Something very strange going on in Italy. I haven’t seen a breakdown yet on the patients who died- age/pre-existing etc. but that’s an alarming rate.
I don’t have a link for this, but I believe Italy has one of the oldest populations in Europe (and maybe the world), so that is part of it...
People in Italy eat with their hands, eat off of each other’s plates, hug, kiss, and I will bet that the mortality is in the elderly the virus would have the same effect there as here!!
firstly, it is reported that a Pakistani man who refused to quarantine is Patient 0. So.....
Secondly, since italians share a similar problem with Asians.. a hemoglobin disorder called Thalessemia..they may share some other kind of genetic code.
Iranians also have that same blood disorder..and some areas had what they called Sickle Cell Thalessemia.
So there could be something genetic going on....
But that doesnt explain all the non Italians having issues that were in Italy and now spreading it in the US..
so back to the Pakistani guy.
Also, I am trying very hard not to freak anybody out tonight (per our host’s instruction) but I believe part of the Italy story is the Lombardy region’s health care system has been overloaded—we have been warning about this.
So here is a source on that:
https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/1872069/italy-deploys-emergency-field-hospitals-to-fight-virus
I looked to see if I could find any demographic breakdown for Italy and could not, but I did see this:
“ It has Europe’s highest proportion of people older than 65, a ratio that is second in the world to Japan.”
I just scanned through Flu Trackers thread for Italy, it is amazing how it blew up there. Cases doubled almost daily. Their first official case was Feb 21st