Britain's reported Covid case rate is about 4 times Germany's.
Britain's reported death rate "with Covid" is about 2 times Germany's.
Vaccination rates are about the same.
Why are things so bad in Britain?
(Cabinet Office note to editors: don't report this, OK?)
Answering my own question here: the official test rate is much higher (~9x) in Britain than in Germany.
Germany used better vaccines (very little AZ).
Germany vaccinated later (less waning).
Germany has something like 4x more ITU and beds per capita than the UK.
Ultimately Germany has a far better, more efficient health service than the UK too.
Germany also tests far fewer people.
Germany uses very different case criteria and very different WITH / FROM causes of death criteria on death certificates. In UK "COVID deaths" are counted when the term COVID appears anywhere on the certificate . In Germany its a stricter clinical definition for cause of death on death certificate. Much like what was used in UK before March 2020.
So a death from chronic heart disease or cerebral hemorrhage for example in the UK where the person happened to have a positive RT/PCR test result on admittance to hospital but no other clinical symptoms of a respiratory infection is counted as a "COVID death" because the positive RT/PCR test made the patient a "COVID case". So on the death certificate. Whereas in Germany the cause of death would be be chronic heart disease or cerebral hemorrhage only.
That is why comparisons of all official mortality / case numbers for "COVID" across countries are usually invalid. Comparing apples with aardvarks.
German octogenarians are somewhat more likely to have "covid-19" on their cause-of-death paperwork than similarly-aged Brits?
Snooze.
