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Italy is a country of 60M+ people and the 8th largest economy in the world, with a very high national debt and that significantly relies on tourism for its economy. Above and beyond the Coronavirus, this can terribly affect the long-term solvency of the country.
Tocilizumab drug in Naples hospital seems promising: «The health of the patient suffering from covid 19, who arrived in critical condition, intubated and treated with the new drug therapy is recovering. Maybe we extubate him because his conditions have improved a lot ». They also say they got confirmation from Chinese colleagues who tested that earlier on 21 cases. The drug is now undergoing trial at Roche. https://w…
The fatality rate of Italy is scary high. I read the reason is that they have such a high percentage of elderly.
> 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 Jap…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they were right in denouncing racism against Chinese people living in Italy. In my opinion there was no actual racism, just common sense measures. That work against any strain. > I am not sure how you can say the government's response is worse than other countries I am thinking of our prime minister, for instance. Two weeks ago he was on TV 16 times in a single day, to denounce the emergency. Then we went into the…
Common sense measures include washing your hands, not avoiding Chinese restaurants. But yes, it wasn't perfect. At least there was no generalized denial.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What he refers to, is that initially doctors said to stay away from people that went to China. Some politicians used that to push identity politics and went to Chinese restaurants and took pictures hugging Chinese people. I live in Poland so I have no idea, but my dad is back home and he's been telling me about it, that's what he said.
That makes a lot more sense to me. I do think both sides of the politcal spectrum are seeking to advance any parts of their agenda they can with this outbreak. I just felt that if something that ridiculous was said (and I am a fairly liberal person!) it would have most likely made international news.
For anyone claiming that this is just a flu: I've never heard of an entire country being shut down because of the flu.
H1N1 in Mexico [1], I was a Biology major during this time at a University in San Diego less than an hour away from the border. I recall this vividly and it still stands out in my mind just how corrupt Big Pharma is [2] and what control it wields, but Corona seems to be having a more political and economic destablizing effect than H1N! did, then again H1N1 was happening in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Still, given the wide-spread nature of this I can't help but draw parallels.
1: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103502...
2: https://web.archive.org/web/20150710024016/https://www.marke...
Italy is a country of 60M+ people and the 8th largest economy in the world, with a very high national debt and that significantly relies on tourism for its economy. Above and beyond the Coronavirus, this can terribly affect the long-term solvency of the country.
I hope (and suspect) that the ECB (and Europe as a whole) will financially stand behind Italy, no questions asked (I'm a fellow European).
Otherwise, EU's future is jeopardy.
Tocilizumab drug in Naples hospital seems promising: «The health of the patient suffering from covid 19, who arrived in critical condition, intubated and treated with the new drug therapy is recovering. Maybe we extubate him because his conditions have improved a lot ». They also say they got confirmation from Chinese colleagues who tested that earlier on 21 cases. The drug is now undergoing trial at Roche. https://w…
Note this is a last resort move for patients in critical condition.
Unreal, a month ago (February 7th) I was posting this news story [1] related to the city of Shenzen which was about to be put into some form of lockdown, it only received one upvote. A month from that event and we have an entire European country (a G7 member to add) under lockdown. I guess the normalcy bias [2] was too strong for too many people until reality hit us hard in the face. [1] https://www.epochtimes.com/gb…
I had a trip booked to Italy starting on March 20 so have been following the news very closely since at least mid February... I Ask HN'd how people were tracking the virus, and the answers I got were "I'm not tracking it in any way, shape or form and I hope it reciprocates the courtesy." Quite funny, but the stats don't lie[0]. The number of new cases in Italy has grown at an exponential rate. This is a developed eco…
[1] https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1236321986122375168
[2] https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1235956761015783427
Not a doctor, but I suspect 3.4% is the upper end of the case fatality ratio (i.e. death among people tested positive) as opposed to the infection fatility ratio (i.e. death among estimate of people infected).