I know for a fact that hospitals in my city are transferring patients from standard hospital beds to ICU beds only so they will receive more government money. So for months now we're living in a rather unusual situation where those in ICU are always more than half the total number of hospitalized patients. Standard care beds for Covid-19 are 10% occupied versus over 50% occupied for ICU beds - which isn't a problem in itself here but it could be in other places if the same thing is happening elsewhere.

Shaking my head here.

Germany got twice as many cases between Oct 1st and Nov 1st than it had in the period between May 1st and Oct 1st. That's just pathetic. And all while peddling that bullshit about "Oh but now we're so much better equipped to handle it and less people will die because of it." Yeah, those record numbers of dead people would disagree if they weren't killed by corrupt and apathetic losers.

Turns out massively inflated numbers of cases also means inflated number of deaths, go figure, asshole.

What really pisses me off is that we had time over summer to prepare. But going into the second wave it looks like no real considerations and preparations were done. It is up to the local health authorities mostly. And they are massively understaffed for this crisis.

Currently we don't have enough materials for testing, so criteria for who gets tested is tightened. Which doesn't help to find chains of infections.

EDIT: We germans don't need Trump to fuck up stuff for us.

We shouldn't compare ourselves to the US. At least we don't kill people on purpose. I still have some kind of Trust that at some point someone will put their foot down. Elections are coming up next year.

What, you Germs don't believe in survival of the fittest?  That's your loss.

Arthritis drug Tocilizumab shows promise in tests against COVID-19: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55002339

Another arthritis drug, baricitinib, is approved by the FDA for emergency use in COVID patients: https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-authorizes-drug-combination-treatment-covid-19

Cases in the USA are surging. I blame it on those damn germs!!!

We did once and then the US and Russia stepped in to stop it. Now they're the ones doing it themselves.

Pfizer has formally submitted their COVID vaccine for emergency approval:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/20/health/pfizer-covid-vaccine.html