Germany's deaths were mostly very, very old people who were already in retirement homes. Confirmed corona deaths that is. I don't really think there's much number fudging going on. There was the carnival (the funny political floats you see online once a year) in North Rhine-Westphalia (ignoring the city-states we have, the most densely populated area in Germany and one of the most densely populated areas in Europe) a few weeks ago and that probably really helped spreading the virus and we are seeing the numbers roar because of that now. Interestingly enough there was also a storm a few weeks ago that lead to some of these carnival events being canceled, and the numbers in the parts were there were widespread cancellations are actually noticeably lower.
Also a good reason for low death numbers in Germany is that it's not been here that long. Give it some time to run it's course and the first serious numbers will appear. Also remember that Germany has a top-notch public health system and did a relatively good job at quarantining early on, (still bad but good compared to the abysmal response in the west overall, putting too much trust in chinese numbers because it was convinient) although it was too little too late overall.
Germany is very federal and the states hold a significant amount of political power over their own business. Schools are closed, as are all non essential businesses. Some german states and cities have already introduced a curfew in an event of political pissing contest with Merkel, and the rest of the country is expected to follow on Monday. The plead to limit social contacts has sadly not been taken seriously by most, which is probably an effect of the low numbers of dead people and the picturesque weather the whole week. (Yes, even while Italy next door is collapsing) Also, Americans like to make the mistake of throwing all of Europe into the same pot - Italy and Germany are very very different countries in many ways and what's happening in Italy is really not applicable to Germany. For starters, Germanys medical infrastructure is much better. So good in fact, that some of the smaller countries around Germany depend on it which has been a growing problem. (and currently, we've even been taking some of the critical cases from France because those people would've died otherwise) Then there are many factors that go into spread and death rate and even culturally these countries are very different, Italy having a culture where old people are very included in the social life and many generations are often living in the same house. It's not unusual for even married, adult Italians to live with their elderly parents. You also have to see that Italy is the country with the second-oldest population in the world. The average age of all the dead in Italy from this is 78.5, which should also tell you something. Maybe, optimistically, Italy is the "perfect storm" scenario and not representative. Maybe.
On the other hand, numbers from the Robert Koch Institut (federal government agency and research institute responsible for disease control and prevention) haven't been encouraging. Right now, it is assumed that 70% of Germans will get the virus and that it cannot be contained anymore. At the current growth rate, this goal would be reached in two months, would lead to a complete collapse of the medical infrastructure and would probably leave 1-2 million people dead.
The current strategy is to delay the spread of the virus to not reach this saturation in the population too quickly as to not overwhelm the health system, but to introduce it gradually so that the health system can putter along and infrastructure can adapt. (Germany has been building emergency hospitals and wants to double it's capacity of intensive care units, which is very expensive) Even at the current death rate of Germany, this would mean about 100k people dead. With their currently published documents and some very simple math ignoring many of the unknowns, this would require months of curfews to turn the current exponential growth into more of a flat linear line, which is economically impossible. Then it also depends on how many people will need intensive care which last time I checked, is also not really clear right now. There are very many unknown factors still and there's no reason to draw a doom scenario like above, but also no reason to think it'll be just a slightly worse flu. Only time can tell. One thing that neither the German government nor public health authorities do is prettify the numbers or do optimistic projections. They're pretty clear about them and they're very serious and quite grim, just most germans have been all "LALALA CANT HEAR YOU LIFE IS GOOD" about it. It's an absolute race against time right now and the window of oppertunity to act is closing fast, which makes me all the more worried about countries that don't seem to act in any coordinated fashion at all. I'm honestly a little surprised international press hasn't been picking up much on these. There's been press conferences in Germany basically daily.
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