Coronavirus-hit Italy sees morgues pushed to the limit, report says

Fox News ^ | March 16 2020 | Edmund DeMarche

[knighthawk]

Morgues in some areas of Italy are working to deal with the dramatic increase in bodies as the result of the coronavirus pandemic that has swept through the country.

The New York Times reported that the Lombardy region, which is in the northern part of the country, has been hit particularly hard. Brother Marco Bergamelli, one of the priests at the Church of All Saints in Bergamo, told the paper that the church cannot keep up with the demand.

[StAnDeliver]

"Each page had an average of 8 columns and 8 names per column. That’s 64 per page. 10 pages would be 640 names. Before the catastrophe, obituaries were 1-1/2 pages. That’s 96 names. So the increase in daily deaths comes to over 500, which is higher than the daily coronavirus death toll so far. These are obviously rough guesses, but they lead me to wonder whether there are coronavirus deaths that remain unrecorded as pathogen-related. At any rate, my guess is that based on the vast expansion in the obituaries section, the vast majority (perhaps 99%) of coronavirus deaths in Italy are ethnic Italian."

Strongly disagree.

A) The Chinese don't do obits.

B) No one in Italy is going to ship a freshly dead Chinese full of Corona back to Wuhan, into the fires they go.

[BobL]

Just to help put the numbers in perspective - for the 16 million people who live in the north of Italy (the area covered by the first lockdown), a rough average of 440 people die on a given day. This virus, assuming the deaths are mostly in that region, is adding several hundred a day to those numbers. Starts getting easier to understand what happened in Wuhan.

[texas booster]

Thank you for the coherent analysis.

In your opinion, would the average Chinese family pay to bring a body back from Italy for a proper Chinese burial?

I can see that the explosion in obituaries (which are paid for) will be predominately Italian, rather than poor immigrant workers.

Looks like there is no simple answer but then life seldom is.

[texas booster]

A discussion of the Chinese (mafia) taking over the apparel business in Italy. By buying the factories that make the brand names, they can send the output back to China as Made in Italy.

https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3825400/posts

[wardaddy]

Does it matter

Why stop a Great Panic that benefits Deep States the world over as a power grab

[wardaddy]

Nobody will ever allow you to know that answer

Ever

[Zhang Fei]

[Thank you for the coherent analysis.

In your opinion, would the average Chinese family pay to bring a body back from Italy for a proper Chinese burial?]

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The problem here is that the epidemic means that even if a family wanted to, it’s unclear the Chinese government would allow what in effect is hazardous biological waste into the country. I expect an urn with ashes is OK, whereas an actual body, even if embalmed, would be an issue.

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[I can see that the explosion in obituaries (which are paid for) will be predominately Italian, rather than poor immigrant workers.

Looks like there is no simple answer but then life seldom is. ]

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It’s not a question of poverty. An obituary stateside, assuming it’s not in the New York Times, might run in the hundreds of dollars. Since it’s a one-time expense, it’s really not that big of a deal for people who are close friends and relatives. The issue is that obituaries are aimed towards people who might have known the deceased, but were less close than direct family or close friends. Nobody in Italy knows the *transient* workers from China, least of all people who would read Italian language papers.

The other aspect here is that fact that the increase in daily obituaries in the profiled paper seemingly due to the new bug (vs pre-bug totals) is in itself twice the daily total deaths reported. This suggests that the new bug is killing more people than officially reported, probably because some deaths aren’t being tested for the coronavirus (just purely because not every coroner may bother to do so for the same reason that most flu deaths aren’t tested for the flu) and therefore not recorded as such. So a single paper is reporting a daily increase in obits that is 2x the total coronavirus daily death totals. The other Italian papers presumably have their own obit sections.

It appears that even with widespread testing, the coronavirus body count at the end of the year will be calculated the same way as for the flu. There will be an actually tested number, where the deceased is examined by a medical examiner for the coronavirus. And then there will be a multiplier, based on allocating some % of the total number of pneumonia deaths to the coronavirus. In the US, the actual (tested for) flu death number is typically in the hundreds per year. The flu death number in the tens of thousands that we read about is a number allocated from the total pneumonia death figure.

[Zhang Fei]

Another reason why not all coronavirus (or flu) deaths are coded with those ailments as the cause of death - the time required to get tests back, in addition to the couple of hours needed per exam, made worse by the need to wear protective clothing that gets in the way:

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https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/autopsy-decision#1
[A doctor examines the remains inside and out. He can remove internal organs for testing and collect samples of tissue or bodily fluids such as blood.

The exam usually takes 1 to 2 hours. Many times, experts can figure out the cause of death in that time.

But in other cases, you might have to wait until a lab can do more tests to look for signs of drugs, poisons, or disease. That can take several days or weeks.

In 20 states and the District of Columbia, a pathologist — a doctor who specializes in the study of disease and injury — has to do the autopsy.]

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In an epidemic situation, I expect the labs get backed up. And medical examiners may be unable to handle the additional workload on top of their usual volume, from beatings, shootings, poisonings, etc.