A scientifically engaged leader: Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel (L) and France's President Emmanuel Macron. Credit: François Lenoir/Pool/AFP/Getty

Let’s get straight to the point. About one in every 1,600 British people has died of Covid-19 since the first confirmed death in early March. Meanwhile, about one in every 10,000 Germans has*.
Britain and Germany are not identical; we have slightly different cultures, different political systems, different demographics. But as countries go, we’re pretty similar. We’re both middle-sized-to-large countries — there are about 66 million of us, about 83 million of them. We are both western European democracies with temperate climates. They’re the 16th richest country in the world by GDP per capita; we’re the 21st. We both enjoy beer and football. It’s hardly comparing apples and oranges.
And yet, somehow, British people have been dying at six times the rate of German people, from a disease that both countries could see coming at the same time. I wanted to ask around a bit and find out why.
The short version is that there are several factors, of varying importance — but, probably, none of them is magic, or hidden, or mysterious. There’s no obvious need to posit “immunological dark matter” or illegible cultural factors. Germany was better prepared and reacted faster than Britain did, and in some ways got lucky, while making some mistakes of its own; it had a political system and, of course, politicians, which were better suited to the moment; and together, those factors added up to keeping several tens of thousand Germans alive.
The key factors, in particular, appear to have been that they took measures earlier, and that they were better at protecting the most at-risk people. Those decisions came at significant cost, economically and to people’s lives – but, I think most of us would agree now, they were worth it.
Here’s the longer version.
First, the political system. Germany, unlike Britain, is very decentralised. It is a federal country of 16 states. Each state is itself broken down into smaller units, each with considerable autonomy over public health measures. The local health authorities all report into the centralised Robert Koch Institute, which is the main public health body, a bit like the US Centres for Disease Control, but often make decisions on their own.
According to Jens Spahn, the German health minister, speaking with Jeremy Hunt at a Policy Exchange event in July, this allowed more rapid responses at local level: “In this crisis, there are unforeseen things, and it means you have to handle things very pragmatically. It can help to have many different players who are self-organised.” If you have cases rising locally and the autonomy to do something about it, you don’t have to wait for central authority to order you to do so.
One direct example of this is the track, trace and isolate (TTI) system, which in Britain so far – I think I’m being fair in saying – has been an expensive failure. In Germany, the TTI system was always very obviously under the remit of the local public health authorities. “Doctors had to report a positive test to the public health authority; the authority had to report it to the Robert Koch Institute. Then there were manual forms that were given straight to the doctor, who had to get numbers and call everyone up, find out the symptoms, get them to isolate,” says one senior German public health expert I spoke to. There wasn’t a single central body trying to run a one-size-fits-all system across hundreds of disparate local authorities.
It also allowed different regions to try different things, which could then provide feedback on what works and what doesn’t. The public health expert told me that Jena, in eastern Germany, was the first “to implement a requirement to wear masks, which in Germany at the time was considered an infringement of personal freedom – silly when you think about it! – and they had much lower infections, so it led to it being implemented elsewhere”.
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