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Medicine

99% of Those Who Died From Virus Had Other Illness, Italy Says (bloomberg.com) 257

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
More than 99% of Italy's coronavirus fatalities were people who suffered from previous medical conditions, according to a study [PDF] by the country's national health authority. Reader schwit1 shares a report: The new study could provide insight into why Italy's death rate, at about 8% of total infected people, is higher than in other countries. The Rome-based institute has examined medical records of about 18% of the country's coronavirus fatalities, finding that just three victims, or 0.8% of the total, had no previous pathology. Almost half of the victims suffered from at least three prior illnesses and about a fourth had either one or two previous conditions. More than 75% had high blood pressure, about 35% had diabetes and a third suffered from heart disease.
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99% of Those Who Died From Virus Had Other Illness, Italy Says More

99% of Those Who Died From Virus Had Other Illness, Italy Says

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  • Yes, that's what modern life is like. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 ) on Thursday March 19, 2020 @11:56AM (#59849362)
    Every adult in the developed world has been sick at least three times, and virtually all have some "precondition" or other. How does this excuse the dismal response to the crisis that condemned all these people to untimely death, though?

    • Re: Yes, that's what modern life is like. (Score:4, Informative)

      by saloomy ( 2817221 ) on Thursday March 19, 2020 @12:06PM (#59849408)
      Yeah, pretty sure they mean when they got sick with corona virus. Diabetes, heart disease... you know, chronic conditions?

      • Re: Yes, that's what modern life is like. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 ) on Thursday March 19, 2020 @01:09PM (#59849744)
        I'm pretty sure that the population of Japan is older, that Japan is much closer to the outbreak, and that its proportion of people with "preconditions" is comparable to Italy's. Yet, look, ma, no 350 deaths a day. Preparation, how does it work?

        • Re: Yes, that's what modern life is like. (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Mr D from 63 ( 3395377 ) on Thursday March 19, 2020 @01:28PM (#59849864)
          I wonder what the risk relevance of being a long time smoker is? Some countries certainly have higher numbers of long time smokers than others.

          The need to extra steps to protect the vulnerable has been clear. They should also be the first targeted when/if some sort of vaccine or helpful meds are identified.
    • Our species does not have any natural predators of the type that most all other animals have, so we either 'invent' them ourselves (war, for instance) or Nature 'invents' them itself, in the form of disease.
      Hard to accept, I know, but: If anything this is a Natural form of population control. There are too many of us already and this is Natures' response to that. Our civilization, our ability to adapt our environment (as opposed to adapting to our environment, like all other animals) has taken Natural Sele

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        That's silly. Humans have lots of natural predators. Large groups and modern civilization let us avoid most of them. Same thing works for most herd animals, although civilization lets us be a bit better at it.

        As for "Nature" trying to reassert a balance, a 1% cull of mostly the old or sick wouldn't even be noticed by most species.

    • Italy's head epidemiologist is Captain Obvious.
      How many people only have one illness or condition by the time they need to be put in the ICU? I suspect very few.

    • The response in the West hasn't been "dismal".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

      And we already know that Italy's medical services are so overwhelmed that the doctors are picking and choosing who lives and who dies so if people with pre-conditions are considered to be a bad bet then they don't get the life-saving treatment, the doctors instead give life-saving treatment to people who they think it will save.

      • Same as it could likely be everywhere else.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

          Looks pretty similar in the UK and Germany, although less diabetes in Germany.

          It's irrelevant though, the Italian doctors have had to choose who got treatment and who didn't, they're highly unlikely to give treatment to the guy with diabetes and heart disease if they think the person without these has a better chance of living and will need the equipment for less time.

    • How does this excuse...

      Who said anything about excuses? In any case, living a disease-causing life - genetic "predispositions" notwithstanding - simply carries consequences; if our distant ancestors have any idea what a bunch of soft, sickly fucks we've turned into, they'd surely disown us from beyond the grave.

  • So everybody (Score:5, Insightful)

    by im_thatoneguy ( 819432 ) on Thursday March 19, 2020 @11:58AM (#59849368)

    30% of Americans have high blood pressure. 10% of Americans have diabetes. I know that there is a lot of overlap.

