[briandear]

Do you know how many flu deaths happened in Italy during the 2016/17 flu season?

Compare that to the Coronavirus deaths. The numbers are really close.

Italy isn’t particularly an outlier in terms of Coronavirus severity when you look at their historical flu numbers compared to the rest of Europe. Their Coronavirus deaths follow the same trend as with their flu fatalities. Really nothing surprising in Italy, but the media lost their minds over it.

https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(19)30328-5/ful...

[SomeoneFromCA]

Yes you are exactly right. It has always been normal to send the dead bodies to neighboring towns, when your crematoriums are full, and they did it every year in Lombardy. No one just noticed previously. I think we need to blame their mayor, for not encouraging building bigger better crematorium.

[DiogenesKynikos]

I asked you about the collapse of the healthcare system in Lombardy, within a few weeks of the virus appearing. When has the flu done that?

You're presenting what happened in Lombardy as some sort of mass hysteria. Was the healthcare system overwhelmed, or was that a mass hallucination?

There have been 30,000 confirmed CoVID-19 deaths in Italy, which is about double a normal flu season. What do you think that number would have been without any social distancing measures? As I see it, the numbers are not that difficult to estimate. About 70% of people would need to catch CoVID-19 before herd immunity brought R below 1. With an IFR of 0.5%, and a population of 60 million people, that would mean about 200,000 deaths. Is that enough to "lose one's mind over"?

[tathougies]

Well, the Lombardy healthcare system was certainly overwhelmed, but I'm not sure you can say it 'collapsed' (what does that even mean anyway).

> When has the flu done that?

The flu overwhelms hospitals quite often. For example, the 2017-2018 flu season saw many hospitals around the world setting up tent wards: https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie...

[DiogenesKynikos]

Collapsed as in:

* Not enough doctors, nurses, beds and medical supplies to treat all (or even most of) the patients.

* Extremely stark triage decisions. Deciding not to treat patients who would normally be treatable, instead leaving them to die.

* Doctors and nurses working to the limit of exhaustion.

* Normal care essentially stopping. All medical resources being focused on one disease.

* Morgues unable to handle the number of dead.

Finally, double the regular number of flu deaths occurred in just a few weeks, and that was with extreme social distancing measures. Without those measures, the death toll would have been far higher.

You're describing this as some sort of mass hallucination. I don't see how that's a defensible position.

[rumanator]

> but I'm not sure you can say it 'collapsed' (what does that even mean anyway).

If there was any doubt that you're being disingenuous and purposely deceitful, the fact that you've decided to resort to petty arguments on semantics to desperately avoid facing the facts is enough to clear up that doubt.

[maxerickson]

Did Italy lock down for 2 months in 2016/17 to combat the flu?

Do you think that information is relevant to a comparison?