Italy is a total standout among the infected countries. I have a lot of relatives there, luckily they are in the central-south and in tiny isolated villages.
But there’s something strange about how hard this is hitting Italy. I’m curious whether we will learn some day why...
Germany had over 1,000 reported cases before it had one death.
Austria, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and UK are similar, so far.
It’s fascinating.
In the end I think they will find a mutation occurred. I know there are the S and L Variants already. Perhaps more.
Depending on the variant, and the genetics of the people (and whether or not they smoke) the virus would get a more secure grip. On top of that, Italy is OLD. And I am not talking about “ruins.”
Demographics may help explain the difference.
CHINA:
Age structure
0–14 years: 17.2% (male 127,484,177/female 109,113,241)
15–24 years: 12.8% (male 94,215,607/female 82,050,623)
25–54 years: 48.5% (male 341,466,438/female 327,661,460)
55–64 years: 10.8% (male 74,771,050/female 73,441,177)
65 years and over: 10.8% (male 71,103,029/female 77,995,969) (2017 est.)
Median age
total: 37.4 years Country comparison to the world: 67th
male: 36.5 years
female: 38.4 years (2017 est.)
ITALY:
Age structure
0-14 years: 13.6% (male 4,326,862 /female 4,136,562)
15-24 years: 9.61% (male 2,994,651 /female 2,984,172)
25-54 years: 41.82% (male 12,845,442 /female 13,183,240)
55-64 years: 13.29% (male 4,012,640 /female 4,261,956)
65 years and over: 21.69% (male 5,817,819 /female 7,683,330) (2018 est.)
Median age
total: 45.8 years. Country comparison to the world: 5th
male: 44.7 years
female: 46.9 years (2018 est.)
total: 45.5 years (2017 est.)
men: 44.4 years
women: 46.5 years
total: 44.2 years (2015 est.)
SUMMARY:
1) Italians are on average 8 years older than Chinese.
2) Over 65: Double the number of Italians (22%) are over 65 years of age compared to Chinese (11%). These are the folks most likely to die of Coronavirus.
My first thought would be a different strain, but at this point we don’t know for sure.
My first thought would be a different strain, but at this point we don’t know for sure.
Maybe a different strain or maybe different genetics.
Could also be environmental factors that have not been identified yet.
Italy’s “high death rate” is not that hard to explain.
Italy failed to properly test its people early on, so the only way they knew someone had the virus was when folks were very sick—and those folks were tested.
Then, there were so many of those very sick folks that they overwhelmed the health care system and more and more people died since adequate care was not available.
The _only_ reason this has not happened in France, Spain, UK, US etc is because these countries are a few weeks behind Italy in getting the disease.
You do _not_ want to hear this, but I have seen _no_ evidence that any other western European country or the US is handling this better than Italy did.
_No_ evidence.
Countries that handled the disease with massive quarantines and massive testing (like South Korea and Hong Kong, for example) had much lower death rates.
If you get it right, you have low death rates.
If you get it wrong, you have high death rates.
For an Italian not to touch someone they know is like, I don’t know, not saying hello for us.