The Gun Counter

"The country's high death toll is due to an ageing population, overstretched health system and the way fatalities are reported"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-heal ... ied-italy/

“The age of our patients in hospitals is substantially older – the median is 67, while in China it was 46,” Prof Ricciardi says. “So essentially the age distribution of our patients is squeezed to an older age and this is substantial in increasing the lethality.”

A study in JAMA this week found that almost 40 per cent of infections and 87 per cent of deaths in the country have been in patients over 70 years old.

But Prof Ricciardi added that Italy’s death rate may also appear high because of how doctors record fatalities.

“The way in which we code deaths in our country is very generous in the sense that all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus.

“On re-evaluation by the National Institute of Health, only 12 per cent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88 per cent of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity – many had two or three,” he says.

Chi-Coms are also lying.

My big question to the Italy death tolls, seeing as the 12% number is the true (ish) number. Is this an "on purpose" thing to promote hype and doomsday predictions or just inept stupidity.
If done here, I would KNOW it was on purpose, to reinforce Orangemanbad. There, not sure.

How does their current total death rate this year compare to previous years?

scipioafricanus wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2020 1:37 pm Chi-Coms are also lying.

This is almost certainly true and unfortunately makes it very hard to analyze some aspects of the situation.

There death toll is probably higher, but the number infected is too (both because of official data editing, and they no doubt missed a lot for all the normal reasons.) Their data is the most mature, and should be a big help in figuring out the situation, but it is not.

The Diamond Princess data made the analysts decide to halve the predictions that were based on China's data, I think.

Perhaps some rational response to irrational incentives in their single payer system?

Maybe coding it as a C-19 death has something to do how the patient's care is charged? Or what account it gets billed to?

scipioafricanus wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2020 1:37 pm Chi-Coms are also lying.

They're also trying to blame the US for it.

ChiComs always lie - especially in anything related to research. Honestly, any data out of Asia, is hard to believe.

Maybe its improved - it has been a long time since I followed such things - but, mostly, no data was to be trusted, from an Asian research facility, and every Han Chinese was to be expected to be an agent of Beijing, even if born in the US.

Interesting factoid about the demographics of Italy's fatalities. Only 4% have been under the age of 60. They have actually had more over the age of 90 than under 60.