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They call fatality rate, or how many people die from Covid for every 100 cases discovered (here the newsletter with the latest data). A kind of virus malice, with a different metaphor for states. Mexico ranks first in the world with almost ten deaths out of every hundred that contracted the virus. Iran ranks second, just over five people unable to attend. Italy ranks third in the world ranking produced every day by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, one of the most advanced medical centers internationally: our country has almost four deaths for every one hundred cases discovered since the beginning of the pandemic, 3.8 to be precise, just above the United Kingdom which registers 3.7% .
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just a statistical photograph, with multiple explanations, but which also raises a series of questions that epidemiologists know only partially answer:In Germany, for example, for every 100 positive cases, only 1.6% do not achieve it, less than half that in Italy, more or less as in the Netherlands, while in France there are slightly more than two, in Spain 2.8, in any case figures clearly lower than ours. Even if the countries are quite homogeneous in geographic contiguity and demographic indices. And for those who dispute that some data can be altered by the transparency rate of a health system, by the political context, the records of Mexico and Iran seem to refute the thesis.
One of the possible explanations, at least according to the American university, it could be found in the number of tests carried out, the more they are done, the more the rate should drop, because most Covid cases are mild in nature and this should mitigate the fatality rate. Germany did 25 million tests, we just over 18 million. But even this may be a bogus explanation given that Britain has so far carried out more than 37 million tests, twice as many as ours, and France and Spain a very similar number to ours. So why does the disease seem worse precisely in Italy?, at least among the big European countries?
The Baltimore scientists suggest two other keys to the explanation. A linked demographic age of the population, which in Italy is among the highest in the world, and we know that the average age of Covid deaths in our country of 82 years, and another linked to the efficiency of the health system, at the time the patient is taken into charge, the speed of treatment. But even here American epidemiologists somehow give up, saying other explanations are unknown. For example, the Czech Republic is among the worst affected countries in the world, but where the fewest people die, with a fatality of only 1.4%. And Poland, where the index always stops at 1.4%? And also from Sweden, famous for having focused on herd immunity rather than on confinements, where however the fatality rate is lower than ours, standing at 3.5%. While in Austria, which has just launched a total blockade, the rate, as in Israel, is among the lowest in the world, ranging between 0.8 and 0.9%.
Also in another index, that of mortality, linked to the total population, the ranking places us among the top twenty countries in the world, in ninth place, with more than 75 cases of death per 100,000 inhabitants, with Germany stopping at 15, France with 67, while Spain surpasses us with 88 cases of mortality and Belgium is the first country in the world with 128 deaths per 100 thousand inhabitants.
Massimo Ciccozzi, epidemiologist and statistician at the Biomedical Campus of Rome, who among other things studied in Baltimore, suggests some interpretations, although not exhaustive: Previous pathologies, it was discovered that our population, at a certain age, has more compared to other countries, at least three according to the study carried out on more than 5,000 medical records. But also the Rsa, which in Italy has been more affected by the virus than in other places, with very elderly subjects. The efficiency of the health system and the monitoring method, which we omit. And many other factors. Unfortunately, the aggregated data is reliable, but it cannot explain everything.
November 18, 2020 (change November 18, 2020 | 07:04)
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