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25 11 4

Mchooofer 57 mins ago

How do you explain Germanys low death toll from covid19 then ?

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hglman 3 hs ago

Will the cia demand we invade Italy for lying as well?

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sullivanzheng2 5 hs ago

" __________'s Coronavirus Death Toll is Higher than Reported."

Fill in any blank with "China" to ensure top hit in this subreddit.

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sullivanzheng2 5 hs ago

Not only for " __________'s Coronavirus Death Toll is Higher than Reported."

Actually, fill in any blank with "China" to ensure top hit in this subreddit with guaranteed money back.

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mechtech 6 hs ago

MILAN—In the town of Coccaglio, an hour’s drive east of here, the local nursing home lost over a third of its residents in March. None of the 24 people who died there were tested for the new coronavirus. Nor were the 38 people who died in another nursing home in the nearby town of Lodi.

These aren’t isolated incidents. Italy’s official death toll from the virus stands at 13,155, the most of any country in the world. But that number tells only part of the story because many people who die from the virus don’t make it to the hospital and are never tested.

In the areas worst hit by the pandemic, Italy is undercounting thousands of deaths caused by the virus, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows, indicating that the pandemic’s human toll may end up being much greater, and infections far more widespread, than official data indicate.

Bergamo, a city of around 120,000, has beenhit particularly hard by the coronavirus. Source: Bergamo city government (overall deaths,confirmed coronavirus deaths, average deaths overpast 10 years; WSJ (estimate of excess deaths amidcoronavirus) Overalldeaths inMarch 2020 Deaths inMarch 2019 Estimate ofexcessdeaths amidcoronavirus Confirmedcoronavirusdeaths inMarch 2020 0 200 400 600 The wider Bergamo province, which hasabout 1.1 million residents, has also beenheavily affected. Source: Bergamo provincial government (confirmedcoronavirus deaths); Eco di Bergamo and InTwig(overall deaths, estimate of excess deaths amidcoronavirus); Italian Statistics Agency (averagedeaths in March) Estimate Overalldeaths inMarch 2020 Averagedeaths inMarch2015–2019 Estimate ofexcessdeaths amidcoronavirus Confirmedcoronavirusdeaths inMarch 2020 0 2,000 4,000 6,000 Italy’s hidden death toll shows what could lie in store for the worst-hit areas of the U.S., Europe and many other countries in the weeks ahead if the coronavirus is not tamed fast. The burden that the pandemic puts on health-care systems can cause so many deaths that it is hard to gauge the full human cost.

As stretched and sometimes overwhelmed hospitals fight to save their patients, many other people die unseen and uncounted, including elderly people in out-of-the-way locations. In addition, the health-care crisis can lead to a surge of deaths from other causes that would normally be treatable.

“There are many more dead than are officially declared. But this is not a j’accuse. People died and they were never tested because time and resources are limited,” Eugenio Fossati, deputy mayor of Coccaglio, says of deaths caused by the virus.

Properly tallying the number of deaths from the pathogen can help public-health officials map out a response to the pandemic, such as making sure hospitals are adequately equipped for the emergency. It can also influence how quickly and strictly governments should impose social-distancing measures, and for how long.

But collecting accurate data is challenging for Italy and many other countries, due to the speed of the pandemic and the fact that most countries’ public-health institutions are geared toward normal times.

The Lombardy region, where this funeral was conducted in Cigole, near Brescia, accounts for 58% of Italy’s official coronavirus deaths. PHOTO: FRANCESCA VOLPI FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Three weeks after Italy became the first Western democracy to place its whole population under lockdown, the rate of contagion is slowing. But in the northern region of Lombardy, where the epidemic started and remains centered, infections had already spiraled out of control before the lockdown.

The provincial cities of Bergamo and Brescia are the two worst hot spots, and have become symbols of Italy’s suffering.

White House Presents Data Projecting Up to 240,000 Coronavirus Deaths YOU MAY ALSO LIKE

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White House Presents Data Projecting Up to 240,000 Coronavirus Deaths White House Presents Data Projecting Up to 240,000 Coronavirus Deaths Dr. Deborah Birx presented data Tuesday, used to extend federal social distancing guidelines through April, projecting the death toll could be as much as 100,000 to 240,000 even with mitigation efforts. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images In and around those two towns, the real number of deaths is probably at least double the official count of 2,060 in March for Bergamo and 1,278 for Brescia since the outbreak began in late February, according to interviews with local officials, doctors and funeral-service providers and comparisons with the numbers of deaths from past years.