    "Nearly Half of all adult Americans have cardiovascular disease"
    https://www.sciencedaily.com/r... [sciencedaily.com]

    If we are looking at 50+ years old then I'm sure the rates are even higher.

    This headline might as well say "Nearly all people over 65 have at least one illness."

    • We are about to find out how obesity figures into it, as well.

      • The UK seems to be doing OK for now.

        • ...but the UK has only tested 64,581 people as of March 19 and they say you don't need testing if you stay at home.
          (from https://www.gov.uk/guidance/co... [www.gov.uk])

          What to do if you have symptoms
          Stay at home for 7 days if you have either:
          a high temperature
          a new continuous cough
          if you live with other people, they should stay at home for 14 days from the day the first person got symptoms.
          This will help to protect others in your community while you are infectious.
          Do not go to a GP surgery, pharmacy or hospital.
          You do not need to contact NHS 111 to tell them you’re staying at home.
          Testing for coronavirus is not needed if you’re staying at home.

          So, I guess the NHS will just have some people collect the bodies when they want to make the final tally someday.

    • Re:So everybody (Score:5, Funny)

      by NFN_NLN ( 633283 ) on Thursday March 19, 2020 @12:08PM (#59849416)

      > 30% of Americans have high blood pressure. 10% of Americans have diabetes.

      Good news everybody. Those numbers are about to go down.

    • Blaming the victim is ALWAYS popular

    • 10% of Americans have diabetes

      Well, 95% of that 10% have Type 2 diabetes. Only 0.5% have Type 1 (being the type that requires insulin), as opposed to Type 2, which just requires that you watch your diet...

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

        There seems to be evidence that lowering insulin resistance through fasting actually often is able to reverse type type 2...

        But seeing how most of the foodstuff in the USseems to contain corn syrup, it's quite possible that they are fucked anyway.

        I am unsure how to feel about that.

    • So, apparently China has less than half the percentage of healthy people than Italy?

  • Not so reassuring (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ilguido ( 1704434 ) on Thursday March 19, 2020 @12:03PM (#59849392)
    High blood pressure, diabetes and some heart disease are overly common conditions. In Italy 5.3% of the population has diabetes (the percentage is higher with older people), in the U.S.A. it is 10.5% [diabetes.org]. In Italy 31% of the population is at risk of high blood pressure. Basically a very high percentage of the adult population is at risk.
  • Even a F'n Dog died of it recently.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
      The dog was 17 years old and the owner refused an autopsy, so nobody knows what it died from. 17 is not a terrible age for a dog to die, especially one as manhandled and upset as this one probably was in its past few weeks.

      • 17 is not a terrible age for a dog to die, especially one as manhandled and upset as this one probably was in its past few weeks.

        Average life expectancy for a dog is 10-13 years, depending on breed. 17 is an amazingly long lived dog. A 17 year old dog dying is a lot like a centenarian dying - the only surprise is that it lasted this long....

  • Worth considering - in the worst case conditions, a cruise ship full of people touching everything, with pretty much no part of the ship safe, only 20% of people got Covid19. So a large percent of the population could simply be immune.

    • Re:And there's a cap on how many people might get (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Åke Malmgren ( 3402337 ) on Thursday March 19, 2020 @12:16PM (#59849472)
      Or it doesn't spread that easily through "touching everything".
    • Wish you posted a reference with that. Not because I don't believe you, just I would like to read about it further. And think about this, using your stat on the infected. A large number of elderly take cruises. And yes, I wish I had a reference link for that information myself.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
      A cruise [washingtontimes.com] ship?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      You really aren't qualified to extrapolate from what happened on that cruise ship to the general public, but you know who is? Epidemiologists and infectologists. When they start saying there's a 20% cap on the percent of people who can get infected, I'll believe it.

      Right now the people who actually know what they're talking about are throwing around numbers like 60%-70% of the population.

    • Worth considering - in the worst case conditions, a cruise ship full of people touching everything, with pretty much no part of the ship safe, only 20% of people got Covid19.

      You forgot to mention that those people were all quarantined in their cabins as soon as a few had tested positive.

    • with a ton of procedures in place to keep everything that touched them clean.

      So yeah, if we do a total lock down as soon as the spread of the virus is underway we can get it down to 20%. Hooray?

