10 ms·

3.65% / 1.75% ~ 2.09, so the difference in age profile might explain a factor 2 in the mortality ratio of Italy vs South Korea. The actual ratio is currently 7

• rwcarlsen 7y ago
  Maybe co-morbidities or general health per age is better in S. Korea.
  • UncleOxidant 7y ago
    It's all the kimchi.
    • Ghjklov 7y ago
      How long can the virus survive in a container of kimchi? I truly would like to know.
• skmurphy 7y ago
  If you factor in collapse of medical services -- Italy ran out of ventilators / ICU beds--the gap becomes clearer. You have to look at over 60 as more likely to be hospitalized, putting strain on medical system.
  • zaroth 7y ago
    This doesn’t account for it because South Korea didn’t even have the number of serious cases that Italy has. The real answer is simply that the number of tests is not equal to the number of cases. The number of positive tests is a factor of the number of tests done, and how selective the testing was allowed to be. It is only loosely related to the number of infected people (technically it is the lower bound).
    • fnord123 7y ago
      >The real answer is simply that the number of tests is not equal to the number of cases. Ye olde "3.6 roentgens. Not great but not terrible" factor. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg5HOnq7zD0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg5HOnq7zD0
    • skmurphy 7y ago
      My comment was directed at age structure of population accounting for difference in mortality, complicated by effective collapse of medical care in certain regions of Italy that meant severe cases that could have been managed because critical and then fatal without ventilation support.
    • RobertoG 7y ago
      >>"The real answer is simply that the number of tests is not equal to the number of cases." I think you are right, but, assuming all the deaths are reported, the obvious implication is that the mortality rate is a lot lower than 3% If fact, looking to Germany, I would say that it's around 0.2, 0.3 % That would be the good news, the bad news is that it's extremely contagious, probably because nobody is immune to this thing. Of course, I'm only a random guy in the Internet, so take it with a grain of salt.
      • gpderetta 7y ago
        I think the current most credible estimate is 0.8%-1%. That's what the UK government has been planning for, for example.
        • RobertoG 7y ago
          Makes sense, it's difficult to calculate without knowing the number of tests that are being done in every country.
  • T-A 7y ago
    As far as I can tell from the media, Italy has not run out of intensive care units yet. See e.g. this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/italy-coronavirus-patients-lombardy-hospitals/2020/03/12/36041dc6-63ce-11ea-8a8e-5c5336b32760_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/italy-coronaviru...
    • skmurphy 7y ago
      Here are two reports that would indicate that the standard of care has been substantially reduced https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/who-gets-hospital-bed/607807/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/who-gets-h... "Doctors and nurses are unable to tend to everybody. They lack machines to ventilate all those gasping for air." ---- https://www.euronews.com/2020/03/12/coronavirus-italy-doctors-forced-to-prioritise-icu-care-for-patients-with-best-chance-of-s https://www.euronews.com/2020/03/12/coronavirus-italy-doctor... "Another nurse working in Lombardy, the Italian region the worst hit by COVID-19, told Euronews the situation was "dire" and far worse than it is being portrayed in the media. Speaking to Euronews on the condition of anonymity, she said: "We have hundreds of cases in our hospital. Half of our operating block has been dedicated to COVID-19 patients. The situation is dire. Anesthetists – despite them playing it down a little bit on the media – have to choose who they attach to the machine for ventilation, and who they won’t attach to the machines" --- A first person report from Seattle ICU doctor https://www.facebook.com/marie.e.will/posts/10163071254245156 https://www.facebook.com/marie.e.will/posts/1016307125424515... "Remdesivir might work, some hosps have seen improvement with it quite rapidly, marked improvement in 1-3 days. ARDS trajectory is impressive with it, pts improve much more rapidly than expected in usual ARDS. Recommended course is 10d, but due to scarcity all hosps have stopped it when pt clinically out of the woods - none have continued >5d. I decode this as they have half the amount of Remdesivir they need, only treating for 5 days when recommended course is 10. The other thing that appears to be going on, and it's also hinted at in report from Seattle, is that old patients are being moved to hospice or "comfort care" who would not have been three months ago because of lack of supplies/personnel/equipment.
      • T-A 7y ago
        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: "Lombardy has just 737 intensive-care beds available for coronavirus patients. More than 600 are filled. [...] The region is racing to bring more beds online; it added 127 on Thursday." (Lombardy is the region with most cases.) This is consistent with the claim in your link #2 that hospitals are near capacity (and not above it, as suggested by your link #1). The point of all this pedantry is simply that I don't think saturation can be invoked yet to explain the high Italian mortality rate. Addition: Here's a slightly older Italian source (March 11) which puts nation-wide ICU capacity in Italy at 5090, with 887 in use: https://www.linkiesta.it/it/article/2020/03/11/italia-coronavirus-ultime-notizie-posti-letto-intensiva/45767/ https://www.linkiesta.it/it/article/2020/03/11/italia-corona...
• Retric 7y ago
  A large number of South Korea infections are even younger due to how it spread. Italy: Above 80: 1,532 (18.4)% vs age 20-29: 296 (0.0)% South Korea: Above 80: 243 (3.1)% age 20-29: 2,261 (28.7)% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_South_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_S... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Italy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_I... Of note, neither country has had anyone under 30 die. Deaths in the 80+ age range are 8.23% in South Korea and 13.2% in Italy. PS: South Korea saw 2 deaths under age 50 where Italy has seen 1. So this age is by far the largest factor.
