (and maybe even earlier). What we don’t know is how many people were “sick” with COVID in December 2019 or January 2020. Compelling evidence exists that millions of people throughout America and other nations were sick with something that was NOT the flu (as these sick people went to the doctor because of their symptoms, got a flu test and the vast majority of these flu tests were “negative.”) This begs the question: What was it that made so many people sick …. with symptoms just like COVID? BTW, the first “official” COVID death happened on January 9, 2020 in Wuhan. However, an Alabama man nearly died of COVID on January 3rd. He later tested positive for COVID antibodies. His wife, who was also sick in DECEMBER, has now tested positive for antibodies THREE times. What’s bizarre is that public health officials have never investigated the possibility these people might have had COVID. There are also at least 14 other Americans who were sick in November or… Read more »
R number is a complete crock. Ignore.