Some Possible Good News from Italy

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silverscreenselect
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Some Possible Good News from Italy

#1 Post by silverscreenselect » Mon Mar 23, 2020 3:45 pm

The reported number of new coronavirus cases and deaths in Italy has gone down the last two days, as you can see from these charts. Relevant figures:

March 21 (worst day): 6557 new cases, 793 deaths
March 22: 5560 new cases, 651 new deaths
March 23: 4789 new cases, 601 new deaths

There have been dips before, as the graph shows, but this is good news, especially if the trend continues. Italy instituted a national lockdown on March 9, 12 days before the trend started to drop. Similarly, in Wuhan, the lockdown went into effect March 9, 12 days before the downturn began.

Putting things in perspective, Trump issued his social distancing guidelines on March 16, and it's an understatement to say that that haven't been followed all that closely in many places (various states and cities announced some degree of lockdown within a few days, but nowhere near what's going on in Italy). While we can't really trust figures coming out of China, the Italian figures are probably as accurate as they can be under the circumstances. This would indicate that the measures that public health officials have been advocating can work... unless we proclaim a "mission accomplished" too early.

Hong Kong also appeared to have the virus somewhat under control and eased its restrictions, only to see another spike in the last few days.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... try/italy/
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Re: Some Possible Good News from Italy

#2 Post by bazodee » Mon Mar 23, 2020 5:52 pm

silverscreenselect wrote:
Mon Mar 23, 2020 3:45 pm
The reported number of new coronavirus cases and deaths in Italy has gone down the last two days, as you can see from these charts. Relevant figures:

March 21 (worst day): 6557 new cases, 793 deaths
March 22: 5560 new cases, 651 new deaths
March 23: 4789 new cases, 601 new deaths

There have been dips before, as the graph shows, but this is good news, especially if the trend continues. Italy instituted a national lockdown on March 9, 12 days before the trend started to drop. Similarly, in Wuhan, the lockdown went into effect March 9, 12 days before the downturn began.

Putting things in perspective, Trump issued his social distancing guidelines on March 16, and it's an understatement to say that that haven't been followed all that closely in many places (various states and cities announced some degree of lockdown within a few days, but nowhere near what's going on in Italy). While we can't really trust figures coming out of China, the Italian figures are probably as accurate as they can be under the circumstances. This would indicate that the measures that public health officials have been advocating can work... unless we proclaim a "mission accomplished" too early.

Hong Kong also appeared to have the virus somewhat under control and eased its restrictions, only to see another spike in the last few days.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... try/italy/
Unfortunately, I think not. I heard an epidemiologist remark that Italy began a protocol of only testing those already admitted to a hospital. I presume this is because they're running out of test kits. So sadly, if they can test more broadly, these numbers will again dramatically increase.

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Re: Some Possible Good News from Italy

#3 Post by Bob78164 » Mon Mar 23, 2020 6:24 pm

bazodee wrote:
Mon Mar 23, 2020 5:52 pm
silverscreenselect wrote:
Mon Mar 23, 2020 3:45 pm
The reported number of new coronavirus cases and deaths in Italy has gone down the last two days, as you can see from these charts. Relevant figures:

March 21 (worst day): 6557 new cases, 793 deaths
March 22: 5560 new cases, 651 new deaths
March 23: 4789 new cases, 601 new deaths

There have been dips before, as the graph shows, but this is good news, especially if the trend continues. Italy instituted a national lockdown on March 9, 12 days before the trend started to drop. Similarly, in Wuhan, the lockdown went into effect March 9, 12 days before the downturn began.

Putting things in perspective, Trump issued his social distancing guidelines on March 16, and it's an understatement to say that that haven't been followed all that closely in many places (various states and cities announced some degree of lockdown within a few days, but nowhere near what's going on in Italy). While we can't really trust figures coming out of China, the Italian figures are probably as accurate as they can be under the circumstances. This would indicate that the measures that public health officials have been advocating can work... unless we proclaim a "mission accomplished" too early.

Hong Kong also appeared to have the virus somewhat under control and eased its restrictions, only to see another spike in the last few days.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... try/italy/
Unfortunately, I think not. I heard an epidemiologist remark that Italy began a protocol of only testing those already admitted to a hospital. I presume this is because they're running out of test kits. So sadly, if they can test more broadly, these numbers will again dramatically increase.
That wouldn't explain the drop in new deaths. --Bob
"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." Thomas Jefferson

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Re: Some Possible Good News from Italy

#4 Post by silverscreenselect » Thu Mar 26, 2020 9:48 pm

Mixed news from Italy. According to the same website I cited in my earlier post in this thread, the number of new cases and deaths per day in Italy has stabilized. The rates aren't really going down, but they aren't continuing to rise the way they were before. The high for both new cases and deaths was five days ago. In other countries including the US, both of those figures continue to climb by the day.

That's the good news. More disturbing is this report from a well regarded Italian news magazine. A town that is near the epicenter of the Italian outbreak has recorded 158 deaths since the outbreak began. Two years ago, over the same period of time, they recorded 35 deaths, and they have had 31 additional deaths officially attributed to the virus. These figures indicate that the town "should" have had 68 deaths but instead had over twice that many. This may just be an isolated anomaly, but it bears watching as statistics come in from other advanced countries. There are two plausible explanations, both of which may account for parts of this spike. First, deaths that occur are not being correctly diagnosed as being due to the coronavirus for various reasons, including the fact that many of these people may not have been under a doctor's active care at the time of their death. Second, people who suffer from other diseases and conditions are dying at an increasing rate because they can't get adequate medical care due to coronavirus-caused shortages. When hospitals in the US get overloaded, which will happen very soon, all these death rates will continue to spike. The report was written by a couple of physicists, one of them the mayor of the town, and they found other anomalies in the year-to-year death comparisons in other towns as well.

https://www.corriere.it/politica/20_mar ... resh_ce-cp
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Re: Some Possible Good News from Italy

#5 Post by jarnon » Sat Mar 28, 2020 12:37 pm

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Re: Some Possible Good News from Italy

#6 Post by silverscreenselect » Sat Apr 11, 2020 7:46 pm

It's not Italian good news, but the Worldometers site I linked to earlier in this thread reports that both new cases and deaths were down about 10% yesterday from the day before (which the current University of Washington model predicted as the apex for the disease). A note of caution: last weekend, there was a similar "drop" followed by a big spike the next day, indicating that the seeming drop was due more to a lag in reporting numbers on weekends.

And a note that most of the models assume that social distancing and shelter in place practices stay in effect until at least the first of June.
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Re: Some Possible Good News from Italy

#7 Post by silverscreenselect » Sun Apr 12, 2020 9:50 pm

Another big drop yesterday in the total number of reported new cases in the US (down 10%) and deaths (down 15%). The key will be tomorrow's figures, since a number of states reported totals that were half of the day before, statistically rather unlikely. It's possible that some of the "downturn" is due to lags in reporting due to the holiday weekend. If tomorrow's numbers are about what today's are, that would indicate that the models could well be right about the apex of the pandemic curve.
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