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Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

reuters.com

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Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#101

Post by Fnoord »

dirtyid wrote: post #40

S.Korea is also effectively an island - water 3 sides + sealed N.Korea border. I don't think it's useful comparing large interconnected EU countries response capabilities against Asian Tigers islands (Korea, Singapore, Taiwan) with deep collectivist cultural roots and large demographics that still remember living under centralized authoritarian rule. In the case of Singapore and China, still are. Italy has too much t…

> [...] deep collectivist cultural roots and large demographics that still remember living under centralized authoritarian rule. In the case of Singapore and China, still are.

From Singapore's Wikipedia page:

> Freedom House ranks Singapore as "partly free" in its Freedom in the World report,[137] and The Economist Intelligence Unit ranks Singapore as a "flawed democracy", the second best rank of four, in its "Democracy Index" [1]

Singapore is a flawed democracy, just like Hong Kong. Its unfair to mention it in the same breath as China which, according to the mentioned index, is Authoritarian.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#102

Post by humaniania »

tomerico wrote: post #10

Italy has an older population, hence more susceptible to deaths and spreading of the virus: - Average age of death due to Coronavirus in Italy is 82 [1] - In Italy, 3.65% of the population is 80 or older [2]. - In Korea, 1.75% of the population is 80 or older [3] [1] https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/covid-19... [2] https://www.populationpyramid.net/italy/2019/ [3] https://www.populationpyramid.net/…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_hosp...

SK has 12 hospital beds per 1,000 people vs 3 in Italy.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#103

Post by fab1an »

bonzini wrote: post #89
fab1an wrote: post #75

Italy got caught by surprise - they only found out that they had cases when a 38 year old (!) walked into an ER with advanced symptoms. Given that this age bracket is not commonly affected by these harsher symptoms it is clear that they had long ongoing community transmission which has now culminated in the current catastrophe. Germany is doing a bit better in this respect, it took them 1000 cases to 'get' the first…

Germany is counting deaths differently. If you have heart issues and you die due to a heart attack you're not counted as a COVID death. In Italy you are as long as you test positive.

Sorry, but this is bogus.

EDIT: I do not mean to imply that Italy failed in any respect. Italy has one of the best HC systems in the world.

The only reason this testing aspect worked out well for Germany is a very localized testing system. This type of 'federalism' is now a big issue though, as the gov can't simply ban events - only the states and communes can.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#104

Post by taeric »

enitihas wrote: post #5

Just curious, does anybody know how did Japan manage to do so well, inspite of a very old population. Also what does HN think is the better place to be right now? A mega city or a small village?

My hypothesis is that it is baseline lung damage from bad air quality. Look at the places that have had severe cases and lookup their air quality.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#105

Post by enitihas »

Fnoord wrote: post #93
enitihas wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is fine to let the idiots win on this one and rub it in our face forever. I would be willing to boost the ego of anyone if we can contain this.

How will they affect the next corona virus or other pandemic though? They'll be able to see "COVID-19 was a joke, this one will be too".

I mean if we have arrived at a point where majority of the people can't be convinced of the existence of this, and the only way to make them understand is to do some damage, we have bigger problems as a society in front of us. You don't throw a kid under a bus if he doesn't understand you, you just keep trying with incentives and maybe minor punishments.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#106

Post by trianglem »

snewman wrote: post #87
pascalxus wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't understand how knowing that you have the virus makes it less likely that you will die from it. There's no cure right? and at this point, anyone with a flu or cold will assume they have it and act accordingly, right?

It doesn't change the actual odds, it changes the perceived / measured odds. Imagine 100 people contract the virus, 10 develop serious symptoms, and one dies. In country A, with widespread testing, 40 of the 100 are identified. The visible statistics are 40 cases, one death, death rate of 2.5%. In country B, with poor testing, only the 10 with serious symptoms are identified. The visible statistics are 10 cases, one…

So based on that Italy’s true infected count is 15 times what they’re reporting or closer to 225,000 cases.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#107

Post by blululu »

js2 wrote: post #67
rb808 wrote: post #33

> South Korea has since reported 67 deaths out of nearly 8,000 confirmed cases, after testing more than 222,000 people. In contrast, Italy has had 1,016 deaths and identified more than 15,000 cases after carrying out more than 73,000 tests on an unspecified number of people. Surely the testing is a huge factor. Test more people you'll find more people infected, so the fatality rate will get smaller. If you're like th…

Singapore is probably doing as best as any country could hope to. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/12/8145224... Also, as an American, I'm embarrassed by my country's response and by how my president addresses the nation. PM Lee shows how you talk to your country: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mYs1Uyx3c8 His original address five weeks prior: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dExr76Wckr8

I would be proud to vote for someone like this.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#108

Post by christoph »

arcturus17 wrote: post #86
PeterStuer wrote: post #74

There's sooooo many lies being propagated by different governments on the true state of things. This afternoon I watched a live broadcast of parliament in which the minister of health claimed Belgium was doing far more extensive testing than any other country on earth. This at a time when standing instructions to medical personnel are to only test people that are already admitted to hospital because of severe pulmona…

I've seen English politicians constantly boast on TV that they've caught it very early and they've done better than anyone in the world...

As a UK citizen I am honestly terrified by my governments response and actions. In years to come I fear it’s going to be the textbook example of exactly how not to manage these types of situations.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#109

Post by elorant »

magicsmoke wrote: post #6
joe_the_user wrote: post #2

It's been making the argument that Korea's aggressive testing has allowed them greater control over the epidemic. Of course, there are a variety of other factors at work. Italy is the second "oldest" country in the world after Japan so Coronavirus infections just would be more deadly there. Also a lot of the Korean infections were confined to a single city in Korea (though the Italian infections also had an epicenter…

If Italy is the second oldest country in the world after Japan, how do they have 800 deaths compared to 16 in Japan? Something about those numbers seems off. Is it because Japan's elderly population tend to live in rural areas compared to Italy's or something else societally related?

Sanitisation habits.

https://jakubmarian.com/a-study-reveals-how-many-europeans-w...

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#110

Post by taeric »

yongjik wrote: post #97
enitihas wrote: post #5

Just curious, does anybody know how did Japan manage to do so well, inspite of a very old population. Also what does HN think is the better place to be right now? A mega city or a small village?

Japan simply isn't testing enough patients, so I would wait a few weeks before judging how well they did. That said, inconceivably they don't have many serious cases. (If the virus was really spreading exponentially, we'd certainly see a lot more patients, tests or no tests.) So they must be doing something right. It's just hard to tell if they could keep it this way.

I said it up thread, but curious to get more responses.

My hypothesis is this had already spread like crazy everywhere. Now we just are seeing the exponential discovery of it.

What marks the places hardest hit with severe cases is the bad air quality. Which acts as a further agitator on lung related complications.

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