Italy’s Covid-19 deaths are staggering. They may be more preview than anomaly | Hacker News Reader

Italy’s Covid-19 deaths are staggering. They may be more preview than anomaly

washingtonpost.com

28 pointsdmitriy_ko14 comments

It seems that the US is on the the path of no mitigation approach https://neherlab.org/covid19/?%7B%22population%22%3A%7B%22po...

You don't know what you're talking about. Not even close. The H0 is now well below 1.0 in the most populous states. Stop fear-mongering. What's happening is severe cases are being identified but new cases in the future (would've be two weeks from now) aren't happening at nearly the same rates. The extreme shutdowns take time to resolve existing cases and for transmission to die out to almost nothing.

Paraphrasing Bill Gates speaking to Chris Anderson: testing needs to be comprehensive and enduring shutdowns long enough to work is the prescription for losing control.

Source for the H0 stats?

Yes emerging victorious. Tremendous victory against the virus and money printing as bonus!

Aftenposten (a Norwegian broadsheet) published an opinion piece today arguing that the high number of deaths is partly due to the multiresistant bacteria that are endemic to many Italian hospitals.

Abbreviating: Italy has 11k deaths per year due to multiresistent bacteria. Severe pneumonia often/usually features secondary infections that need antibiotics. A large wave of pneumonia, particularly a form with which the hospitals have little experience, offers those multiresistant bacteria a Great Chance.

In case anyone would like to read it themselves you can find it here:

https://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kronikk/i/awEP27/derfor-...

Google Translate does a fair job of turning into English:

https://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kronikk/i/awEP27/derfor-...

No idea how good it is at other languages.

If Italy has such a problem with multiresistent bacteria, then how come it is able to have such a high proportion of elderly people?

Does Italy have greater seasonal flu mortality than other countries?

Good question, I don't know about seasonal flu, but here's data a few calcs on this pandemic:

According to Johns Hopkins tracking site now (2020-March-23 4:00 PM EDT) (1)

Global deaths = 18,557 / cases = 414,227: rate calculates to: 4.47%

Italy deaths = 6,820 / cases = 69,176: rate calculates to: 9.85%

USA deaths = 674 / cases = 51,542: rate calculates to: 1.3%

Beyond the obvious shortcomings and inconsistencies of testing in counting the cases, another strong caveat in counting the deaths in a rapidly developing situation is the lag - e.g., the USA is a few weeks behind Italy on the curve, and it takes time for the disease to kill (i.e., we don't know how many US cases are doomed and will be counted as deaths in a few days)

(1) https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594...

I think most mortality rates of covid are pure speculation right now because we use confirmed cases as denominator and in most cases we have no idea how confirmed cases relate to true number of infections.

I've seen stats in other threads (cuz HN is about 80% COVID threads these days) that implied that the Italian population was about 22% elderly, which is on the higher end. Compare that to about 11-13% in China, or about 17% in Canada.

That also meant they had, even during "normal" times, higher rates of fatalities from the Flu and extreme temperatures e.g. heatwaves killing elderly people with no AC or mobility, freezing in blizzards, etc..

That would suggest that you actually have a better chance of surviving if you stay away from the hospital.

Your response assumes that suffering from an ~untreated hospital-worthy primary disease is better than a treated primary disease plus a difficult secondary infection.

People might find the story in The Hot Zone interesting. I read it years ago. I googled it recently and it was available online for free in PDF form.

It's mostly about Ebola. The pertinent detail here is that tribal elders told people to stop going to the white man's hospital and that helped stop it (as just one detail of an overall strategy).

(I completely misread the comment I'm replying to the first go round. If you have an email notification of a nutty sounding reply, I apologise.)

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