Coronavirus: Why it’s so deadly in Italy. Demographics and why they are a warning to other countries
Andreas Backhaus
The bottom line is that the coronavirus hit Italy and South Korea very differently in terms of age at around the same time and the same level of the outbreak — at least the level that we noticed in terms of confirmed cases — thereby causing a much higher number of deaths in Italy. An implication is that simply tracing the number of confirmed coronavirus cases by country over time, as many graphs and website currently do, is not telling the full story. The raw number of cases is a rather poor predictor of deaths by COVID-19, at least in the short-run. If the virus spreads predominantly among young people, as appears to have been the case in South Korea, there is no immediate risk of collapse to the hospitals. However, if it spreads to the old population, as in Italy, collapse is looming; and it might be a matter of days. When (not if) this happens is another factor that is hard to predict, as some efforts are underway.
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