The fatality rate of Italy is scary high. I read the reason is that they have such a high percentage of elderly.
And has one of the lowest fertility rates [1] in not just the EU, but in the World. Odd considering how just a generation ago having a large catholic, and poor, family was one of the most prominent qualities of Italian life.
They keep trying to monetarily incentivize increasing birth-rates, much like Japan, but its not working. I often wondered what implications all of these austerity measures and under-employment in regards to population growth would look like in the West, and it seems to be following the Japanese model quite well.
With that said, this is incredibly terrifying; the implications are looking dire.
1: https://www.thelocal.it/20160517/why-italys-facing-a-birth-r...
I would not say so, no. That's speculation, this has not been true even for the south for a long time now. The only large, poor families you see are from immigrants nowadays.
But, and this was just my personal experience since I was in the EU during the financial crisis; Italy, much like Spain and the other so called PIIGS, is a country plagued with underemployment and little to no social mobility for those under the age of mid 30s for the most part.
And while I cannot attest to the number of their siblings or their religious beliefs, to say Italy itself is not is rather difficult to believe given my first hand experiences.
I remember walking down the piazzas during the day to set up shop in the central parts of town, and the amount of large groups of 20 year olds (I was in my 20s back then too) were there day and night drinking in public was astonishing.
I'm from Poland, where the fertility rate is also very low, but parents in their 20s are still not that uncommon in this country.
Emilia Romagna hasn't been communist since at least 2 decades.
Emilia Romagna is largely an industrial compound with better average welfare state than the rest of Italy.
At best I would say Italian-socialist with some communist folklore
> the amount of large groups of 20 year olds (I was in my 20s back then too) were there day and night drinking in public was astonishing.
1) All the cities in Italy have large student populations because of well-respected universities. Bologna has one of the oldest universities in Europe, which is now massive. Chances are 95% of the kids you saw were students.
2) People in Italy like to hang out. Even if you have a job, anytime after 6pm is fair game for an aperitivo and whatever comes next, particularly when you are 20. Also, in smaller cities and towns, shops close at lunchtime and people go out to eat together, coming back around 2 or 3pm.
Edit: guess not, suppose I should spell it out: "Gypsy" is widely viewed as a slur, and thus is not appropriate as a cutesy spelling of a group of countries.
Its literately the first line in the link:
>> It’s been almost two years since Prime Minister Matteo Renzi introduced an €80-a-month ‘baby bonus' for low-and-medium income families.
>>> But now Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin wants to double that amount in a bid to stave off what she describes as a “catastrophic” decline in the country’s birth rate, as well as introduce higher payments for second and subsequent children.
The sad truth is that Italy is hard for young people with the wrong degree (or without a degree). Postponing children is often a necessity, if you don't want to depend on your parents (who often own an house and have a nice pension). And so many skilled people just leave.
That's pretty much the millennial plight, and I agree; the sum is absurd when put in proper context, but that is what the Italian Government deems 'necessary' to pay just to keep the native population (targeted low income and likely low educated) churning out more numbers. Apparently the secretary general wanted to double that, and 2-3x it for subsequent children.
The US probably subsidizes it even more with all the tax credits for having children, too.
I'm not saying this to be supportive of the process, just restating my observations. Also, Italy has the easiest immigration laws of all of the EU to help boost its population numbers.
Speaking of depending on their parents, I met a girl in Croatia visiting her Italian BF (she was from Washington) as she was thinking about staying long-term and living 'la dolce vita' a bit longer at her to be in-laws place when she realized all she had to do was marry her BF and would be granted complete citizenship.
They thought about taking a year to just travel if they did it, I wonder if she went along with it?
That tells me that case count will grow at a rate of test rate * 10% for days to come even if the actual spread has peaked.
IMO, and I’m not sure why more people aren’t saying this, the hospitalization rate in the general population under typical exposure rates is probably closer to 1% than it is 10%, and so just multiply the severe or critical cases by 100x to see the general population infection rate.
And if severe case count is not growing, than neither was the infection rate ~7 days ago.