  • nostromo 7y ago
    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 less scary. If Italy, for example, were to report on the number of fatal infections in people younger than the natural life expectancy, the fatality rate would drop in half.
    • black_puppydog 7y ago
      you could also say that for people 80 and above, this epidemic will more than double their already significant chances of dying this year...
      • toolz 7y ago
        That's a really hard thing to say this early. For all we know many 80+ people are asymptomatic and most older people aren't negatively affected at all by covid 19. It seems really dangerous to conflate actual mortality rate with mortality rate among the confirmed cases. Those numbers will be drastically different with diseases that have many asymptomatic carriers.
• ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
  Except if the increased rate of death is from the medical system being over capacity.... this still wouldn't be a good test of quality of their responses, but more just revealing the capacity of their medical system.
• krzyk 7y ago
  The infection in Italy started in hospital or in retirement home (I don't remember which), so the first infected were people > 70. In South Korea it started in a cult, where most people were young < 40, and moslty women (which have less CFR than man for COVID-19). And the rest was South Korean lack of regard for privacy (they have a map for each case where you can trace where and when a given infected person was - so you can check if you were near him/her) and technological superiority.
  • T-A 7y ago
    > The infection in Italy started in hospital or in retirement home (I don't remember which), so the first infected were people > 70. Italy's patient #1 is 38 (see the article). Patient #0 has not been identified. > In South Korea it started in a cult, where most people were young < 40 That would be the Shincheonji Church of Jesus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shincheonji_Church_of_Jesus#Association_to_the_coronavirus_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shincheonji_Church_of_Jesus#As... I don't know what their age profile is, but the outbreak began with a 61-year old ("Patient 31"), and several people mentioned here are above 50 (the founder is 88): https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/world/asia/south-korea-coronavirus-shincheonji.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/world/asia/south-korea-co...
    • kijin 7y ago
      About 80% of South Korean cases were less than 60 years old, with a peak in the 20s [1]. It is widely rumored that Shincheonji prefers to recruit young people who are easier to exploit. [1] https://coronaboard.kr/#age-card https://coronaboard.kr/#age-card
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• elorant 7y ago
  My guess is that there are a lot of unreported cases in Italy while in Korea authorities seem to ran more vigorously tests. So the latter might have much more accurate numbers than the former.
  • tomcooks 7y ago
    More rigorous tests than Italy, seriously?
    • Benmcdonald__ 7y ago
      Yes and yes
    • pbourke 7y ago
      > More rigorous tests than Italy, seriously? SK leads the world. 3,692 / 1MM pop vs Italy 826 / 1MM pop. Source: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/3/12/21175034/coronavirus-covid-19-testing-usa https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/3/12/21175034/co...
    • hcknwscommenter 7y ago
      You say "rigorous tests" OP said "vigorously tests". Very different meaning. The test in both countries is essentially the same, and thus the same rigor (in terms of sensitivity and specificity). The vigor by which the testing was performed (in terms of #people tested as a % of total pop) is WAY WAY higher in S. Korea.
    • bane 7y ago
      South Korea used to be at about the same development index as Italy maybe...20 years ago? Today it's tied with Israel (as of 2018) and above Spain, France, and Italy. The PPP is also about 10% higher than Italy and has about half the unemployment rate. Most importantly it has one of the most advanced healthcare systems in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_quality_of_healthcare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_quality_o...
      • 7y ago
• _-___________-_ 7y ago
  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.
  • superpermutat0r 7y ago
    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.
    • _-___________-_ 7y ago
      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.
      • superpermutat0r 7y ago
        If they are never recorded does that not mean they infect more people and that results in sicker population creating more burden to the health system - resulting in more deaths? The statistics always seem to go up no matter what kind of interpretation.
        • _-___________-_ 7y ago
          The point is that deaths - the numerator of the case fatality rate - are basically always recorded, whereas cases - the denominator of the case fatality rate - represent only a subset of the people that are infected. When the health system is severely overburdened, that subset because a smaller and smaller proportion, as scarce resources are used for testing of people presenting at hospitals rather than population-based testing. People who are asymptomatic or have minor symptoms don't present at a hospital, so they don't get tested, so they never get recorded as a case (which, by definition, requires a test and a diagnosis). The real population fatality rates are guaranteed to be lower than the CFR unless you believe that every person who is infected is being tested and diagnosed, and it's my opinion that they'll be much lower.
• petre 7y ago
  It's also easier to leave Italy and spread the disease because it doesn't have a DMZ in the North and lots of migrant workers and other EU nationals, free to leave at any time. Some have fled the lockdown using ferries through Croatia or Greece and then on to their home countries. When the North was quarantined, many Italians irresponsibly fled to the South, prompting the authorities to issue a country wide lockdown. Good luck trying to escape by ferry from Korea to Japan, Russia or China in the middle of a pandemic. North Korea is out of the question. Also Koreans are likely to obey the rules imposed during a healty emergency crisis (they also has a MERS epidemic in 2015), while Italians are more likely dismiss them as nonsense.