Italy

[HonestlyItsFine]

No, this isn't about travel.
I was just wondering about the mortality rate in Italy. Why is it so much higher than anywhere else?
According to this dashboard, Italy has had roughly the same amount of cases as South Korea. However SK is only reporting 50 deaths vs 300+ for Italy.
Anyone got any theories?

Correct reporting?

I thought it was maybe down to smoking, but their rate (according to Wiki) isn't so much greater than ours - 16% in England to something like 23% there.

They have an ageing population but so does virtually all of (Western) Europe.

They have a much greater elderly population unlike Korea. The elderly are more susceptible to dying due to co morbidity.

Italy is being honest. That’s why.

And all other European countries are not? I doubt that very much.

Italy are not testing people unless they are seriously ill so therefore they are under reporting total cases so death rate seems higher.

@Bartlet- thanks for that- it's actually quite reassuring! I have quite bad anxiety in general, and facts like that are helpful in amongst the media drivel.

75% of those who have died were a) between 81-89 years old and b)two thirds of them had at least 2 serious chronic health conditions.

Bartlet's information is not correct. Italy is testing far more people than neighbouring countries (especially around the zone rosse) because patient zero hadn't been found. Testing is taking place outside in triage tents and in lots of places other than hospitals.

Patient zero may not even be Italian, right? There are lots of tourist areas in Northern Italy.

Patient zero was found last week and is German.

My dd is currently a student in Italy and has been told that Italy have a high infection rate because they have thousands of employees from China working in factories that manufacture luxury goods in northern Italy. Some of those employees returned from China after Christmas with the virus which was treated as normal flu by medics. Therefore many people became infected before it was discovered that it was Coronavirus.

Italy is also testing way more people than many other countries in Europe.

Someone on another thread said that the virus was circulating around two hospitals before it was detected. So maybe that's why if that's true.

I think it’s impossible to know right now what the true stats are. We don’t know which countries are under reporting or testing to be able to work out why.

I’m in North East Italy but not in the Red Zone (yet).
I’m monitoring the situation as a normal member of the population.

This is my interpretation of the death statistics. Apologies if I offend anyone with my blunt delivery.

1. People who have died so far were mostly high risk (cancer, heart or lung disease) and old (average 81yo) people. Corona virus was the additional factor which precipitated their situations. Those people had CV as an additional cause of death on their certificates.

1. It’s still early in the campaign. Three weeks ago, many imagined they had just an awful case of the flu and recovered. ONLY THOSE WHO DIDN’T RECOVER quickly were hospitalized and in some cases died. Those are inflating the early Italian figures above the Chinese average.

Italy is being bombarded with real time figures and public health information from reliable sources. It has a VERY VERY strong military based Protezione Civile Corps which already had a pandemic protocol. This was applied and the information coming out is reliable, if shocking.

To a PP 4711cologne from a trustworthy eyewitness source I can say that Germany is NOT giving the same public transparency.

Did I read somewhere that the U.K. is only publishing WEEKLY Corona virus statistics??
That’d be enough to make anyone paranoid...

Sgtmajormummy taht was a miscommunication- it's still daily at the moment.

Well, the Italian Rai News has just put out a special announcement that the whole of Italy is now declared a Red Zone.