China has posited that the high rate of mortality in Wuhan was prior exposure to SARS. I’m not sure if Italy was involved with the SARS, but they’re a good test of that Chinese claim.
” Individuals suffering the most may have been primed by one or more prior coronavirus exposures, and due to antigenic epitope heterogeneity, are experiencing the effects of antibody dependent enhancement (ADE).
This postulate isn’t novel as it has been found and characterized in the SARS coronavirus, SARS-CoV. Enhancement was identified by Yang et al. [6] in 2005 and was hypothesized as being the reason for such a high mortality rate in China [7].”
also from Science Direct, reposting from I dunno who posted it first:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1286457920300344?via%3Dihub
Early on one would suspect the patients with existing complications to die relatively quicker. In fact overall they represent a majority of deaths. So one should expect the death rate for patients infected with existing conditions is much higher.
“China has posited that the high rate of mortality in Wuhan was prior exposure to SARS.”
I think there was something about the vaccine for SARS also being a contributing factor - but thought that was tin-foil hat stuff. Maybe not?
do you have any insight into whether the same concept applies if this virus becomes an annual (or more frequent) disease?