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Comment by maremmano | Hacker News Reader

What surprises me is the number of deaths in relation to the number of infections. Even higher than Iran where I would expect less effective patient management than in northern Italy. What is your opinion on this?

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30% of the population is over 60.

Only 17% of the Chinese`population is over 60.

We should expect to see a devastating impact on Italy with a much higher CFR.

https://www.populationpyramid.net/italy/2020/

And yet Germany (median age 48, nearly the oldest in the world, slightly older than Italy and similar to Japan) has seen only two deaths so far out of ~1,100 cases. I've yet to see a definitive explanation for the extreme difference between what we're seeing in Italy vs South Korea vs Germany when it comes to mortality rates. Italy has a developed-world, universal healthcare system. Perhaps the cases in Germany are not far enough in yet to produce a higher rate of death (seems unlikely, in many cases elsewhere older patients are dying rapidly). The only explanation that seems plausible that I've seen, is that their healthcare system (locally) was quickly overwhelmed and they're leaving the worst cases to die, unable to tend to them.

another fairly obvious explanation would also be that the Italy's numbers are underreported and there's significantly more sick people, which would also explain the healthcare breakdown.

Because I have no real explanation how a few hundred people on ventilators are supposed to bring the healthcare system down.

Here's an interview with another doctor in Milan.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-monday-ed...

Iran's numbers are either undercounted or under reported.

The average age in italy is much beyond 50 (60 million population) and we have 3000 ICU in total. Yes.

In 2019, the average age of the Italian population was 45.4 years:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/569187/average-age-of-th...

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