| HN Mirror

> 99% of cases in Italy have existing health problems, average age 79

Definitely no, unless you define the "cases" as "whatever my wish is to name the case to prove my own point now" and even then also fake the numbers.

Both the doctors on any location on Earth, including China, as well as World Health Organization define the cases differently and count completely other values: the "cases" are the actual big numbers we see in the news, and around 20% of people counted so actually are so bad that need to be in the hospital, in order to get the intervention if their sickness gets worse!

From all the cases recognized, many can't breathe, needing the intensive care units, and many die.

So even if not every country makes the same number of tests per capita, the speed of the growth of the cases of deaths can be compared.

Just an example of one country, the speed is everywhere consistent: The current count in Italy is 47021 cases, 4032 dead. The time the cases and dead double at the moment is still around every 3 days. Just 10 days ago Italy had 631 deaths, total (2020-03-10). Try yourself: 600 x 2 (that is, in 3 days) = 1200 ; 1200 x 2 (in next 3 days) = 2400.

Compare with the reported total numbers of deaths in Italy:

    2020-03-09                 463

    2020-03-10                 631
    2020-03-13 (3 days later) 1266
    2020-03-16 (3 days later) 2158
    2020-03-19 (3 days later) 3405

    2020-03-20                4032

Use the same principle on your local statistics, compare with other locations which have other policies and other beliefs: as long as the control of growth is not achieved, that is what happens, independently of the political views.

The government of Netherlands doesn't believe it should do much, in order not to hurt its economy. The speed of growth of deaths in the Netherlands is nevertheless comparable:

     2020-03-14                 12
     2020-03-17 (3 days later)  43
     2020-03-20 (3 days later) 106

Looks like a small number, doesn't it? Well, only 16 days ago, 2020-03-04 Italy had the current number of deaths the Netherlands has now. If the government of the Netherlands continues to act according to their political views (there's big pressure now on them), check their number in 16 days, it has to be close to the Italian number now. And Italian government didn't even produce their number intentionally: the first quarantines of areas in Italy started 2020-02-22.

That's how exponential growth behaves, and there is not any other known method to decrease the speed of the growth than trying to limit the transmission from person to person.

And not, it's not comparable to flu, here's a graph from Italy of deaths per week, already many days old (violet: dead per week from flu, red: dead per week from COVID-19):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Is_COVID-19_like_a_flu%3F...

The problem with not doing enough measures is that when that is held the result isn't anymore "just" the currently observed percents of deaths, and that starts to happen around the time the hospital capacities are overflown.

And we don't need allegories about "mother nature" or whatever -- the above is a real problem to which the world reacts.