In Germany, there was a very bad "flu" wave in january and february. My guess is that these were actually undetected Covid cases, and that Covid infections acutually peaked in february.

Besides, Germany is less hard hit by covid because the average life expectancy is about 81, while in the most affected countries it is much higher. So there proportionally much less people in the high risk group in Germany. Furthermore, Germany has one of the highes ICU capacities per person in the world.

They had a "soft" initial hit from late March to mid-May with only around 10k deaths. Since late October till now they've had 5x as many totaling almost 60k deaths.

I saw something a while ago (but haven't been able to find it again) suggesting that Germany's "second wave" in the Autumn didn't involve much (or any) excess mortality - suggesting something of a testdemic/casedemic - don't know whether this is true or not, and what Germany's total excess mortality was for 2020.

But if it's true that this is a genuine "second wave", it would appear that the whole story at the beginning about Germany just being so much better at handling things than the UK - more efficient, more public spirited, better at obeying rules etc. - was just hogwash, though.