People are also dying of other ailments because hospitals are too overloaded with coronavirus cases to give them the treatment they need, doctors and local officials say.

Some 85 people died in the whole of last year in Coccaglio, a town near Brescia of 8,700 residents. In March of this year alone, the town’s main church bell has sounded the death knell 56 times. Only 12 of the deaths were officially attributed to the coronavirus.

Confirmed Italian coronavirus deaths Sources: Italian government; Johns Hopkins CSSE Note: Through April 1 Deaths per day Cumulative deaths March ’20 April 0 2,500 5,000 7,500 10,000 12,500 “We know the real number is higher, and we mourn them, knowing full well why they died,” says Mr. Fossati, the deputy mayor. “It’s a hard truth to accept.”

Another problem is that the number of virus carriers is also vastly undercounted. Italy has reported about 111,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus, but testing is mostly limited to those who show symptoms. Many virus carriers with no symptoms aren’t tested. Officials and health experts estimate the true number of infected people at anywhere from hundreds of thousands to six million.

The uncertainty about the death toll and the number of infected people makes it difficult to establish the true fatality rate of Covid-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus. Estimates by epidemiologists of the fatality rate still range widely, but it is generally thought to be between 1% and 3% of those infected.

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[deleted] 4 hs ago

I work as a seafarer for a RoRo-Passenger ship from Greece to Italy. I was there from the beginning of the outbreak. Everything you said is absolutely true and I am glad that you took the effort to post this.

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mechtech 6 hs ago

Italy’s government-run statistical agency on Wednesday reported a nationwide jump in deaths for the first three weeks of March from a year earlier—particularly in northern Italy, where it found the number of deaths more than doubled in over half the hundreds of towns and cities it surveyed. “If you base any policy-making on these numbers, you should be very careful,” says Lucas Böttcher, a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has modeled fatality rates for Covid-19. “They can highly fluctuate during an outbreak.” Nowhere in Italy has been harder hit than Bergamo, a city of about 120,000 people. In March 2019, 125 people died in the city. This March, 553 people died. Of these, 201 deaths were officially attributed to the virus. This leaves 352 further deaths for the period, far higher than normal. In the wider Bergamo province, which comprises the city and more than 240 small towns and has a total population of 1.1 million, 2,060 people died in March from the virus, according to the official count. But some 4,500 more people died in the province in March than a year earlier, according to a new joint study by the local Eco di Bergamo newspaper and research firm InTwig that took data from 91 towns in the province. The real number of deaths in the province of Brescia, where this funeral was conducted, appears to be at least double the official count of 1,278 since the outbreak began in late February. PHOTO: FRANCESCA VOLPI FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL “Other countries that have the good fortune to be seven to 14 days behind us have to use that time to erect defenses,” says Giorgio Gori, Bergamo’s mayor, who estimates the virus has spread so widely in his city that one-third of the population has been infected. “We were first, and we weren’t prepared. Any leaders looking at us and not reacting vigorously will have a lot to answer for.” Similar situations have played out across the Lombardy region, which accounts for 58% of Italy’s official coronavirus deaths. In towns around Lombardy, local officials and doctors say the deaths recorded in March are many times the average monthly number. Often, the monthly toll matches deaths that towns normally record over half a year. The health-care system in the region is so overstretched that doctors can’t treat all the sick. Those who die outside the hospital usually aren’t tested for the coronavirus. “They are not receiving postmortem tests,” Eleonora Colombi, a family doctor based near Brescia, says of people who die outside hospitals, such as in nursing homes. “Many of those who die and aren’t tested are old, but you normally don’t have so many people all dying at the same time. It’s corona.” At Dr. Colombi’s office, three patients who tested positive for the coronavirus have died in recent weeks. But an additional 20 people who died with symptoms associated with the virus weren’t tested. The problem isn’t just with patients sick with Covid-19. “We have a problem with the elderly and other sick people like cancer patients who are dying at home,” says Dr. Colombi. “The ambulance won’t come if you are 94 years old and there are 50 other people waiting.” An added problem is that 20% of Bergamo’s family doctors have been infected—and those still working only consult with patients over the phone. The local health service has responded to the high infection rate among family doctors by instituting teams of three to four doctors that make house calls in full protective gear. But with only eight teams for all of Bergamo, and each team able to make only about eight visits a day, many people don’t receive care. So many coffins are accumulating that they are being stored in warehouses like this one in Ponte San Pietro, near Bergamo. PHOTO: FRANCESCA VOLPI FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Pietro Fiore, the mayor of Castellone, a small town south of Milan, says some local residents have died because they weren’t brought to the hospital for conditions that might have been treatable because the hospitals were overwhelmed with coronavirus patients. In Castellone, 31 people died between March 1 and March 26, compared with five in that period last year. About eight of the 31 deaths were officially attributed to the coronavirus, but about 10 more were probably caused by the virus, and a similar number by potentially treatable ailments, says Mr. Fiore. With Italy under a strict lockdown, it isn’t only funerals that have become impossible. In Castellone, death notices aren’t being posted on billboards around the main piazza, as is often done in small Italian towns. In Castellone, where the tradition is still strong, residents normally follow up the death notices with their own notices posted around the town expressing condolences for the families of the deceased. “People don’t even know who is dying, and there isn’t the chance to show support for the families that lose people,” says Mr. Fiore. “That’s the hardest thing.” MORE ON CORONAVIRUS IN ITALY The Soccer Match that Kicked Off Italy’s Coronavirus Disaster Family Is Italy’s Great Strength. Coronavirus Made It Deadly Italy’s Coronavirus Death Toll Overtakes China’s Italy’s Slow Progress in Fighting Coronavirus Is a Warning to West There are signs the lockdown that was imposed on March 8 across Lombardy and two days later on the whole of Italy is beginning to have an effect. The rate of contagion has slowed, and fewer people are being admitted to the hospital. A study by a team of epidemiologists at Imperial College London estimates that Italy’s strict social-distancing measures prevented about 38,000 deaths up to the end of March. It will take time for the number of daily deaths to come down, since many of those who are dying became infected weeks ago. For now, the sheer number of people dying is still overwhelming Italian towns. Funeral-service agencies that work with hundreds of funeral homes in Brescia and Bergamo say the number of dead they buried or cremated in March was more than twice the number in March last year. The stated cause of death is often just pneumonia, without reference to the coronavirus, they say. In Bergamo, so many coffins were accumulating in mid-March that a convoy of army trucks came to take them away for cremation elsewhere. In Brescia, the local diocese has offered 40 empty churches to store coffins as they await their turn for cremation, which can sometimes take up to two weeks. While funerals aren’t allowed because of social-distancing requirements, priests still bless the dead. “One of the most difficult things to accept is that unfortunately many people are dying on their own, with none of their dear ones next to them,” says Brescia Bishop Pierantonio Tremolada, who gives regular blessings over the coffins in churches. “That is something we can still do for them.”

