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RE: US 6th in deaths, but low rate
(03-21-2020 05:37 PM)Attackcoog Wrote: (03-21-2020 05:18 PM)DavidSt Wrote: (03-21-2020 05:09 PM)UofMstateU Wrote: (03-21-2020 04:11 PM)JRsec Wrote: (03-21-2020 12:11 PM)TripleA Wrote: Agree. Been saying that for days, especially when people said we were tracking Italy. Well, Italy has 60M, screwed up from the beginning, and has an older population. We have 5 1/2 times as many people, and acted much more quickly.
I have some profound questions about Italy's death rate.
1. Do the Italians immunize regularly for other forms of the flu?
They have vaxes like we do, but the primary care system is so bad that nobody wants to bear going to the primary care doctor to get one. Its why the have such as high death rate from the flu, and its been getting worse over the past 5 years. I believe last year they had a death rate from the flu 40 times higher than the US.
Quote:2. Do they have inherent genetic markets that make them more susceptible?
3. Is their something natural to their diet that inhibits the immune system?
Intersting question. I doubt it, but we may not know for sure for a while until after the sift through all of the data.
Quote:4. Is this just an example of what might have happened here had we not locked down travel when we did, which was still not soon enough?
Italy was a victim of chinese propaganda and being overly PC. And their healthcare system collapses like a house of cards under normak situations. They were ill-prepared at the primary doctor level, the ICU level, the hospital doctor and nurse level, and they failed to do any mitigation to quell the number of infections. Allowing travelers from china, hugging them to show they were not racist, did nothing but to ensure maximum spread. Honestly, their issue isnt just coronovirus. They probably have more people in the hospital for just the flu right now. Its like they were not prepared at all, their heathcare system was already short of beds, and then they did everything they could to get the highest number of coronovirus infections as quickly as possible. Basically, they did everything as porrly as you could.
Quote:5. Is there a different strain at work in Italy?
Whether there are one or two strains I dont think is the difference. Even if there are two, I bet they both have the same symptons and rates of extreme diagnosis. The proof is that once we started testing a higher number of people, we received a higher number of positives. The numbers are normalizing for all countries. (At least all countries which report consistenly without manipulating the numebrs by atrributing deaths to some other cause.
Quote:And to counter that Australia has faired remarkably well given the incidence of initial spread. What are they doing right?
Their pace of infections is picking up. They were in the dead of summer, so the virus probably didnt survive long. Now thats its into the fall, and without a lot of mitigations in place until the past couple of days, their infections are ticking up.
Quote:And, why isn't Russia more affected???
Being isolated as a travel destination certainly helps, but I would trust their numbers like I trust N. Koreas numbers.
Back to us and Italy; its important to note the US handled 500,000 hospitalizations due to the flu over the past 5 months. We did it without issue. Thats something Italy couldnt pull off ever as a percent of their population ( which would be about 100,000 hospitilizations. ) Italy literally had the worst case medical system, a worst case scenario in an aging popualtion with underlying health issues, and instead of mitigating the spread, they actively promoted the spread.
Germany seems to be doing something right than Italy who is next door. They both are are single payer system or a universal health care system, but Germany invested in the medical field with more doctors, nurses, hospitals, beds and all that.
Germany is about 30% larger than Italy, so the raw numbers have to get higher before you stress their system. Also, I suspect their population isnt as old. That said, they are going to start have trouble soon if their infection numbers continue to grow at this rate. You also have to pay attention to active cases. Of Germany's 22,364 total reported cases---22,071 are still active. The death toll there is going to climbe as those cases mature. Spain is smaller than Italy and they are now seeing their death numbers take off. Spain only has around 40 million people, but they have already hit 1378 deaths with 25,496 total infections. Spain has 86% of thier total infections still active---but they had 285 die just in the last 24 hours. In other words, Spain had almost as many deaths JUST TODAY as the US has in TOTAL Covid-19 deaths.
You are completely ignoring cultural differences. Was discussing this with my daughter today. Germans tend to be far less "touchy feely" than Italians and much more aware of personal space. They also tend to bend much quicker to authority and would likely follow government orders and advice much more readily. Spain is closer to Italy than Germany.
Germany's outcomes are looking a lot like ours. They are slow to close cases, but both countries show extremely low numbers of critical cases.
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