In mid-January, long before most Germans had given the virus much thought, Charité hospital in Berlin had already developed a test and posted the formula online.
By the time Germany recorded its first case of Covid-19 in February, laboratories across the country had built up a stock of test kits.
A German Exception? Why the Country’s Coronavirus Death Rate Is Low
I think this article is just what you have been talking about as far as their healthcare system.
All the CoVid-19 articles in the NYT are not behind a paywall.
Yes, Germany had the
capacity to do massive testing, but if they had started it before Italy collapsed, we would have all known that there was a problem in Europe significantly earlier. I don't think Germany was doing massive testing and just hiding the fact that they had a problem from the world, and I was watching their numbers of positive cases start climbing with the rest of Europe at the very end of February, so I don't think it makes sense to say that they got started with the actual testing sooner. (If I remember correctly, I think Italy was the first to start testing aggressively in Europe, which is why they discovered what they did.)
I do agree that Germany was much better prepared than the rest of the West, and that they acted faster. But they seem to have still waited to really get started. (Either that, or they were testing and just didn't have problems until importing it from Italy at the end of February, I suppose.)
Either way, I've been really intrigued with the German system for a while. Their healthcare, their labor relations, and a bunch of other stuff, so... "Germany did it, so we could have done it too" is not something I agree with, since Germany had the advantage of being Germany. The United States is a total disaster when it comes to social cohesion and a functioning government.
That doesn't really matter.
Trump's advisors were struggling to convince Trump that we needed to mandate social isolation by February 26. Trump wasn't listening and was still hosting rallies at that point ...
Internationally, the fact that the WHO acted so late in declaring a pandemic actually
does matter, I think. If it had been even a week earlier, Madrid would have probably been spared the massive problems they have had, since that type of warning bell going off might have convinced them to call off the marches for International Women's Day.
Action will always come "too late". We could always have acted sooner.
But Trump waffled until March 31 to get serious about the threat.
By then, we had taken my son to Emergency twice, ... they couldn't spare a test for him, ... and we could find no face-masks ...
I'm sorry to hear that. I hope he's alright.
But again, I am in no way defending Trump with any of this. We
should have had the testing capacity to start responding to this at the beginning of March, and we didn't. There is no excuse for how the response to the crisis was botched.
If the Democrats had been in charge, I think we would have probably been doing things at the same pace as Europe. What I reject is the idea that we would somehow have started some sort of massive testing campaign a month earlier than Europe.