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jMyles 7 hs ago

It is highly unlikely that the number of deaths *caused by* Covid-19 is higher than those being reported, as the number of deaths being reported is deaths from any cause of those patients who have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. We know that, as of the middle of March, only about 12% of those deaths coded as "coronavirus" were confirmed to have been caused by complications of Covid-19.

So, while the number of deaths *with* SARS-CoV-2 may be higher than reported because of under-reporting, the number *from* Covid-19 is likely much, much lower.

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hglman 3 hs ago

This non sense and a total failure to understand how the cause of death works. If you die of pneumonia and are positive for SARS-Cov-2, the virus drove that death. If you have any number of acute failures of the human body will sick, the virus was the driving events.

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jMyles 3 hs ago

Can you provide a source which contextualizes Ricciardi's comments that way? As you can see, he said, > "On re-evaluation by the National Institute of Health, only 12 per cent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88 per cent of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity – many had two or three," My understanding of the typical usage of the term "pre-morbidity" is that it is used to describe a condition *prior to a disease or illness*. In short: I don't think that your description matches what is coming out of the Italian Health Ministry, and I'd like to see a source that corrects my view. I think his intention in this statement is clear: > "The way in which we code deaths in our country is very generous in the sense that all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus. The outward appearance is that many, many patients were testing positive for SARS-CoV-2, regardless of their presentation, and all of those who died (median age 80) were coded "coronavirus" in this dataset if they tested positive, regardless of their cause of death. And don't get me wrong; I think this is a reasonable way to generate this dataset. What is unreasonable is the interpretation (by the media and some public officials) that the huge numbers we're seeing represent a cause of death, when we've been expressly told that's not so. > If you die of pneumonia and are positive for SARS-Cov-2 It seems like you didn't examine the data: none of the pre-morbidities listed are "pneumonia".

