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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

#211

Post by Camillo »

taeric wrote: post #205
Camillo wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? Right now air in Wuhan [0] seems to be significantly worse than Milan [1]. Both cities are under some level of quarantine, but it has been stricter and going on for much longer in Wuhan. Chinese sources say that the air in Wuhan is much better than it was before the quarantine. We can assume that the difference between the two cities would be even larger during normal activity. Edit: Milan is much closer to S…

I used those sites and looked at daily historical. I grant that China was strictly worse. But Milan is strictly worse than everywhere else getting hit. Edit: and the air being better after the quarantine would support my hypothesis. It wasn't that that helped, but the better air. (Which is still very bad)

The daily historical on that website goes back to February 12th. Wuhan has been in lockdown since January 23.

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

#212

Post by danso »

toolz wrote: post #166
paulryanrogers wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fatality numbers won't reflect those who developed permanent lung damage or had to go into intensive care. Best not to suggest anything that might down play the seriousness considering how infectious this virus is. (Otherwise it may encourage risky behavior.)

but what about the risks of over-selling this disease? Look at Italy for example. I've read self-reports from healthcare workers claiming 200% hospital capacity. I can only image the needless death resulting from such panic. Mind you that isn't covid 19 putting them over-capacity. In the worst hit region in Italy (Lombardy) confirmed covid 19 cases represent enough cases to take up less than 10% of their hospital bed…

> In the worst hit region in Italy (Lombardy) confirmed covid 19 cases represent enough cases to take up less than 10% of their hospital beds.

Do you have a source for this comment? This WaPo story from 6 hours ago says differently:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/italy-coronaviru...

> Giulio Gallera, Lombardy’s health chief, said Thursday that the region would reach its capacity in “five, six or seven days,” even if it tried to add more beds in hospital “cellars.” In an interview with Italy’s La7 channel, Gallera described the possibility of adding 500 intensive-care beds at Milan’s expo center, the kind of rapidly assembled zone that China created in the hard-hit Wuhan area.

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

#213

Post by nikk1 »

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?

I'm in Japan right now. I don't have any insight into government response, but there could be cultural factors that could have reduced the spread of the virus. In general, the Japanese avoid physical contact. They bow when they greet each other, money is exchanged on a tray rather than by hand, they typically don't hug, etc. Plus many people wear face masks. Occasionally when I bought something from a store, they would throw in a free face mask for me as well. And many businesses and restaurants put hand sanitizer at their enterance.

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

#214

Post by m_mueller »

ivanhoe wrote: post #204
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/…

There are also cultural differences, Italians like to hang out in groups, outside, personal space is much smaller, people hug and kiss and touch all the time. Also they're not really the most disciplined nation, lots of them simply ignored the safety rules, continued to go out, there were even some cases where infected people run away from quarantine. And additionally the spread of virus is not uniform as it depends…

I think there is another factor as well: have a look at train stations during rush hour on East Asia currently vs. Europe. 1) the density is significantly higher but 2) nearly everyone is wearing surgical masks now. I think that mask wearing is an effective measure to slow down the spread, acting at the sender side rather than the receiver (which Western people tend to focus on). You can see a similarly lower exponential spread in other Asian nations compared to Europe and I think that masks plus a lesser degree of body contact can explain this largely.

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

#215

Post by taeric »

Camillo wrote: post #211
taeric wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used those sites and looked at daily historical. I grant that China was strictly worse. But Milan is strictly worse than everywhere else getting hit. Edit: and the air being better after the quarantine would support my hypothesis. It wasn't that that helped, but the better air. (Which is still very bad)

The daily historical on that website goes back to February 12th. Wuhan has been in lockdown since January 23.

I'm now on my phone, but the site I used went back longer. I'll compare when I can.

And again, China was worse. Italy is just worse than all places I checked that had a lot of cases, but not as many severe cases.

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

#217

Post by malandrew »

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…

> If you're like the US and test very few you get the huge fatality rates we saw in Washington.

Most of the fatality rate in Washington is due to it spreading in a single nursing home. IIRC, it was 19 deaths from that one nursing home.

More vigorous testing comparable to SK likely wouldn't have caught the issue in this one nursing home in time as it spread like wildfire there. Only if the testing had caught the single employee that was the source would it have made a difference.

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

#218

Post by toolz »

danso wrote: post #212
toolz wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but what about the risks of over-selling this disease? Look at Italy for example. I've read self-reports from healthcare workers claiming 200% hospital capacity. I can only image the needless death resulting from such panic. Mind you that isn't covid 19 putting them over-capacity. In the worst hit region in Italy (Lombardy) confirmed covid 19 cases represent enough cases to take up less than 10% of their hospital bed…

> In the worst hit region in Italy (Lombardy) confirmed covid 19 cases represent enough cases to take up less than 10% of their hospital beds. Do you have a source for this comment? This WaPo story from 6 hours ago says differently: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/italy-coronaviru... > Giulio Gallera, Lombardy’s health chief, said Thursday that the region would reach its capacity in “five, six or seven da…

lombardy has 7280 confirmed cases [1] lombary has a population of 10MM (wikipedia) italy has 3.18 hospital beds per 1000 [2]

the math for that adds up to 31,800 hospital beds 7280 confirmed cases is 22% - so my sources were off or wiki is wrong as originally I recall reading lombardy has a 16MM population.

I will say that your article claims they haven't run out of ICU beds yet but that number is surprisingly high for ICU needs to cover covid 19. The article implies 600 ICU cases from covid 19 - that's over 12% ICU from confirmed covid 19 cases, which is more than twice what china reported.

It's also very surprising how few ICU beds they have allocated towards ICU....

The USA has something like 14% of hospital beds as ICU beds [3] but Italy appears to only have have less than 3% of their beds available for covid 19 ICU

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1099375/coronavirus-case... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_hosp... [3] https://www.sccm.org/Communications/Critical-Care-Statistics

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

#219

Post by dmix »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #172
js2 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Singapore has been competent, but Taiwan's response has been more impressive. It's very close to the hot zone, millions of people travel to and from mainland China every year, it has roughly the population of Australia living on 10% of the land Japan has, the WHO refuses any cooperation, and yet there have been under 50 cases and no local transmission. Not only that, but as a democratic state, Taiwan's control measur…

> TW government had a plan for this epidemic and a healthy skepticism for both official news and the WHO.

Which is notable that the US CDC seems to be following WHO closer than anyone, at least early on...

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

#220

Post by Fnoord »

FriendlyNormie wrote: post #193
Fnoord wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

You do understand that everything would have been fine if we simply pretended this virus didn’t exist, right? A few extremely old people would have died slightly sooner. That’s it.

The disease is extremely contagious. Hospitals would've been even more overburdened as they currently are if we just "did nothing" because it would've spread much quicker.

You might get to the point where you need to make a choice between who you're going to accept in the hospital (younger people then get the fast lane over the elder due to potential higher amount of life years being saved). I believe its like that in Italy at this point.

If old people quarantine themselves the chances of them not getting this disease increase. I know a few elder (including loved ones) who I don't want to see passing away, so I have an interest in this.

On a different note, I also find it selfish and distasteful to feel careless about big groups of other people based on discriminatory elements such as age.

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