      Realistically we can't keep the entire economy shut down for more than a few weeks. Our society just isn't set up for it. Please will run out of money for rent & food and go ballistic. In America that means bands of armed bandits. Gun sales are way, way up, btw.

  • That's helpful! Because only a certain percentage of human beings have some illness or condition at any given moment. Say... 98%? Oh wait...

    (I understand that 15-29 y.o.s can be in a much better health situation and may not have a complicating factor [though some do!]. That's not the case once one passes the 30 barrier. As much as the youngs may want the grups out of the way doing all in one go would create... unanticipated problems)

  • Starvation more Likely (Score:4)

    by nukenerd ( 172703 ) on Thursday March 19, 2020 @12:27PM (#59849544)
    Here in the UK I am more worried about dying of starvation than the virus, seriously. The shelves of the food shops are mostly empty. I managed to get some stuff today, which will last me a few days, but what will the situation be like in a week or two when possibly the wholesale supply chain could be slowed down? There is no wholesale supply shortage yet, but arseholes are stockpiling. I hope the arseholes will soon reach the their credit card limit, or run out of storage space. I expect some of what they are stockpiling (even the bread shelves were empty) will just rot before it is eaten.

    Surprisingly you can't find whole chickens, but there were a few chicken joints available - surprising because whole chickens must be an inefficient use of freezer space.

    I'm hoping they will introduce rationing. Some supermarkets have already set some informal rationing, but without legal force there have already been some nasty scenes at the checkouts - so the checkout operator told me today. People will fight each other for food if it gets short.

    • Here in the UK I am more worried about dying of starvation than the virus, seriously. The shelves of the food shops are mostly empty.

      By next week all C19 problems will have blown over.

      Firstly, people are starting to realize that tanking the economy is not a good idea, and I expect things to get significantly better in a day or two.

      Secondly, it looks like Chloroquine is virtually a cure for C19 and this fact has reached public awareness.

      Expect the US to start heavily using Chloroquine to combat the disease (and verify large-scale testing), then produce and ship massive amounts of it to other nations.

      • By next week all C19 problems will have blown over.

        I really hope you're right, but the science (medical and social) seem to be against you.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Jahta ( 1141213 )

        Here in the UK I am more worried about dying of starvation than the virus, seriously. The shelves of the food shops are mostly empty.

        Secondly, it looks like Chloroquine is virtually a cure for C19 and this fact has reached public awareness.

        Expect the US to start heavily using Chloroquine to combat the disease (and verify large-scale testing), then produce and ship massive amounts of it to other nations.

        That's a bit premature [slashdot.org]. The FDA is only initiating clinical trials of chloroquine "to actually see if that benefits patients". It may turn out to be a silver bullet for C19 (which would obviously be great), but we're not there yet.

        In the UK today, during the prime minister's daily briefing [bbc.com] he said he hoped that "we can turn the tide within the next 12 weeks". But when pressed, he admitted that there's no guarantee.

      • Re:Won't be a problem (Score:4, Interesting)

        by slack_justyb ( 862874 ) on Thursday March 19, 2020 @05:08PM (#59850818)

        it looks like Chloroquine is virtually a cure for C19

        Except it'll turn the pH of the endosome of a 70 year old so acidic that it'll be a race to see what burns up first, their kidneys or their lungs. Ionic regulation isn't at any kind of pace to be giving it to the elderly, they have way slower metabolisms. Heck even 60+ crowd will have to be watched for ruptures in their eyes, ears, finger tips especially around the small arteries as the pH level will already affect those weakened walls. You know to prevent blindness, seizures, loss of hearing, renal failure, standard stuff that comes with random ruptures.

        Now people may say, "Wait a minute! The President said that it wouldn't kill anyone!!" That's also correct. If you're being giving the medication slowly in a controlled environment and have staff to attend, you can totally watch the whole process, manage blood pH levels, and what not. I mean shits been around since the 1930s, we're pretty good at using it. However, we can't use it as a vaccine and using it as a treatment eats a shit ton of nurse and medical resources. So if 100 people are all on this at the same time in a middle of the road hospital, you've basically eaten every single attendant's time in the house. Good luck if you come in for a car wreck. And no, it has no medical system to watch and report to the nurse's hub, so it's all good old fashioned manual stats taking and blood draw that is required and running that down to lab. But hey, if anyone is feeling inventive, go get'em tiger. If someone can get that built like, um, two weeks ago would be awesome.

