Right now the official explanation is that we're quite good with testing and isolating cases so far, which would mean that the confirmed count right now is much closer to the actual count than in Italy (or the US).
On Twitter the opinion seems mostly to be that the death cause is doctored.
I'm kinda hoping for the first, right now, because the projections aren't pretty (even if we're a bit further behind Italy). We only now started shutting down schools, and most events and even that is spotty as every state does its own thing and sometimes even every city.
I think it's a mixture of both. Underreporting of deaths and relatively strict lockdowns in known outbreak areas (basically municipial governments can call for that in Germany - so think the S...-County in Washington going on total lockdown by some local politicians authority). Looking at the Italian data this thing really seems to ravage through the elderly and although it's very sad that they now won't get ICU and co. my personal, subjective opinion (samplesize n=3) is that in this age-group hospitalisation for non-chronic, dire stuff basically just is a death-sentence anyway. People go through rehab, home-care to the hospital again where they succumb to some resisant bacteria in coma... It's sad they'll now die fast from pneumonia but ultimately that's life and judging from the n=3 samples, I'd much prefer a relatively fast, morphine-assisted death by suffocating (not sure how bad it feels with morphine) at this age to the comatose, 15-meds a day mushing up your brain-situation, which is typical.
Disclaimer: I'm aware, Italy is not doing palliative care anymore (which is really bad!) and also that this is not just a flu and also younger people die, but hopefully the rates here are closer to the real flu (which, talking from family experience again...) can kill a 20-something as well.
To be honest at first I found it suspiciously low, but now that the Scandinavian countries are very low as well it would require quite the conspiracy to keep this up.
The German virulogist who developed the first test for COVID-19 speculated that based on the numbers Italy must have had more deaths earlier on, but might have mistaken them as old people dying from the flu (which happens all the time and therefore didn't raise any eyebrows in the medical system).
The US might be undercounting but they are still reporting a high proportion of deaths compared to infections. In my mind it is more likely that mild or asymptomatic cases are being missed than that deaths are being missed. So the number of deaths seems more likely to give an accurate indication of how far the outbreak has progressed.
But indeed it's possible that those countries are simply not testing people suspected of having developed regular pneumonia, it's always tricky to compare these kinds of statistics when each country might use their own definitions and methods.
It is still gamesmanship and internal politics (do not add to panic) in France and Germany, their numbers for Western Europe zone that is heavily interconnected with Northern Italy (the unfortunate guinea pig of the entire West, also for a number of local and central government inefficiencies and incompetence) just do not add up... it was the same in Spain until yesterday too, but they went tits up and opted for full transparence. The United States seem further behind in that respect, but the Fed just went full bazooka with printing money and Trump can now deploy any given artillery in full.
On Twitter the opinion seems mostly to be that the death cause is doctored.
I'm kinda hoping for the first, right now, because the projections aren't pretty (even if we're a bit further behind Italy). We only now started shutting down schools, and most events and even that is spotty as every state does its own thing and sometimes even every city.