Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Coronavirus / Corona Virus

The situation with the statistics is not entirely clear however in Italy we do know that the majority of people who die are over the age of 70 and/or have one or more chronic medical problems (heart, lungs, cancer, obesity etc.). The death toll in Italy is also given as those that die with SARS-CoV-2. We know that some other countries are only reporting those who die exclusively because they have SARS-CoV-2, This accounts for the apparent discrepancy between the percentages report by one country as against another.

Unfortunately the hospital systems become so overwhelmed that the rules of triage come into force; ie save those that can be saved and let the others go. This means anyone over a certain age is unlikely to receive full medical attention let alone being put on a respirator.

To answer you question "do they include cases where the person died from other causes but also had the virus?", for Italy the answer is yes.

Unfortunately due to the huge number of people involved and the limitations of laboratory facilities in many areas only people with symptoms are being tested, and in some cases even worse only people being admitted to hospital are being tested. The experts believe that as many as 10 times the number of people reported as infected are infected. It seems also that the principle period in which contagion is transmitted is in the early stages of infection. This means that there is a huge pool of infected people who are asymptomatic passing the infection everywhere where people are in close contact, or even touch something recently touched by an infected person.

This is the logic behind the lockdown. Effectively get everyone to isolate as much as possible until all those infected, whether showing symptoms or not, have recovered from the infection. For the sake of the human race it is not such a huge disaster because the mortality rate of young people is low. For the economy, following on top of existing world wide economic problems it is a disaster and in the end may have long lasting effects on the way in which the economy is managed.