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anom_aleez 8 hs ago

And it will be elsewhere government leaders suppress data in the name of not looking like bad parents, for lack of a better analogy.

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MickLittle 9 hs ago

Another pay wall.

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whatisliquidity 10 hs ago

Those catacombs need to be maintained somehow.

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Playaguy 10 hs ago

"I want you to remember these people died WITH the coronavirus and not FROM the coronavirus” ---The president of the Italian Civil Protection Service in a morning briefing

What does this actually mean?

It means that the Italian death toll figures could have been artificially inflated by up to 88%. If true, this would mean the total number of Italians who have actually died of Covid19 could be as low as ~700. Which would bring Italy, currently a statistical outlier in terms of Covid19 fatalities, well in line with the rest of the world.

It means thousands of deaths currently widely attributed to Covid19, and being used to justify the introduction of measures equating to medical martial law, may not have died of covid19 at all but of their serious chronic co-morbidity (cancer, heart disease etc.).

This statistic is not a secret, or in any way controversial, it was in The Telegraph after all, but people seem to be ignoring it, or reading around it, or perhaps simply not understanding it. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/have-many-coronavirus-patients-died-italy/

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PizzaBadger 11 hs ago

No surprise here. Lots of deaths of going unreported. But also countless infections going unreported. The data is far from complete.

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Cora-0467 Yesterday

I'm in France and it's the same thing. the director general of health said that it was difficult to count outside hospitals. he said that the over-mortality compared to last year was 35%. it is starting to list deaths in homes for the aged (over 10,000 establishments), and it has already recorded almost 900 deaths that have not been counted since the start of the epidemic. we are today at 4503 deaths in hospitals + 903.

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TenYearsTenDays Yesterday

Did you mean this : https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/la-mortalite-est-en-hausse-de-9-a-l-echelon-national-20200330 ? It looks like national excess mortality is up 9%, but it can be as high as 40%(!!!) in some areas: >Il apparaissait ainsi d'après ces données que les départements où la mortalité avait le plus augmenté sur cette période étaient Mayotte (+40%), le Haut-Rhin (+38%), la Corse-de-Sud (+31%), et les Deux-Sèvres (+27%). Dans l'Oise, où est apparu en février le premier groupement de cas importants en France, cette hausse s'établit à 14%. Holy crap, thank you for the information!

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happygloaming Yesterday

Yes yes "more experienced than anticipated" or some such. Obviously this shouldn't cone as a surprise but it's valuable to show actual examples so we can extrapolate from there. I recall reading about the Spanish army coming across an abandoned nursing home with elderly people dead in their beds. Were they tested????

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TenYearsTenDays Yesterday

That was such a horror story, one of the saddest to come out around this thing. > Were they tested???? This is a good question, one I don't know the answer to with certainty. My guess would be no, that the situation is the same in Itay and most places: those that die outside of the hospital are generally not tested even if they are suspected COVID cases. This makes sense since tests are scarce right now, and unless innovations are made, reagents are going to start running out. So they are being conserved like gold. This scarcity is why many developed countries haven't been testing everyone like one would have to do to contact trace and isolate. That said, some innovations have been made, such as this one from the [Danish 'CDC'](https://old.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/fq427p/danish_health_agency_solves_problem_in_shortage/) although I personally have some reservations about whether that may affect accuracy, I haven't looked into it in depth to really know.

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Surfsupforthesummer Yesterday

Can we get anymore bad news from you? You literally live for this shit.

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happygloaming Yesterday

Please sit down, I'm sorry to inform you that you're not on r/rainbowsandskittles anymore, you seem to have somehow stumbled into r/collapse.

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Surfsupforthesummer Yesterday

I ain’t talking about recent posts. Go back 80+ days, they live for this shit.

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happygloaming Yesterday

I know. I'm teasing you.

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Surfsupforthesummer Yesterday

Teasing could be good during this time. It put a smile on my face that’s for sure.

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happygloaming Yesterday

😋

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dankhorse25 Yesterday

This means that if 60% of the city has been infected them the mortality rate is close to 1% which is insanely high.

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_rihter Yesterday

Bodies are piling up.

