COVID19 Death Toll in Italy: No Need to Panic Yet, or Probably, Ever

March 19, 2020: Today, deaths in Italy due to the the novel Corona virus reached a total of 3,405.

The average age of those who died was 79.5 years.

Most who died suffered from one or several other diseases, including heart disease, emphysema and diabetes.

Prior to the COVID19 outbreak, Italy's death rate was running at about 10.6 per thousand, equivalent to 639,000 per year for the country as a whole.

So deaths attributable to the novel Corona virus have thus far increased Italy's death rate for the year by at most one half of one percent.

However, since most of those carried away by the Corona virus were both very old and more or less seriously ill due to other causes, many, probably most, would have died in the current year anyway.

Therefore, when 2020 ends, the effect of the Corona virus on Italy's death toll for the year may be rather small to negligible.

Yet the Western nations are shutting down their economies and debauching the government finances in the name of what is merely another strain of flu.

Looks like a colossal scam from which those with inside knowledge of government planning will make fortunes.

What Governments should be doing is something sensible like urging old folks to self-isolate, providing old-folks with home delivery of food, medicine, etc., and getting everyone to take at least 1000 units of vitamin D every day.

Radical measures beyond such obvious, minimal and sensible actions, should prompt voters to punish governments severely, as in booting from office, for buggering up the economy, and creating schemes for looting the treasury. Trump Out, Trudeau Out, Xi Out, etc.

Related:
Stat: John P.A. Ioannidis. A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data

The novel Corona Virus Is Going Global and If You're Retired, It May Just Have Been Targeted On You

Over at the Unz Review, multiple articles and lame arguments have been presented for the notion that Covid19 is an American biowarfare agent aimed at China, intended to disrupt China's economy.

Problem is there's virtually no way of knowing if that is true, and if it were true it would indicate that the US Government is inept beyond belief, since such an act of sabotage would almost certainly come back on America and cause devastation at least equal to that wrought in China.

In any case, debate about the source of the novel corona virus, whether it derives from a Chinese biowarfare lab or from an American biowarfare lab, or maybe from Israel, and who, if anyone, is responsible for launching it upon the world, is futile.

There is no way of knowing how this pandemic started, short of total incompetence or confession on the part of those responsible.

To launch a plague undetected is the easiest thing in the world.

The responsible party, whether acting with deliberation or by inadvertence, will almost certainly never be identified.

But one thing's for certain. There's no need for 300 American soldiers in Wuhan to do the job, to mention a theory to which Ron Unz repeatedly alludes.

Just one person with a pair of contaminated gloves will do it:  visit the supermarket, touch this, touch that, smear the shopping cart handle, then drop the gloves where someone is likely to pick them up and contaminate themselves and others, then stand back and watch as the magic of exponential growth takes over.

Next thing you know the newspaper front page announces in 256 point type:

CONTAINMENT IS FUTILE

Followed by, in slightly smaller type:

In Canada, local transmission “is going to be widespread, it’s going to be severe”.

And that's a key fact you have to understand if you want a plausible theory of the origin of this plague. The thing's a boomerang. It hits those who launch it as hard as those they launched it against, assuming, that is, that this plague is is the result of deliberate human action, unlike all the other plagues that have emerged from China without human intent, from the Black Death in the 14th Century, to the Asian flu of 1958, the swine flu the chicken flu, etc. 

Another key fact about this novel Corona virus, whether it is man-made or naturally occuring, is that it kills the old, not the young.

So who benefits?

Both China and America: each with rapidly aging populations and a problem financing the maintenance of the elderly.

What's a government to do? Kill off the useless eaters with this handy virus, obviously.

So no, pretty certainly, China didn't do this to America and America did not do this to China. But it could be a joint operation using a virus modified by scientists of both countries, working, as we know, in collaboration on means to enhance the pathogenicity, or achieve gain-of-function, as the techies of doom like to say, of bat flu viruses.

Related: 

Zero Hedge: Italy Reports 2nd Straight 1,000+ Jump In Cases As Mortality Rate Hits 5%
Zero Hedge: "This Is The Most Frightening Disease I've Ever Encountered In My Career" Says Architect Of National Pandemic Strategy