4 ms·

Italy is looking like a “perfect storm” tragedy no matter what. The older population, combined with rapid, widespread transmission, to the point where critical

Italy is looking like a “perfect storm” tragedy no matter what. The older population, combined with rapid, widespread transmission, to the point where critical cases completely overwhelm the health infrastructure, is absolutely a recipe for horrible CFR numbers like that. The fear that healthcare infrastructure elsewhere could be overwhelmed by another sudden outbreak is really the only reason experts are freaking out, as far as I know. Also just reported today, apparently over 99% of fatalities in Italy were folks who had existing medical conditions, but I have no idea what that really tells us. Anyway, you could be right too, maybe it’s unreasonable to guess that true IFR is an order of magnitude lower.

qwytw 7y ago
The fatality rate and the total number of cases reported by Italy don't really mean much if anything at this point. Because their health system is overwhelmed they are mainly only testing people who already have severe symptoms which inflates the fatality rate as most mild cases are never identified. While it's reasonable to assume that's it's higher there than in places like South Korea or Germany it's very likely that it's still considerable less than anything close to 9%.
ascorbic 7y ago
> Also just reported today, apparently over 99% of fatalities in Italy were folks who had existing medical conditions, but I have no idea what that really tells us. Not a lot, without knowing the number with existing medical conditions among the infected population. How many over-70s don't have any existing medeical condition?