Italy - 2 Weeks Post Total Lockdown & A record Number Of Deaths

Could the Italians not be testing everyone and counting some non-covid19 respiratory illness deaths as the disease, since they just can't test everyone? Thats the only thing I can think of. Their high mortality rate doesn't fit otherwise.

Unless smoking plays a big role in weakening the lungs to be ravaged by Covid-19. An insanely high 24% of Italians smoke and its probably highest among the oldest generation.

Kvothe wrote:

Could the Italians not be testing everyone and counting some non-covid19 respiratory illness deaths as the disease, since they just can't test everyone? Thats the only thing I can think of. Their high mortality rate doesn't fit otherwise.

Unless smoking plays a big role in weakening the lungs to be ravaged by Covid-19. An insanely high 24% of Italians smoke and its probably highest among the oldest generation.

This is the key regarding Italy and other similar areas. Covid 19 is a respiratory disease that will hit chronic smokers hard. A similar stat can be seen between the number of elderly male chinese deaths vs female (who smoke less).

So the US and Canada have a much lower smoking rate and Covid will more or less present as a flu. The real risk in North America is the obesity rate, as that can also cause concern.

Stay safe people

YMMV wrote:

sp2 wrote:

I haven't had a chance to look into this, but I'm guessing that German (and Scandinavian) death-rate is completely fake. It's so far out of line with everything else, it just makes no sense at all.

It probably turns out there's some idiotic quirk to the way they're recording things that's making them fail to count most of the CV deaths.

The same could be said of the biggest anomaly: Italy.

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Nah, it really couldn't. Italy's nowhere *near* the biggest anomaly.

Italy's rate is maybe 2.5 times that of the rest of the world (rough approximations, from a quick glance); Germany's is maybe one 17th.

Germany (and a few other countries) are MUCH bigger outliers than Italy.

And Italy's case is obviously far further along and more well-developed.

And in Italy's case we pretty much know what's happened: medical resources got totally overwhelmed and they're having to basically just let people die. (Much like what happened in Wuhan, where the rate was similar to Italy's.)

Italy's number makes a fair amount of sense. The German number makes none whatsoever.

Do you the Germans are 15 times better than the Japanese at figuring out how to keep people alive?

No. Unless there's something*really* weird and miraculous going on --like the virus that invaded Germany is a new *strain* that's vastly less virulent, or the Germans invented a miracle drug and haven't bothered to tell anyone else-- this is some kind of blip.

Either they're basically not counting the CV fatalities for some reason, or their curve is SO new and explosive that people just haven't had a chance to die yet.

I'm pretty sure the truth of the matter will reveal itself sometime soon --especially since their case-growth is almost as horrific as ours is right now, so they're gonna be overwhelmed pretty quickly, just as we are.

I've been glancing at Worldometer COVID-19 for several days now and the gain in cases and deaths has become alarming since two days ago. For those interested check the link and look at how much we are not in any way 'flattening the curve'. We're going to get through this time, but it seems clear that we are about to enter at least two months of unprecedented collective pain.

Link:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Kvothe wrote:

Could the Italians not be testing everyone and counting some non-covid19 respiratory illness deaths as the disease, since they just can't test everyone? Thats the only thing I can think of. Their high mortality rate doesn't fit otherwise.

Unless smoking plays a big role in weakening the lungs to be ravaged by Covid-19. An insanely high 24% of Italians smoke and its probably highest among the oldest generation.

This is exactly why Italy has been hit hard, and Iran also. Kind of amazed the news outlets never mention this.

Kvothe wrote:

Could the Italians not be testing everyone and counting some non-covid19 respiratory illness deaths as the disease, since they just can't test everyone? Thats the only thing I can think of. Their high mortality rate doesn't fit otherwise.

Unless smoking plays a big role in weakening the lungs to be ravaged by Covid-19. An insanely high 24% of Italians smoke and its probably highest among the oldest generation.

I think yours is the most objective answer in this conundrum. Also consider that in Lombardy it is smoking PLUS severe air pollution (due to heavy industry and winter thermal inversions).

Italy has near slave labor Chinese nationals working in their “exclusive “ designer clothing and shoes sweatshops in and around Milan. They’re getting what they paid for.

Banner. wrote:

Kvothe wrote:

Could the Italians not be testing everyone and counting some non-covid19 respiratory illness deaths as the disease, since they just can't test everyone? Thats the only thing I can think of. Their high mortality rate doesn't fit otherwise.

Unless smoking plays a big role in weakening the lungs to be ravaged by Covid-19. An insanely high 24% of Italians smoke and its probably highest among the oldest generation.

This is exactly why Italy has been hit hard, and Iran also. Kind of amazed the news outlets never mention this.

Hopefully at the end of all this, tobacco becomes treated as an illicit drug. We control people’s lives in so many other ways, might as well keep people from slowly killing themselves too.