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Bethereguy Yesterday

Mimimimi

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communistdoggo49 Yesterday

Makes sense. How many people go and seek help and how many already accept their fate at home. My dad is the latter and said he won't go to the hospital if he gets it, but he is taking the virus seriously and knows what to come if he gets it. Perhaps others feel the same and would prefer to die at home than go to the hospital and die and be stacked with the dead bodies

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mk_gecko 8 hs ago

Apparently they are giving people on ventilators fentanyl to keep them unconscious. Weird. Now they're running out of fentanyl.

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workaccount1338 8 hs ago

Something China something fentanyl something COVID joke

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hubal84 Yesterday

Thats fucking depressing and wrong. Your dad is not a doctor to decide if he will die. why this sub is full of negative dystopian ideology

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eggobooster Yesterday

The hospital will give supportive oxygen, fluids, electrolytes. They may also give hydrochloriquine (Plaquenel) and help you with your secondary bacterial infection. Lots of blood work: d-dimer to check for hypercoagulation, ast/alt for liver function, WBC which have been low. If you go on the ventilator, you're going to have a baaad time. It happens really fast. If you do go to the hospital for this illness, make sure all your paperwork and shit is set up for your loved ones. They don't trach patient's who have been on a vent for a long time, too. Supposed to be after 20 days but the OR risk is too great with aerosolizing. You saw the shit about EMS not doing CPR on the way to the hospitals, that the patient needs to have a heartbeat before transport. It was already used for some but with all these policy changes, hospital might not be the most welcoming. Which fucking sucks. I wish they would send people home who are in comfort Care, like a morphine drip. I wonder if they do? "We are *trying our best* to have loved ones connected to video when they pass or are going to be ventilated." << My hospital chain.

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skylernordquist Yesterday

Why tf does a doctor have the right over him to decide when/how he dies?? If he would rather accept his fate, that is his decision alone.

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hubal84 Yesterday

Oh really, since when is pro suicidal ideas are labeled “fate”

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joemato Yesterday

I think you already know the answer to that question. It’s a fucking sub based on collapse of society lol

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hubal84 Yesterday

Collapse does not equal “celebrating death” and laughing at dead bodies around the globe. This sub is cheering death with smirk on the faces. The fuck is wrong with you

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joemato Yesterday

I agree with you, friend. Nothing is wrong with me. I think at the core of all of us we don’t want things to collapse. Cheering death with smirking faces could be a way of coping. Making light, easing tension within, acceptance, etc. The point I was trying to make is that when the subject matter is based on collapse, you’ll see people relishing in it. I understand if it came across as disagreeing with you.

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hubal84 Yesterday

No problem buddy. There is a tendency in this sub to enjoy human suffering. I mean i am being downvoted for telling his/her dad to go to the doctor instead of committing suicide. Anyway good to see some sane people here.

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BenUFOs_Mum Yesterday

I don't think it's just Italy who are not reporting the full extent of the virus.

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working_class_shill Yesterday

I mean they're not going to go around door-to-door to count bodies in houses are they

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workaccount1338 8 hs ago

Look at Katrina

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hereticvert 10 hs ago

Nah, they're just going to drive around with a cart yelling 'bring out yer dead!' every day. /s

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TenYearsTenDays Yesterday

Oh totally. It could not be any other way at this juncture. This is more to remind people that those nice, neat and not all that high numbers one sees are *estimates*. For example in Italy recently the flu official death toll was something like 2,000 for the season. However, estimates for the annual Italian death toll range from 8k-16k. http://archive.vn/V6KR9 https://www.epicentro.iss.it/influenza/sorveglianza-mortalita-influenza

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PracticalLiterature1 Yesterday

Pretty sure ours is as well..

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TenYearsTenDays Yesterday

"Ours" being any country in the world that is. At least Italy is admitting it.

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TenYearsTenDays Yesterday

Archive link: http://archive.vn/HtCnM

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TenYearsTenDays Yesterday

Let's see here, there's:

Faster than expected
Worse than expected
More than expected

and now

4 . Higher than reported

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driusan Yesterday

They're just dying faster than expected.

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pantsmeplz Yesterday

Except for item #4, if you look at news articles from the last decade about climate change those subjects also apply.

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Miss_Smokahontas Yesterday

Can I add More contagious than expected. Deadlier than expected.

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TenYearsTenDays Yesterday

Thank you, good additions. FWIW one expert has come out and said: "I think this is the most transmissible virus I've ever seen" says Dr. Ian Lipkin at around 21min in this podcast, http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-special-lipkin/ and he compares it to other airborne diseases like measles and smallpox. That's a *lot* "more contagious than expected" if he's even in the range with that statement.

