[gioele]

> Here's the thing with Italy. They're the first Western country to get a major outbreak.

Here is the other thing with Italy: differently from other neighbor countries, they have been testing people without symptoms.

Numbers: until February the 24th, Italy performed ~8500 tests (mostly on people without symptoms, but that were in contact with confirmed SARS-CoV-2-infected patients), while UK did ~6500 (focused on people with influenza-like symptoms), Germany ~1000 and France ~500.

This is better from a safety point of view (you get to discover all problematic patients earlier and you can quarantine them before they spread the infection even more). But is makes "your stats look worse" (cit. The wire) because now you look like the epicenter of the infection.

Guess what? The testing method has now been changed ("aligned") to what the other countries are doing, so that the numbers do not look that much worse.

Source: https://www.ilpost.it/2020/02/25/tamponi-coronavirus-italia-...

[kaffeemitsahne]

This is amusing to hear in light of all the "saving face" talk about China.

[tomp]

> until February the 24th, Italy performed ~8500 tests

How is this relevant? For all we know, they might have only tested 200 people by 22nd, when the panic (quarantine, news) first started.