Kvothe wrote:

Unless smoking plays a big role in weakening the lungs to be ravaged by Covid-19. An insanely high 24% of Italians smoke and its probably highest among the oldest generation.

Remember, the prevalence of young smokers compared to older smokers is very imbalanced, i.e., probably closer to 40+% of older italians smoke, and likely less than 15% of younger italians smoke. Ergo, the older italians who contract corona are going to have a much higher mortality rate.

sp2 wrote:

The German number makes none whatsoever.

Do you the Germans are 15 times better than the Japanese at figuring out how to keep people alive?

No. Unless there's something*really* weird and miraculous going on --like the virus that invaded Germany is a new *strain* that's vastly less virulent, or the Germans invented a miracle drug and haven't bothered to tell anyone else-- this is some kind of blip.

Either they're basically not counting the CV fatalities for some reason, or their curve is SO new and explosive that people just haven't had a chance to die yet.

I'm pretty sure the truth of the matter will reveal itself sometime soon --especially since their case-growth is almost as horrific as ours is right now, so they're gonna be overwhelmed pretty quickly, just as we are.

Never trust numbers out of Germany:

sp2 wrote: Germany (and a few other countries) are MUCH bigger outliers than Italy..

do you even know what "outlier" means? A group of data points aren't the "outlier" vs a single data point.

For the clueless on this thread (just about everyone apparently) obviously the Italian testing is focused on the very sick, and the Germans et al are apparently testing everyone they can, including the not-very-sick, maybe even asymptomatic.

why do you NOT WANT TO BELIEVE IT??? Why does good news send you into denial without even thinking rationally about how it could be true? It's not hard to figure out, why did someone have to explain it?

Bad Wigins wrote:

sp2 wrote: Germany (and a few other countries) are MUCH bigger outliers than Italy..

do you even know what "outlier" means? A group of data points aren't the "outlier" vs a single data point.

For the clueless on this thread (just about everyone apparently) obviously the Italian testing is focused on the very sick, and the Germans et al are apparently testing everyone they can, including the not-very-sick, maybe even asymptomatic.

why do you NOT WANT TO BELIEVE IT??? Why does good news send you into denial without even thinking rationally about how it could be true? It's not hard to figure out, why did someone have to explain it?

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Stick around a little while, Buddy. You will soon be proven every *bit* as stunningly stupid and full of sh*t on this issue as you already have been on everything else you've said about, well, pretty much anything.

And then, once again, you'll learn *nothing* from the experience. Because that's who you are.

Bye now.

Be discerning about the information you accept from communist and socialist countries.

Not a scientist but I can read wrote:

busser wrote:

Italy, Spain and France right now have the highest deaths in Europe. Germanic/nordic at the bottom. The cost of cheek kissing?

That is an interesting thought.

I think it's more in these 3 countries because it started in Italy.

What I also don't understand is why Germany's death number is so low compared to the cases.

Beer?

Some very low numbers:

Russia, a country of 146 mil is reporting 114 cases with no deaths and none listed as serious/critical.

Finland, 5.5 mil, 322 cases/no deaths/2 listed serious/critical.

India, 1.2 BILLION,  147 cases with only 3 deaths and none listed serious/critical

Great disparity between Iran & Iraq. Iran, 81 mil population, is imploding with 17,300 cases and 1,135 deaths. Their neighbors to the West, Iraq, 38 mil, only have 164 cases with "12" deaths reported as of today. Granted, Iraq has less than half the population of Iran, but this is a huge difference on how CV is impacting two countries in the same geographical region.

Finland doesn't look so good relative to its small size.

One troubling aspect of Europe is that warmer countries are doing worst, while we hope the coming warmer weather slows the virus.

Here in the Czech Republic there have been over 500 cases and not a single death yet. Czech Republic now has the highest total of cases in the world without any deaths.

And as far as I know they have mostly only been testing hospital patients.

mwh wrote:

Finland doesn't look so good relative to its small size.

One troubling aspect of Europe is that warmer countries are doing worst, while we hope the coming warmer weather slows the virus.

Not really true. Over half the cases in Spain are in Madrid which is bitterly cold in winter. Northern Italy has cold winters too. What these places have in common though is lots of tourists - including Chinese - even in winter.

We're already well into spring here in Central Europe, this is our first week at home in Germany, and we will likely be in lockdown next week.

The authorities tried to aggressively isolate the first known cases and the county with the most cases has been locked down since the end of February.

However several people brought the virus home from their holidays in Italy and elsewhere, even if they themselves did not get sick. The authorities can only trace known cases and known contacts. After seeing the carnage in Italy, it's not surprising that the authorities are panicking - I just hope we aren't too late. The worst will probably hit us in 3-4 weeks.