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darkclowndown Yesterday

Which would be like the best news ever. The more contagious the less serve

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TenYearsTenDays Yesterday

Exactly, it really would be very good news indeed. I hope Dr. Lipkin recovers from his case of COVID and tells us more about his theory as to why he thinks it's so contagious.

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vocalfreesia Yesterday

Doesn't measles have an R-naught of 14 & Covid-19 an R-naught of just under 3? Am I misunderstanding a term here?

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TenYearsTenDays Yesterday

You are not misunderstanding per se. But maybe in a sense: r0 is not a fixed property. It can change based on various factors. Also, since this is a novel disease all of our initial estimates of properties like r0 are subject to reevaluation weeks or months down the line. What Dr. Lipkin is driving at is that it is possible we've severely underestimated the R0, that is not in the 2-3 range that is commonly thought but is rather much higher, possibly into the measles range. Is that going to be the case? Maybe, maybe not. His assertion is the farthest outlier I've ever seen from someone credible fwiw.

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vocalfreesia Yesterday

Ok, that makes sense. There definitely has been a shift from symptom to asymptomatic transmission which would increase it. That 60 person choir where 45 tested positive (suggesting singing / breathing and not only coughing etc spreads it.) Pretty scary to think if you just share some air space with someone who is infected but asymptomatic that could be enough to infect you. Maybe we should be using masks because of the potential asymptomatic numbers. If only there wasn't a shortage. Healthcare workers need them more.

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TenYearsTenDays Yesterday

> Maybe we should be using masks because of the potential asymptomatic numbers. If only there wasn't a shortage. Healthcare workers need them more. Yes, all professional grade PPE **needs** to go to HCWs now, true. However, we should all wear DIY cloth masks, like in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. http://archive.vn/dBfsO#selection-2413.104-2413.454 Cloth masks (and manufactured surgical masks for that matter) don't really protect you that much, but they DO go some ways towards protecting the environment. Check out this site, watch the videos for the science and then check out the DIY resources at the bottom. https://aiki.info/masks/

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blindfremen 7 hs ago

Even rudimentary masks can reduce the viral load. So instead of ingesting 100% of the particles in a given area, the mask wearer might only ingest half or less.

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Miss_Smokahontas Yesterday

Holy crap. Smallpox level would be extremely scary. I'm going to listen to this.

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TenYearsTenDays Yesterday

cool, I highly recommend that everyone listen to it. That guy pulled no punches, maybe because he IS sick from it so he coughs the whole time lol. He maybe thinks "I might die, might as well be totally honest and throw scientific reticence to the wind" or something. He's saying stuff that usually you need to get a scientist drunk to hear. It was quite a listen, especially the part where he admits that he and his team saw strong evidence that mass maksing works to quell community spread but then didn't publish said evidence in order to prevent mask supplies needed for frontline healthcare workers from being depleted. It was *wild*. I have been listening to all sorts of science podcasts for years now, and I've never heard anything quite like this one.

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TenYearsTenDays Yesterday

Archive link: http://archive.vn/HtCnM

7

Wuhan-Pangolian-Stew Yesterday

https://youtu.be/8o_uXF9B4KI

Did hugging a Chinese girl from Wuhan help or Not? Does she still need hugs?

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awesomevsauce Yesterday

Can we stop posting articles that we can't read

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Pfhreak - @Pfhreak 1 day ago

There's a second order death toll too, because resources that would otherwise be available are being used to treat the pandemic.

That means many things that might not be lethal if treated quickly and with the best care, for example injuries from a car accident or a heart attack, are now entering a stressed health care system and likely have worse expected outcomes.

Then, all the folks who would normally be secondary concerns and receiving preventative care are now most likely not receiving that care. It's less likely that these develop into death, but could easily turn into serious health complications.

It's important to remember that it's not just covid-19 we're dealing with. It's covid-19 plus all the stuff we'd normally be taking care of. We'll be unwinding this ball of yarn for a long time after addressing the virus itself.

fxj - @fxj Yesterday

The Eu is monitoring mortality in europe at this website:

http://www.euromomo.eu/

It goes back several years and you can clearly see the last influenza pandemics (2017). It also show the mortality for each member country and of course italy. At the moment there is no increase in mortality there.

