Please don't do this "only the elderly" thing here. It's already a flamewar trope.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

How many younger people in Italy are in intensive care? More than somebody, THAT I can tell you.

What happens when there're not enough places in intensive care units - something that is ALREADY HAPPENING in Lombardy?

We don't know yet what is happening. We don't know mortality. Several EU countries have no data or release no data about intensive care units.

But, for once, Italy is reacting quickly, even though it's got some issues (e.g. the leak to the press before the law passes). Don't play this down. WHO and others are calling for preparedness. We're taking the necessary steps. Is the world doing the same?

> This is an extreme overreaction for a disease which is only fatal to the elderly

I find this an incredibly offensive thing to say. This is unempathetic to an insane degree. I hope when you're elderly people treat you with more respect than you treat others with.

Beyond that, it's incorrect. There are fatalities in younger age groups, just at a much lower rate. Once ICU and ventilators are exhausted, the fatalities in all age brackets (except children) does go up.

The issue is the high percentage of patients that require intensive care, with up to 5% needing respiratory support. This can very easily overwhelm local health systems, and cause a knock-on effect to health support to the rest of the community. The best defence governments have right now is to try and slowdown the progression of the disease, and quarantining entire regions has already been shown in China to be an effective way of doing that.

icu are already full in that region. When all icus are full, it gets fatal for a lot more people. This is why Italy is acting that way

Only fatal for the elderly seems a bit over-simplistic. The link you provided doesn’t indicate how many cases the younger population has. Also, why is it an overreaction? Elderly people should be protected too.