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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

#341

Post by whytaka »

pif wrote: post #333
2019-nCoV wrote: post #13

This outbreak is a litmus test for the competence of countries. It's already shone a bright light on the fragility of global supply lines, cheap travel and open borders. These are the aspects of life most likely to change after this is all over.

> It's already shone a bright light on the fragility of global supply lines, cheap travel and open borders. Are you serious? Those are the things that have given us so much prosperity in the last decades, and indeed no government has dared interrupt the flow until it has become unavoidable due to major national heath danger.

Which is a major failure in risk assessment. You know, that thing capitalists are supposed to be good at.

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

#342

Post by T-A »

skmurphy wrote: post #326
T-A wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going through your links: #1 provides no numbers and no details beyond a claim that "They lack machines to ventilate all those gasping for air." #2 does not even go that far: it speaks of "a huge turnover issue and leaving hospitals at near capacity" (near, not above, contradicting #1) #3 is from an intensivist in Seattle, Washington, not from Italy. I chose the Washington Post link because it provides numbers: "Lomb…

#3 was to show what can happen in one hospital. These patients are hard to transfer. Lombardy is about 9200 sq mi. (about 100 miles square). If you need a ventilator you may not be able to withstand a 50 mile ambulance ride. But I concede I cannot offer conclusive proof that Italy is out of ventilators.

Lombardy started transferring intensive care patients to other regions a week ago:

https://ilmanifesto.it/lombardia-paziente-trasferiti-fuori-r...

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

#343

Post by _-___________-_ »

superpermutat0r wrote: post #330
_-___________-_ wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't conflate case fatality rate with actual fatality rate. South Korea has almost certainly just had more time and "medical bandwidth" to find more of the minor and asymptomatic infections that make up potentially 80%+ of the total, and turn them into cases by diagnosing them.

I thought that actual fatality rate is always higher than measured in case of exponentially growing pandemics. Just imagine the case where it takes 20 days for people to die. Your calculations of fatality rate this early in the disease would be conservative.

A far bigger factor in a disease like this, where 80%+ of people have mild illness, is all the people that were never recorded as cases because their symptoms were too mild or were non-existent.

People want to use CFR as a measure of how worried they should be, or as some kind of comparison between countries, and it's totally inappropriate for either purpose.

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

#344

Post by tallanvor »

pmontra wrote: post #322
eisa01 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, you probably only have to look at the counts of infected tourists coming back. In Norway that is 89 from Italy, and 112 from Austria (25% of the total infected as of writing...)

Is Norway testing everybody coming back into the country?

No. In fact they just revised their testing criteria and will not test most people who are asked to quarantine at home. Testing is expected for people who have acute respiratory illness, people who are hospitalized, health care workers handling these cases, and immune-compromised people with mild symptoms.

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

#345

Post by lou1306 »

bad_user wrote: post #291
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/…

No, the far more likely explanation is that the total number of cases reported for Italy don't reflect reality. Because they are overwhelmed Italian hospitals basically send people home if they have a fever or other symptoms with no test administered, instructed to come back in case the symptoms worsen, only people having trouble breathing being admitted in the ICU. Italy could easily have in reality 10 times the num…

> Because they are overwhelmed Italian hospitals basically send people home if they have a fever or other symptoms with no test administered,

Sources, please.

> only people having trouble breathing being admitted in the ICU.

Well, why would you put someone without respiratory failure in an ICU to egin with?

Also, Italy performs 1 test per 1000 people [1]. Surely there are more cases than the reported ones, but 10 times? I am no statistician, but wouldn't it require extreme bad luck to miss so many cases with such extensive testing?

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/covid-19-testing/

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

#346

Post by troeks »

taeric wrote: post #301
cplanas wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about severity, but Norway is the European country with the highest infection ratio, after Italy and tiny Iceland. As of today: - Italy: 1 case per 3.996 inhabitants - Iceland: 1/4.285 - Norway: 1/6.710 - Denmark: 1/9.081 - Switzerland: 1/10.035 - Spain: 1/14.831 - France: 1/23.292 - Germany: 1/30.160

From my searches, they are currently at zero deaths? Low, at any rate. Feels like this supports my hypothesis. If anyone starts looking, they will find cases. Only if you have a baseline lung damage rate that is elevated will you see severe cases.

The first death in Norway was yesterday, an elderly person.

I tried looking up some numbers on severe cases, but the Norwegian Institute of Public Health webpages are currently experiencing some DNS issues.

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

#347

Post by imtringued »

joe_the_user wrote: post #247
gattilorenz wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many (technically former) "red zones", especially in Lombardy, they tested also asyntomatic family members of infected people, or their contacts. I'm not sure how inaccurate it is, but I have no idea what has been done in SK.

South Korea traces the movement of everyone who tests positive, puts the movements online and tests those who were exposed to someone positive (this is in the article I believe). It's a massive effort but with the world economy at a stand-still, what else do people have to do? North Italy has a population of 27 people btw so the 10K that are registered as positive as a drop in the bucket.

I guess I'm lucky enough to know one of these 27 people.

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

#348

Post by lou1306 »

kjakm wrote: post #124
christoph wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I thought that - but then I watched today's press conference with the chief scientific adviser and chief medical adviser. They made some very good cases for not locking stuff down just yet. Primarily you need to consider the behaviour of people. This is going to go on for a while no matter what we do and if we lockdown people now, by the time we hit the peak they will be ready to give up and go outside again. We need…

> We need to save the drastic measures for the peak.

If you only act when you hit the peak, any measures will be moot. Countries need to act now to reduce that peak and flatten the curve.

But sure, why not letting thousands of Atletico supporters into Liverpool, while Madrid has 1k+ cases. Was it also a "drastic measure" to play a football match behind closed doors?

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

#349

Post by imtringued »

koheripbal wrote: post #167
nostromo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how the media should report on deaths over 80, or even over 90. It's not that old people aren't worthy of protection, but when you're 85 in the US you have a 10% chance of dying in the next year for any and all reasons. So saying this disease kills 15% (for example) of 80+ year olds without context sounds horrific, but contextualized in the actual risks of just being very old to begin with, sounds much l…

You will not feel this way when you're 80

The problem is that this disease forces everyone to pretend they are 80. Give the old the care they need but don't drag down the young.

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

#350

Post by imtringued »

m_mueller wrote: post #214
ivanhoe wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 exponen…

You can't know who has the virus so everyone has to wear the mask to prevent the spread.
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