They write on their website:

Note concerning COVID-19 related mortality as part of the all-cause mortality figures reported by EuroMOMO

Over the past few days, the EuroMOMO hub has received many questions about the weekly all-cause mortality data and the possible contribution of any COVID-19 related mortality. Some wonder why no increased mortality is observed in the reported mortality figures for the COVID-19 affected countries.

The answer is that increased mortality that may occur primarily at subnational level or within smaller focal areas, and/or concentrated within smaller age groups, may not be detectable at the national level, even more so not in the pooled analysis at European level, given the large total population denominator. Furthermore, there is always a few weeks of delay in death registration and reporting. Hence, the EuroMOMO mortality figures for the most recent weeks must be interpreted with some caution.

Therefore, although increased mortality may not be immediately observable in the EuroMOMO figures, this does not mean that increased mortality does not occur in some areas or in some age groups, including mortality related to COVID-19.

freyir - @freyir 1 day ago

Even if they can't test everyone who dies for Covid-19, I'm sure Italy is recording the total number of deaths. It should be possible to determine how much the total death rate increased each week or month relative to the average death rate over the past few years.

EDIT: I found a non-paywall version of the article on MSN and that's essentially what they're reporting. "Nowhere in Italy has been harder hit than Bergamo, a city of about 120,000 people. In March 2019, 125 people died in the city. This March, 553 people died."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/italys-coronavirus-deat...

flocial - @flocial 1 day ago

http://archive.is/UWxPP

rubber_duck - @rubber_duck 1 day ago

One thing I saw in a news report here is a doctor checking in on the status in Italy - she said that they were not doing autopsies - patient was on a respirator and had symptoms or was confirmed - cause of death corona. So I'm not sure about the reasoning with testing - but I could be wrong.

riffraff - @riffraff 1 day ago

I cannot read this article ATM, but there was another one a couple days ago on an Italian newspaper, in English, which gets the same conclusion by looking directly at the number of deaths in the period compared with last year. The number seems to be a much better proxy of the gravity of the epidemic than the reported infected.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.corriere.it/politica/20_mar...

ImpressiveWebs - @ImpressiveWebs 1 day ago

I haven’t read the article due to the paywall, but it’s also worth considering the following quote from the Telegraph on March 23, which quotes Prof Walter Ricciardi, scientific adviser to Italy’s minister of health:

> “The way in which we code deaths in our country is very generous in the sense that all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus.

> “On re-evaluation by the National Institute of Health, only 12 per cent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88 per cent of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity - many had two or three,” he says.

So while it may be true that many deaths have not been reported, it’s also true that many deaths are misreported.

Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas...

guscost - @guscost 1 day ago

Take on the one hand these untested victims, and on the other the folks who tested positive but did not die of pneumonia or respiratory distress. Right now it’s awfully hard to guess whether the true “death toll” (to the extent that such a vague thing can even be defined) is more or less than the reported number. But folks will try to estimate this retroactively, far into the future.

olliej - @olliej 1 day ago

It seems like this could apply to pretty much every effected country.

We know the US has drastically under tested which again results in under reporting.

nickpinkston - @nickpinkston 1 day ago

Here's the full text (coming in multiple comments because of size limit):

MILAN—In the town of Coccaglio, an hour’s drive east of here, the local nursing home lost over a third of its residents in March. None of the 24 people who died there were tested for the new coronavirus. Nor were the 38 people who died in another nursing home in the nearby town of Lodi.

These aren’t isolated incidents. Italy’s official death toll from the virus stands at 13,155, the most of any country in the world. But that number tells only part of the story because many people who die from the virus don’t make it to the hospital and are never tested.

In the areas worst hit by the pandemic, Italy is undercounting thousands of deaths caused by the virus, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows, indicating that the pandemic’s human toll may end up being much greater, and infections far more widespread, than official data indicate.

Italy’s hidden death toll shows what could lie in store for the worst-hit areas of the U.S., Europe and many other countries in the weeks ahead if the coronavirus is not tamed fast. The burden that the pandemic puts on health-care systems can cause so many deaths that it is hard to gauge the full human cost.

As stretched and sometimes overwhelmed hospitals fight to save their patients, many other people die unseen and uncounted, including elderly people in out-of-the-way locations. In addition, the health-care crisis can lead to a surge of deaths from other causes that would normally be treatable.

lwelrkwnnzsd - @lwelrkwnnzsd 1 day ago

no it's not - STFU YOU FUCKING LIBERALS!

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