Many people die all the time but it's much harder to hide how many people die total in a developed nation for systemic reasons. Except for natural disasters, th

Many people die all the time but it's much harder to hide how many people die total in a developed nation for systemic reasons. Except for natural disasters, the mortality rate for a country the size of the United States or Italy is surprisingly stable. The difference between deaths in March 2019 and March 2020 gives a lot more reliable information on the impact of the virus than testing numbers, which are limited by the availability of tests and the testing procedure (contact tracing vs testing only the highest risk patients or the most severe cases). However, this is just a more concrete measure of the extreme impact of the virus. Without a lot more data, it's not enough to even predict how many people have it or how infectious/deadly it is.