        Now ignoring the 60+ crowd for a minute. The 40-60 crowd should be fine (especially with tab form of the medication), but the upper end of that bound will need to "FUCKING REST!!!". Your tendons become jelly with the stuff so lie down in bed and don't freaking move for the course of the treatment (unless you're on the maintenance formula, but that kind of defeats the point of taking it since you'll get better way before the medication hits a useful level, so you kinda need the fast acting higher dose). There's literally no end to the number of people who get springs in their joints while on this stuff, mostly because they were picking up a cereal box or something and suddenly their flexor tendon decided to split into two. Now they need repair and "Oh yeah that's right", we're treating the 60+ crowd and that's eating up all the resources, looks like that's going to have to heal on it's own! (wink, wink, you've going to have lifelong problems with it)

        Everyone younger than 40 pretty much it's a non-issue, just drink lots of water, lots of rest, stop doing dumb shit. But then again, this current virus isn't really hammering them hard to begin with. So, what benefit are you getting out of using this? Yeah we'll stop a few deaths in the <40 group, but they aren't even remotely the focus to begin with. In treatment at least. For spread, STOP FUCKING GOING TO BARS AND SHIT!!

        At the hospital, the point isn't to save people, that's kind of like the after effect. The point is to treat people faster, so they can get out the door faster, so that the next person in line can be treated faster. There's no fucking end to treatments that can be used on this, but that's not the fucking point. There's so many sick, we need to treat them FASTER. So yeah, Chloroquine could totally be used in this case. It's antiviral is well known. That is not the point though. It's potentially a slower method of treatment in people who would have recovered all by themselves with the help of a ventilator and it is a method of treatment that requires more human resources to monitor than a ventilator that's hooked into the hospital's network and some computer can beep beep at the nurse when shit hits the fan. Now where it might be interesting to consider are for people where they aren't recovering on a ventilator, ya know the worse of the worse cases. But even then using on maybe 1 out of 5 in

    • It would be surprising if it came to starvation. Stores generally only stock enough for normal buying each week. When the shipments for the next week come in, the shelves will be filled again. And everyone who bought stuff they didn't normally won't be buying it again, because it will be still sitting in their cabinet.

      In my area everyone stocked up on toilet paper, peanut butter, and pasta, but left all the vegetables. So I bought a pile of tomatoes and some basil and cooked up a big pot of tomato soup. For

  • Italy's population is older than most (Score:5, Informative)

    by PeeAitchPee ( 712652 ) on Thursday March 19, 2020 @12:58PM (#59849676)
    It is irresponsible to publish anything about COVID-19 in Italy without mentioning that their population is older than most countries -- in fact, the 5th oldest population of all countries in the world when measured by median age [wikipedia.org]. This information is critical when you have a disease that disproportionately affects older people -- to the point when you must ask *why* such a critical detail would ever be left out when discussing COVID-19 in Italy.
  • It must be that Mediterranean diet [wikipedia.org].

  • Well, what do you expect. Italy designs and manufactures some of the least reliable cars and making excuses for it is so ingrained into their culture that they cannot help but make excuses for the poor prognoses.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • No consolation (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MrL0G1C ( 867445 ) on Thursday March 19, 2020 @01:26PM (#59849842) Journal

    More than 75% had high blood pressure, about 35% had diabetes and a third suffered from heart disease.

    100 million Americans have high blood pressure, 100 million Americans have diabetes or prediabetes and 30 million Americans have heart disease. Of course there is likely plenty of cross-over here but the summary won't be much consolation for many Americans.

    https://www.heart.org/en/news/... [heart.org]
    https://www.cdc.gov/media/rele... [cdc.gov]
    https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fasta... [cdc.gov]

  • So 99% of the people who died had some other illness. This tells us little about whether this is relevant without also listing how many people in the total population have any other illnesses. Or does it even take another illness to develop a serious case of the infection? Or to get infected at all? What percentage of people recovering have other illnesses?

    I hate it when statistics are paraded out without actually containing any kind of information.

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