Every time we fight our way through the comments to a Covid-19 story – somebody needs to do – there are more than a few that suggest that the American response is a media-fed frenzy not justified by the cases or casualties to date. There are indeed some otherwise very bright people who have written as much in just the last day.
Sigh.
If you are among those who do not accept that the stakes in the fight against the novel coronavirus are very high, the example of Italy really ought to persuade you otherwise.
Only three weeks ago, the first Italian died of Covid-19. Since then, at this writing, 2158 have, and the death rate is accelerating rapidly.
2158 dead Italians is the proportionate equivalent of 11,760 dead Americans.
In three weeks.
Annualized, assuming no acceleration from the average Italian Covid-19 death rate of the last three weeks (and we know it is accelerating rapidly), the equivalent in the United States would be 200,000 Covid-19 deaths, multiples of any normal flu season. And if it gets out of hand, it probably really gets out of hand. That is the rough basis for the CDC model you have seen that shows potential deaths north of a million Americans.
So, we definitely don’t want to turn out like Italy.
The good news is that our deaths are not, at least yet, rising as quickly as in Italy. Two weeks after Italy’s first death, 233 people had died (scroll through the link for the daily Graph o’ Death). Two weeks after our first death (eight days after Italy’s) we only had 57 deaths. We do not know the reason for the difference, but various learned pontificators have pointed out that Italy’s median age is seven years older, and its social circumstances are quite different, and maybe some of its hospitals are now being overwhelmed.
Those factors and more may explain the difference in the death rates.
Sadly, our trajectory in cases seemed very similar just five days ago. See below. Therefore, we Americans may have to rely on our lower Covid-19 death rate to keep our casualties in the thousands — like a seasonal flu — rather than in the hundreds of thousands.
We will learn soon whether the aggressive American response in the last few days is enough to bend the curve favorably. You are not going to win a lot of friends, though, arguing that the potential benefits are not worth the game.
And, in case it isn’t clear, if you do this you are a giant bag o’ douche who might possibly actually cause somebody else to die.
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