German approach seems pretty similar to ours

From the Guardian:

"3,000 now infected in Germany

Kate Connolly, our correspondent in Berlin, reports that 3,000 people in Germany now have coronavirus. Six people have so far died.
Berlin, Bavaria and two other states are the first to announce the blanket closure of schools and kindergartens. Two others, the worst-hit state of North Rhein Westphalia where over 1,000 are infected, and Rheinland Pfalz, are expected to make similar decisions later today.
Michael Müller, the mayor of Berlin, said public transport is also due to be reduced to a minimum.
In the Bundestag legislation has been passed this morning allowing companies to access compensation if they put their employees on so-called ‘Kurzarbeit’ or reduced working hours, enabling them to continue paying them their full wage. The law in all its detail will be fully enacted within the next ten days.
“We will not leave anyone alone,” Olaf Scholz, the finance minister said. In addition Scholz and the economics minister Peter Altmaier are planning billions of Euros of liquidity help for businesses, in an effort to protect firms and jobs.
Meanwhile the German Football League, the DFL has announced that Bundesliga and second league matches will be halted from next Tuesday until 2 April. Matches this weekend will continue to take place, but without spectators.
This morning at a regular press conference which the head of the Robert Koch Institute, the leading public health and safety body in Germany has been holding for the past two and a half weeks, its director, Lothar Wieler said public health bodies had three aims in their attempts to tackle the virus.
To try to ‘level off’ the epidemic curve, to ensure the most seriously ill don’t end up having to be hospitalised at the same time.
To try to speed up the adaptation of hospitals to cope with an increase in intensive care beds and patients who will need respiratory assistance. He said the virus was a “stress test” for Germany’s health care system.
To slow down the spread of the illness by cancelling large events. Every citizen should be prepared to reduce their social contacts, he said. “Each and every one of us needs to simply consider what he absolutely has to do”, and cancel everything else, he said.
Wieler said Bavaria’s decision to stop visitors to care homes was “a very sensible measure” and that school and kindergarten closures were “a good measure in helping the slowing down” of the virus.
“But then you have to ask who looks after the children,” he said. “The medical staff is mainly made up of females. So a concept needs to be created as to who will look after the children to allow these people to still be able to work”.
Wieler said that between 60-70% of the population would get the virus, due to the fact that it is new, there is no immunity against it, no vaccination against it and no treatment for it” and that “many many people” will have had it already without knowing it, and will have already recovered. Those numbers are unquantifiable, but the more people who get it, long term, the better, as that will increase the immunity levels.
Four-fifths of people will get it very mildly with many not even realising they have it, he added.
One fifth will suffer serious symptoms. That could still amount to millions of people being severely ill at once, hence the repeated stress by health officials on slowing down its stress."

Posted By: Jim on March 13th 2020 at 12:05:03

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