We all know Italy is the COVID19 horror story at the moment, and I regret every unnecessary death that occurs.
But like you, I try to cut out the drama and white-noise. I try to understand the phenomenon for what it is.
Most people I talk with seem to passionately confuse the political responses and measures being taken, and the economic impacts, with the actual risks posed by the virus itself.
So I've been given these long irate lectures for even discussing COVID19 as if it were another disease - "OF COURSE!!!! This is incredibly dangerous epidemic, it's shut down the world and is destroying our economy. People are terrified and hospitals are flooded with people. Angela Merkel herself said COVID is the greatest human disaster since WW2, and you question it????"
I've been called "stupid", "totally irresponsible", "ignorant", a "denier", even a "far-right shock jock". And I'm told people like me are responsible for the virus spreading in the first place - so I'm evil too.
Well, I'm complying to all precautionary measures - quietly, calmy, But I'm still interested in questioning and understanding the true nature of COVID19 and it's direct health issues - "evil" person that I am.
I guess we all learn something every day.
I found IJID study this very interesting for example:
The IJID published a detailed study of annual influenza deaths in Italy from 213/14 to 2016/17, adjusting for comorbidities (which COVID19 headlines certainly do not).
It calculates excess Italian deaths of 7,027, 20,259, 15,801 and 24,981 attributable to influenza epidemics in the 2013/14, 2014/15, 2015/16 and 2016/17.
Currently the COVID19 Italian total, bundling in the effect of all other comorbidities, is around 4,825.
OK, there's no doubt more to come. But Italian fatalities can triple from here, and even adding in comorbidities, it will still be less fatal than 3 out of 4 years worth of flu.
I try to be hopeful. We'll know in a year or two what the ultimate health impact was. Of course politicians will always claim their measures saved millions of lives.
"At the beginning of a pestilence and when it ends, there’s always a propensity for rhetoric. In the first case, habits have not yet been lost; in the second, they’re returning. It is in the thick of a calamity that one gets hardened to the truth – in other words to silence."Albert Camus,The Plague.
(20min delay)