Italy Coronavirus Mortality Rate 15%

Maybe the Italians hang out in large groups compared to other countries. Or maybe they hug and kiss each other more. Or maybe they never wash their hands. Or maybe all their citizens smoke cigarettes.

 

The rate is 5-7% as reported by most authorities, not 15%. Italy has the highest percentage of elderly people in Europe, thereby the highest percentage of population at serious risk. The median age of Italy's population is almost 10 years older than that of the USA. 23% are 65 or older. As the virus is most dangerous to the elderly, it is logical that the mortality will be higher when the percentage of elderly is greater.

 

Italy did nothing wrong. They just don't know how many people were infected so their death rate is calculated on poor data. Italians are no more susceptible to dying from the virus than anyone else.

 

I think that's a really big part of it. Their population is 25% older. Does that translate into 25% fewer cases or is it a non-linear relationship?

 

Problem is that many of the corona virus cases go unreported. Many people get the virus and show no symptoms or only have a mild cold without reporting it to the government. But when someone dies, that is reported. So since the number of people who recover is underreported, the death rate is greatly exaggerated. South Korea had a lot more testing and a culture of people reporting to the government and their official death rate is .7%. And even in that case, there are still a bunch of people who didn't report or didn't even know.

 

That and the Florence mayor's "Hug a Chinese" campaign/

 

Their mortality rate is higher than 1% because deaths lag infections by about 10 days. So to get s. Korea mortality rate, you would take current deaths and divide that by the number of infections from 7 to 10 days ago.

Also, they've (and uk) done enough testing to suggest there aren't masses of asymptomatic infected people.

 

It translates into a higher than average mortality, because the people involved have a higher than average risk age.

 

What I mean is, does a 1% increase in average age result in a 1% increase in hospitilizations? I have a suspicion it's not a linear relationship. That's good for us, since we're younger than Italy.

 

I don't think that would be a factor in how many people might become infected at all. It would mean more of those infected would be hospitalized, because the older age group will be responding more negatively
and be sicker on average.

The majority of healthy people infected do not need hospitalization, or any treatment more drastic than we would use for common seasonal flu. Many contract the virus and never even know they have had it.
Overall, the situation is greatly, greatly exaggerated, and the reaction greatly exaggerated as well- lots of overkill. As of last week, the US had 41 deaths attributed to the virus, over a few months. That's about the same as the number of murders occurring in Chicago each week. The lowest level of annual deaths in the US from influenza virus strains in the last 10 years- is 12,000. The highest.... 61,000. None of those events caused us to panic and hoard toilet paper....

I suspect that more people will die of stress-induced heart attacks and strokes than virus. Just a week ago, I took a senior neighbor to the ER with a 250+ blood pressure spike, totally related to her distress and fears over the news reports and the market crash of her retirement funds. Now she's on a tranquilizer to prevent it happening again. Panic is a very dangerous thing- it gets people killed.

 

The situation is perilous. Why do you think countries are shutting themselves down? Italy is being overwhelmed by actual sick people, not people having panic attacks. Fortunately, we're taking steps to stop community spread. In a month's time, comparing the number of dead to the number of murder victims in Chicago will be as laughable as the early denials of "well, there's only 15 people infected".

Deaths and infections always move slowly at first in a pandemic. In 1980, AIDS had killed a handful of people. That number is now 30 million. The Black Death started with one sick person. You should read "The Band Played On". It's a fascinating look at the early attempts to get people to take "gay pneumonia" (as AIDS was sometimes called) seriously.

 

Probably not, but the mortality for an 85 year old is 20% in any given year

 

As does interruptions in supply chains