Italy's current mortality rate is 8% (3,405 deaths, 41,035 confirmed cases). Of course their lack of testing is probably influencing the numbers somewhat, but still.
We have quite a lot of mortality data from different countries around the world at this point so I am a bit disappointed that people are still spreading these unsubstantiated claims. I seem to be posting this link a lot lately, but here are the latest Italian stats on their deceased:
Over 23,000 deaths and deaths under 30 have not even passed double digits yet. Only 1.1% of all deaths were people under 50; and that's deaths, not infected.
> COVID-19 currently has a 3.4% case fatality ratio according to the WHO last week -
This number will likely go down to below 1% because:
- S. Korea have implemented large scale tests on asymptomatic cases and their death rate is 0.77%
- the "Princess Diamond" cruise, which can be considered a closed experiment, has had a 1% death rate for people that were not ventilated
- in China if you exclude the Hubei province, the mortality rate is 0.88%
In Italy the mortality rate is 6% but the explanation is quite simple — they stopped testing asymptomatic cases, even people with fever are sent home without a test and instructed to return in case the fever doesn't go away in a few days and they are overwhelmed. At this point they are only admitting people that have trouble breathing.
And northern Italy has really good hospitals, so the only reasonable explanation for the huge disparity is that they have more than 10 times the reported total cases.
In other words, the virus has infected many more people than official numbers.
Remember that those "total cases" are cases that have been discovered via tests, it does not include people that stayed at home and weren't tested, either because the symptoms were too mild or because they were sent home.
According to the WaPo, it's likely that far more people are infected in Italy than we know about, and therefore the true mortality rate is much lower. Apparently the government is only testing people with "severe symptoms":
> The actual Italian death rate, they say, is probably far lower than what the government numbers suggest. The unofficial estimates assume the actual number of people infected with the virus — people who have not yet been tested — is massive. In other words, several hundred thousand people in Italy may be carrying the virus.
> “It’s a huge iceberg,” said Fabrizio Pregliasco, a virologist at the University of Milan. “We are only looking at those who are sick.”
> Though Italian leaders touted widespread testing at the beginning of the outbreak, the government has applied tight guidelines for who can be given swabs. Health officials have been testing those who have severe symptoms and are in need of obvious medical care.
So even a disease no worse than flu, you'd expect would cause a much higher death rate than normal for this time of year, simply by shifting the curve forward six months. And COVID-19 is likely to be worse than flu.
(I say likely because the data quality here is so poor we really have no idea how dangerous it is)
To know the actual mortality rate you would have to test every single person in a country. Right now is more of the cultural thing:
How likely is the person experiencing flu-like symptoms to go and test for coronavirus? Seems that in Italy only seriously sick people would go and take test, that's why you have this shocking 1 in 7 rate - because most of the mild cases go undetected.
That's from one month ago and it doesn't mean that those people would be dead equally if they had not been infected.
Actually the official number is grossly under-reporting COVID-19 deaths:
"We estimate that the number of COVID-19 deaths in Italy is 52,000 ± 2000 as of April 18 2020, more than a factor of 2 higher than the official number."
That's interesting, it shows how misleading an average can be (the average 8000 dead for the flu that I quoted).
Still, if you focus on Italy, which is the most ahead in Europe, by March 28th (the time that report was updated), the number of deaths was already matching the 2017 peak (and in about 2/3 of the time). Since then the death count went up 70%.
edit: also note the caution about the uncertainty due to delayed registration.
Angelo Borrelli, the head of Civil Protection, who announces the latest figures every day at 6 p.m., said Saturday night that the 793 new deaths have been caused “by and with” the coronavirus. “We count all the dead, we make no distinction between with and by the coronavirus.” However, one wonders whether these daily figures reflect the situation correctly. The dead are said to have almost all had one or more other diseases, which leaves a question mark as to exactly how deadly the coronavirus is. At the same time, it has become clear that a large number of people who die at home (which is often a retirement home) do not undergo a coronavirus test."
"On Friday, April 24, 2020, Vittorio Sgarbi, a member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, denounced what he claims are false coronavirus death statistics. Sgarbi feels that fake statistics are being propagated by the government and the media to terrorize the citizens of Italy and establish a dictatorship.
The member of the Forza Italia party slammed the closure of 60% of Italian businesses for 25,000 Chinese-Coronavirus deaths from the floor of the legislature. “It’s not true,” he said. “Don’t use the deaths for rhetoric and terrorism.” According to the National Institute of Health, 96.3% did not die of coronavirus, but of other pathologies stated Sgarbi – which means that only 925 have died from the virus and 24,075 have died of other things claimed Sgarbi, “….the virus was little more than an influenza. Don’t lie! Tell the truth!”"
At 0.01%, Italy would expect to see around 6,000 deaths. They're up to 1200 as of today and don't appear to have be nearing an inflection point. We should know soon I guess...
Since Feb 25 there have been 91 deaths with positive COVID-19 diagnoses. In total there have been 330 deaths. I'd be very curious what the age breakdowns are.
Anyhow, this was just a small example that shows that we're already seeing significant mortality relative to the _total population_ and not just by confirmed positive cases.
> COVID-19 kills anywhere between 0.7-4% of the people it infects. (Some countries like Italy saw a much higher mortality rate, nearing 15% in Italy, I believe, but that was due to the breakdown of the overwhelmed health services).
That is mixing up IFR and CFR. We don't have any good way of knowing IFR yet, and it may be quite a while before we can get a good estimate. The denominator in CFR is confirmed cases, so Italy's inflated CFR could be (and probably is) entirely related to the lack of sufficient testing.
Even if they can't test everyone who dies for Covid-19, I'm sure Italy is recording the total number of deaths. It should be possible to determine how much the total death rate increased each week or month relative to the average death rate over the past few years.
EDIT: I found a non-paywall version of the article on MSN and that's essentially what they're reporting. "Nowhere in Italy has been harder hit than Bergamo, a city of about 120,000 people. In March 2019, 125 people died in the city. This March, 553 people died."
https://www.cebm.net/global-covid-19-case-fatality-rates/
Which is in consistent with the data from a cruise ship where all people could be tested.
Which means 30k deaths not 500k. Still a lot I think.
Also pretty close to flu, which makes me distrustful of this mortality rate, seeing how different it looks in Italy now compared to seasonal flu.
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