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NYT was impressed by the Neil Ferguson/Imperial College report which, they wrote, “reached new conclusions because of the latest data from Italy”:

17 Mar Udated 2 Apr: NYT: Behind the Virus Report That Jarred the U.S. and the U.K. to Action
It wasn’t so much the numbers themselves, frightening though they were, as who reported them: Imperial College London.
By Mark Landler and Stephen Castle
With ties to the World Health Organization and a team of 50 scientists, led by a prominent epidemiologist, Neil Ferguson, Imperial is treated as a sort of gold standard, its mathematical models feeding directly into government policies...
“A lot of it is not what they say, but who says it,” said Devi Sridhar, director of the global health governance program at Edinburgh University. “Neil Ferguson has a huge amount of influence.”...

Dr. Ferguson has been candid that the report reached new conclusions because of the latest data from Italy, which has seen a spiraling rate of infections, swamping hospitals and forcing doctors to make agonizing decisions about who to treat...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/world/europe/coronavirus-imperial-college-johnson.html

however:

23 Mar: UK Telegraph: Why have so many coronavirus patients died in Italy?
The country’s high death toll is due to an ageing population, overstretched health system and the way fatalities are reported
By Sarah Newey
According to Prof Walter Ricciardi, scientific adviser to Italy’s minister of health, the country’s mortality rate is far higher due to demographics - the nation has the second oldest population worldwide - and the manner in which hospitals record deaths...
But Prof Ricciardi added that Italy’s death rate may also appear high because of how doctors record fatalities.
“The way in which we code deaths in our country is very generous in the sense that all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus.

***“On re-evaluation by the National Institute of Health, only 12 per cent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88 per cent of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity - many had two or three,” he says...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/have-many-coronavirus-patients-died-italy/

***NYT and the rest of the FakeNewsMSM have conveniently ignored Ricciardi’s revelation to this day, despite his credentials:

World Health Organization: European Advisory Committee on Health Research (EACHR)
Committee member: Professor Walter Ricciardi (Italy)
Professor Walter Ricciardi graduated with a degree in medicine in 1986 and a doctorate in public health medicine in 1990 from the University of Naples. He currently holds the title of Professor of Hygiene and Public Health at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Rome where he is also Director of the Department of Public Health and Deputy Head of the Faculty of Medicine. In addition to contributing to over 300 academic papers, primarily in the fields of Epidemiology, Health Services Research and Public Health Genomics, he is also Editor of the European Journal of Public Health, of the Oxford Handbook of Public Health Practice and Founding Editor of the Italian Journal of Public Health.
Professor Ricciardi is also active in national health policy and is Chair of the Public Health Section of the Higher Health Council. In 2011 the Minister of Health of Italy appointed him as his representative in the State-Region Committee for the evaluation of the Italian National Health Service. Internationally he is a member of the European Commission expert panel on “Investing in Health” (EXPH), a member of the National Board of Medical Examiners of the United States of America, and has was elected President of the European Public Health Association (EUPHA) from 2010–2014.