> Then why are countries like Germany, which were exposed earlier, not experiencing similar problems and lockdowns?
Just wait a week or so.
Just wait a week or so.
"Just wait a week" is the refrain of everyone who is panicking right now, as it has been for the past few weeks.
Because that's how the exponential function works. Italy started earlier so its numbers are still growing by thousands every day.
But the numbers for France and Germany are almost exactly the same as the numbers that Italy had 10 days earlier, and Switzerland trails Italy by only 5 days once you correct for the smaller population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2019%E2%80%932...
So I ask again, if this is such a super-pandemic, why are Germany and France fine despite having looser quarantine measures and earlier outbreaks than Italy? And why do you expect them to get dramatically worse over the next week?
Is this what you want in your community?
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/03/8099657...
If that's your definition of "fine", then when you wrote this:
> why are Germany and France fine despite having looser quarantine measures ...
were you actually saying:
"why are Germany and France having looser quarantine measures despite having looser quarantine measures?"
/shakes head
"Why are Germany and France not worse off than Italy despite having looser quarantine measures and an earlier start to their outbreaks?"
And I still haven't heard an answer which comes close to justifying Italy suspending its citizens' rights. But that's fine; it won't matter in a few months, and we're approaching an easy opportunity to make money and travel smart as the herds follow their predictable migrations.
I just wish that people were less eager to give our fundamental rights away over this; history shows that they are unlikely to come back once they are surrendered. I'm already tired of the CBP shutting down entire 80mph interstates to search every vehicle passing through; where does this end?
Anyways, arguing about it is just something to do while everything is shut down, eh? :)
Looking back at the January data, however, there were already more cases of pneumonia than usual in that same area and many of those that survived now have antibodies. And in fact, the strain that is hitting Italy was actually already present in Germany in January based on genome analysis; for whatever reason the real outbreak started a bit later in Germany than in Italy, but that's expected because the initial phases of the epidemic are random.