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Which countries exactly? EU kept it’s head firmly in the sand until Bergamo happened towards the end of February, and even then the prevailing philosophy was “I

by tomp 5y ago

Which countries exactly? EU kept it’s head firmly in the sand until Bergamo happened towards the end of February, and even then the prevailing philosophy was “Italians are idiots, this can’t happen to us”.

onethought 5y ago
Well, Taiwan, Korea, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, of course China had Wuhan in full lockdown. By March Canada, a handful of the south americas, uk had all started some form of restrictions.
makomk 5y ago
Yeah, whereas the reality seems to be more like Italians were idiots, and this could well be why it happened to us. There were several interesting things about the Italian outbreak which got downplayed or ignored (at least in the English-speaking world) because it didn't help with the preferred political narratives. The information coming out of Italy was obviously garbage. The only way for an outbreak to go from first detected community spread to hospital systems collapsing so fast was if they'd done an even worse job of testing patients with no ties to China who were hospitalized with potential Covid symptoms than the US, which had a policy of not testing patients with no ties to China hospitalized with potential Covid symptoms (and still detected them much earlier in the outbreak). Obviously you weren't going to get any meaningful figures on infection rates out of that - was it a mild disease causing lots of deaths by infecting everyone, or something slower spreading but deadlier? Who knows. Their treatment guidance was bad and likely killed people too. And it's worth remembering that pretty much no other country had cases seeded from China turn into uncontrolled community spread in the way Italy did, before or after them, except perhaps South Korea - the whole rest of the pandemic seems to trace back to Italy's massive undetected and uncontrolled community outbreak. It was obvious that something different had happened in Italy, and there wasn't enough evidence to say exactly what or what the implications would be for the rest of the world.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  >There were several interesting things about the Italian outbreak which got downplayed or ignored (at least in the English-speaking world) because it didn't help with the preferred political narratives. Not in the UK, the situation in Italy was all over our news. Probably the biggest criticism I have of the UK media was their overemphasis on young people succumbing. The stats said that young people were unlikely to die but we were presented with cases of that almost daily.
- pasabagi 5y ago
  V. interesting take. I always assumed that the reason why the Italians got it so bad was because they are a nation of extremely social old people who kiss every time they meet. Old people in most countries in europe are rather lonely, whereas in Italy they crowd the streets of every town in the evenings. I could imagine in such an enviroment, a low-deadliness-fast-spreading disease could cause a very rapid collapse in a hospital system.

by tomp 5y ago

onethought 5y ago

Well, Taiwan, Korea, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, of course China had Wuhan in full lockdown. By March Canada, a handful of the south americas, uk had all started some form of restrictions.

makomk 5y ago

Yeah, whereas the reality seems to be more like Italians were idiots, and this could well be why it happened to us. There were several interesting things about the Italian outbreak which got downplayed or ignored (at least in the English-speaking world) because it didn't help with the preferred political narratives. The information coming out of Italy was obviously garbage. The only way for an outbreak to go from first detected community spread to hospital systems collapsing so fast was if they'd done an even worse job of testing patients with no ties to China who were hospitalized with potential Covid symptoms than the US, which had a policy of not testing patients with no ties to China hospitalized with potential Covid symptoms (and still detected them much earlier in the outbreak). Obviously you weren't going to get any meaningful figures on infection rates out of that - was it a mild disease causing lots of deaths by infecting everyone, or something slower spreading but deadlier? Who knows. Their treatment guidance was bad and likely killed people too. And it's worth remembering that pretty much no other country had cases seeded from China turn into uncontrolled community spread in the way Italy did, before or after them, except perhaps South Korea - the whole rest of the pandemic seems to trace back to Italy's massive undetected and uncontrolled community outbreak. It was obvious that something different had happened in Italy, and there wasn't enough evidence to say exactly what or what the implications would be for the rest of the world.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago
>There were several interesting things about the Italian outbreak which got downplayed or ignored (at least in the English-speaking world) because it didn't help with the preferred political narratives. Not in the UK, the situation in Italy was all over our news. Probably the biggest criticism I have of the UK media was their overemphasis on young people succumbing. The stats said that young people were unlikely to die but we were presented with cases of that almost daily.
pasabagi 5y ago
V. interesting take. I always assumed that the reason why the Italians got it so bad was because they are a nation of extremely social old people who kiss every time they meet. Old people in most countries in europe are rather lonely, whereas in Italy they crowd the streets of every town in the evenings. I could imagine in such an enviroment, a low-deadliness-fast-spreading disease could cause a very rapid collapse in a hospital system.