Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/03/19/covid-19-death-toll-in-italy-o.html
• 3,405 people have now died of COVID-19 in Italy
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And to think that it’ll be even worse in the US. This is what happens when people don’t take it seriously, and we’ve had the president dismissing it for months. This, more than anything, is his real crime here.
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“Hold my beer”
– Uncle Sam
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It should be noted that Italy has the second-oldest population in the world.
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It should be noted that Italy has free healthcare and excellent access to medical relief for everyone.
Here outside of the Colonies, we are all betting on when the gunfights will start for access to your Privileged-only structures.
Have fun until you can, guys, and remember that it is you who supported and pushed for turbocapitalism in the first place.
Or China is under-reporting.
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And China has that too, but Italy’s population is older than China’s. That fact helps explain why their death rate is higher.
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I haven’t checked, but is the death toll/infection reports coming out of China completely honest/accurate? It seems like something a country like China would want to minimize.
And a country like the US as well, for that matter. Gotta keep the machine lubricated. What better way than claiming things are fine and not testing everyone fast enough? That should buy some time.
Hmm. I don’t recall pushing for that. I mean, I lived with it, I didn’t disrupt it, but I also don’t feel like I pushed for it. In fact, for a good number years I’ve been drifting firmly into an anticapitalist mindset. Not militant, but firm.
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Italy had over 5000 new cases yesterday. They’ve been pretty locked down since Feb 22, so yeah, this is pretty worrying: when is lockdown supposed to start helping?
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Exactly. How can we possibly trust China’s figures? There are two possible situations: they are underreporting their numbers or they are vastly underreporting their numbers.
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Can someone help me understand how macro testing for something like this works? Is everyone suppsed to get tested, or just if you show symptoms?
If its just if you show symptoms then how does that curve the spread significantly if you are infectious way before you show?
If everyone should get tested then how often? Just because you tested negative today does not mean that will remain a constant for long.
Care should be taken when “painting” with such a large brush.
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Dingdingding!
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I still think smoking is a significant factor. In Italy I saw large numbers of people staggering out of public buildings to have a puff, barely able to make it across the line which marks the smoking area.
France is second in line, and they have a lot of smokers too.
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Per the WHO: test, test test.
Testing provides for a few important things:
-knowing the true numbers for national resource allocation, quarrantine timing, etc
-disease tracking - know who, where, when to predict resource needs
-infection tracing - if you know the neighbor you borrowed milk from Does have it, then you isolate yourself. If you know he does not, you don’t have to worry about that contact.
-in-hospital resource planning, If I admit a pt with pneumonia and know if they have the disease vs influenza,then my coworkers can use proper PPE for the situation, and neither over nor under utilize
But that doesn’t matter in the US, bc we don’t have the resources for mass testing. Hopefully that’ll change, but it hasn’t yet.
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I’ve been a frequent reader of BoingBoing and its BBS. Your comment made me finally create an account so I could reply.
Your overly broad generalization of Americans is not only annoying, but also hurtful to a lot of people. You have no idea what it’s like to be an American that has to wake up every day to some new fresh hell spewed out from the White House ever since January 2017. The last 19 or so years of post-9/11 hell in general have been a complete mess and turned the U.S. into a total joke on the world stage through constant foreign policy snafus, unforced errors, war crimes and faux pas. And that’s alongside all of our domestic fuck-ups with Congress constantly licking the boots of the rich and powerful and only throwing regular people and marginalized groups a bone once every few years.
I and countless other Americans just want it all to stop so we can get back on track and maybe, just maybe, show the world what happens when the U.S., its people and its government, are focused on undoing the the last near-century of imperialism that our nation has wrought on the world through nation-building, proxy wars, and other nasty shit and the last few centuries of oppression we’ve heaped on the indigenous peoples, minorities, workers, and the poor within our borders.
I’ve had just about enough of the “Oh, America’s had a good run, but it’s finally coming to an end” or “Y’all get what you deserve” bullshit that only serves to discourage and kick good people while they’re down.
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No worries. I hear Trump is on it. He said so. /s
Welcome to BoingBoing. I look forward to hearing more from you.
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Great answer. Thank you!
