Italy has 1\6 as many people as the United States and a much higher percentage of recent Chinese immigrants both legal and illegal.
+100! That’s true and that is why you must consider all factors before making extrapolations.
Italy also has a much older general population and a larger percentage of heavy smokers than we have here.
“...much higher percentage of recent Chinese immigrants both legal and illegal...”
Yes, and they did not ban travel to China until late in epidemic. With the huge numbers of Chinese in the textile and leather industries, the interaction between the two countries was very significant. The Italians were easy targets of the virus.
It also has the highest number of older people who are the prime target for the virus.
Unless and until our government explains to us why this virus is qualitatively different from previous pandemics, I continue to believe that they are hiding something significant from us or we are destroying our economy unnecessarily.
The comparison is more specious as the data gets deeper.
One factor affecting the country's death rate may be the age of its population — Italy has the oldest population in Europe, with about 23% of residents 65 or older, according to The New York Times. The median age in the country is 47.3, compared with 38.3 in the United States, the Times reported. Many of Italy's deaths have been among people in their 80s, and 90s, a population known to be more susceptible to severe complications from COVID-19, according to The Local....
Often, as testing expands within a community, more mild cases are found, which lowers the overall death rate, Gordon said. This was the case in South Korea, which conducted more than 140,000 tests and found a fatality rate of 0.6%, according to Business Insider. - https://www.livescience.com/why-italy-coronavirus-deaths-so-high.html
From which we also have this reveling insight from 2018:
Americans who knew something about Italy used to nod knowingly when I’d tell them the National Health Service was going from bad to worse,
Mario Monti.. installed to take over from Berlusconi as Prime Minister, who proceeded to force austerity with a vengeance on Italian regions in deficit, which meant most of them. Poof! there went the hospital beds, and the staffing, leaving patients amassed on gurneys in emergency room halls. Mario did more damage to ordinary Italians’ health care in one year than Silvio had in seventeen.
The right-wing League and the no-wing Five-Star Movement, the two parties currently – and improbably – sharing power, have made rosy joint promises to restore funding for the public medical sector, fight corruption, and improve services. Plus promising their constituents everything from earlier retirement to a guaranteed minimum income.
But it’s all pie in the sky, based on a magic trick....When they cobbled together a government, each party stuck to its own promises, despite the glaring contradiction between taking in less and spending more. - http://www.stethoscopeonrome.com/2018/12/warning-politics-may-be-bad-for-your.html