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Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

bbc.com

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Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#141
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The range of mortality I see is rather 0.3-1% [1] [2] [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).

Mortality rates are low because hospitals are working. Intensive care beds in Italy are projected to be full in less than 10 days. You’ll see the rate grow by then.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#142
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>just a generation ago having a large catholic, and poor, family was one of the most prominent qualities of Italian life. 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.

What is a long time? I lived and worked in the Central part in Emilia Romanga, an affluent albeit largely communist part of Italy, and I saw it amongst farming families, although most had since abandoned Catholicism. Many of the older children had left for Germany, Switzerland, Austria or Holland for work to send money back home. But, and this was just my personal experience since I was in the EU during the financial…

I lived (part time) in Bologna 2015-2019 and my Italian friends there, who were mostly in their 30s, by and large were childless.

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.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#143

I was not very surprised that Italy turned out to be the (first?) major hit in Europe. Considering the strong business connections, it had to be either us or Germany. We are, as much of the world, importers from China, but many enterprises here are also, somewhat, strong exporters to China (I can see it from my dayjob as industrial automation SI), and if you factor in the small average size of Italian companies requi…

Italy is Iran's largest trading partner out of all the countries in the EU iirc

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#145
post #21

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…

I really want to know if the people who appeared to catch it after recovering simply had the disease in remission or what, because being unable to develop an immunity screws up all the numbers until there is a workable vaccine.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#146

The fatality rate of Italy is scary high. I read the reason is that they have such a high percentage of elderly.

Yes, it's Simpson's paradox. Fatality rate is lower in Italy than in China for all individual age ranges, but the overall rate is higher in Italy because of the older population.

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Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#147
post #97
post #9

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.

National debt is merely a number's game. ECB can simply eat it. They are suffering from deflation after all and they could use some inflationary move. Debt accounting for the national governments is there to enforce financial discipline in normal times. Right now it is much more akin to war time. Evenly distributing the pain through bond and currency holders will be seen as just compared to the lives that can be save…

National debt may be a numbers game, but it's not merely that.

There's nothing simple about any ECB decision on monetary policy, and the composition of the EU when combined with the nature of the Euro is such that pain almost by definition can't be evenly distributed.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#148
post #100
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately, the universe will be able to resolve our dispute rather convincingly, and rather soon, even. I predict that: 1. France will have an exponential explosion of cases. 2. France, after dragging its heels, will eventually undertake similar quarantine measures. 3. Whatever economic damage that early mitigation would have caused will be inflicted multi-fold, as the country reacts too late. 4. Those same doctors…

1. Agree 2. Possibly, I don't think Macron is immune to over-reaction 3. The economic damage is the damage caused by the reaction, not by the virus itself 4. I am not talking about some rural generalist. These are infectious diseases specialists, who from what I can tell publish in the likes of the New England, I give them more credit on that topic than the average TV anchor or newspaper editor

>The economic damage is the damage caused by the reaction, not by the virus itself

Exactly. I wonder what would have happened if this entire virus was treated similarly to the seasonal flu.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#149
post #6

For anyone claiming that this is just a flu: I've never heard of an entire country being shut down because of the flu.

That's a bit of circular argument. You can't claim people aren't overreacting based on their reaction.

It's very much not just a flu though, that much is pretty clear at this point.

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