The Italian government has just decided to lockdown the entire region of Lombardy and many other areas in the north of the country. Basically, like a war zone: No one gets in, no one gets out. For those living outside Italy, might be a little hard to understand what is happening in the country to force a government to take such drastic measures, especially in the era of social media and fake news, so let me try to explain it from the perspective of someone living inside the emergency area.
At the moment that I am writing this post, there are 5.883 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Italy. CONFIRMED, no bullshit fake news!!! From these cases, 233 have died, 589 have recovered and 5.061 are somewhere in between. Some will surely die and some will recover, no one knows how many. These numbers mean 2 things: The number of infections is growing very fast in Italy, and the death rate is also going up, just look at the numbers to confirm it. With each passing week without controlling the problem, the percentage of dying people is going up. Again, just look at the numbers to confirm it. I might be wrong but I believe in this moment Italy has the highest death rate from COVID-19 in the entire world. Italy has 3.96%, China has 3.83%, Iran has 2.49%. Those are the top 3. Most of the other countries have less than 1% death rate.
Now this is happening because people are looking at this virus has "just like a normal flew, it is only dangerous for old people or people with a weak immune system, I will have no problems surviving it if I catch it". And you are being bombarded over and over and over with this bullshit, by your friends, by the news and by Facebook. So let let me give you a wake up call to reality: You are being told the story wrong. You are being told that ONLY old people and people with week immune systems or other previous conditions are in danger of dying. And it is quite amazing the amount of people that truly believe in this bullshit, even though nowadays many people consider themselves a virology expert with just one click in google ore a Facebook post. But the nude and crude reality is that old people and people with week immune systems or other previous conditions have MORE chances to die. It is this subtle difference between "ONLY" and "MORE" that you need to understand. You still have a considerable chance to die if you catch the virus, even if you are very young and with an amazing immune system, let me explain you why. In many cases (maybe in most cases) you still need oxygen therapy or ventilation and need to be interned with medical assistance to recover and survive, even if you are very young and with an amazing immune system. AND THAT IS THE BIGGEST PROBLEM THAT SOMEONE NEEDS TO EXPLAIN TO YOU!!!
There is a lot of disinformation on the internet and news, so in case you are not familiar with the real consequences of the virus, there is a very objective study called “Clinical Characteristics of Coronavirus Disease 2019 in China”, conducted by the China Medical Treatment Expert Group for Covid-19. Let me write you a small excerpt from it: “On admission, lymphocytopenia was present in 83.2% of the patients, thrombocytopenia in 36.2%, and leukopenia in 33.7%. A majority of the patients (58.0%) received intravenous antibiotic therapy, and 35.8% received oseltamivir therapy; oxygen therapy was administered in 41.3% and mechanical ventilation in 6.1%; Mechanical ventilation was initiated in more patients with severe disease than in those with nonsevere disease (noninvasive ventilation, 32.4% vs. 0%; invasive ventilation, 14.5% vs. 0%). Of these 204 patients, 33 (16.2%) were admitted to the ICU, 17 (8.3%) underwent invasive ventilation, and 5 (2.5%) died. Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation was performed in 5 patients (0.5%) with severe disease. The median duration of hospitalization was 12 days. During hospital admission, most of the patients received a diagnosis of pneumonia from a physician (91.1%), followed by ARDS (3.4%) and shock (1.1%). Patients with severe disease had a higher incidence of physician-diagnosed pneumonia than those with nonsevere disease (99.4% vs. 89.5%)”.
Just like a normal flew, right? Did you read the part about the oxygen therapy being administered in 41.3% of the people infected? About the 12 days of average duration of hospitalization? This my friends, is the REAL PROBLEM!!!! No country has thousands and thousands of oxygen masks, ventilators and beds for so many infected people. No doctor or nurse can work 24 hours non-stop per weeks or months, and we need them to save people. Ours are probably working 20 hours per day, and yet it is not nearly enough. This is what is happening in Italy, the Italian health care system is collapsing and that is why such an abnormal number of people are dying. It is not a Chinese problem. It is not an Italian problem. It is your problem too, the virus is already in your country too. Just a few days ago, the situation in Italy was probably not very different from the one your country has right now. Some cases, but nothing too special. We were stupid, we looked at this as being a Chinese problem. We only had a few, very localized cases of infection. Didn't seem like a big problem, so we didn't give it much attention. We were wrong, look where we are now, just a few days after… And unfortunately, I am seeing other countries being equally stupid, thinking this is an Italian problem. This is a global problem, we live in a era where I can easily buy a cheap flight and in a couple of hours I am in the other side of the world. A few days from now, there might be someone in Poland thinking "this is a Swedish problem". That's the way our globalized world is today, the virus doesn't give a shit about frontiers, nationalities, sexual orientation, gender, color of skin, language spoken or any other of that stupid distinctions. Only people make those distinctions, not the virus. I am old enough to have seen the exact same bullshit in the 80's with the HIV. Back then, it was "a gay problem", remember?
So the big problem in Italy right now, and I am sorry if this offends anyone, is not so much the virus itself, it is the stupidity of the Italians. The more important thing they had to do was a very basic thing: Just avoid contact with other people as much as you can, stay at home as much as you can until all this go away. But the government closed the schools and public gatherings, so they all went shopping because staying at home is boring... Then they closed most of the public spaces and shopping centers, so Italians went on vacation and skiing because there is nothing better to do, spreading even more the virus. Now they have locked down around 25% of the Italian territory and thousands and thousands of people are running to the train stations to get out of the red zone, because of course, staying inside your fucking home is not an option, so the effect this new measure is having is to spread even more the infection. Soon the entire country will be infected. What is happening with COVID-19 in Italy is mostly a consequence of Italian people attitudes and behaviors.
MYSELF INCLUDED!!! I am not infected and I did not take particularly risky behaviors, but looking back, I also did not take this virus very seriously in the last weeks. I had 4 cat shows where I was supposed to judge cancelled, and I thought: "well, that's a little radical...". Then I had 7 flights cancelled in 2 days and I thought: "those stupid idiots, I am never flying with that airline company ever again!!!". Every now and then I looked at all the mass hysteria around the COVID-19, and I thought: "I have no patience for this and better things to do". By the way, quite frankly, there really is a lot of mass hysteria around this virus. Both negative (it's the end of the world) and positive (not even worth worrying about it). Anyway, that’s why I am writing this post right now to all my friends outside Italy, so you don’t have to be lockdown in your own countries a few weeks from now because you didn't take the COVID-19 very seriously. You can't work, you can't even go out for your normal every morning coffee, you can't do anything. Right now my wife is in Finland and I am not quite sure how she will return home. If my parents or my daughter have an emergency in Portugal, I can't go there to help them. Pretty soon we will run out of food inside the house, both for humans and animals, so we will have to go out to buy it, risking to find a supermarket full of empty shelves, or catching the virus in the process. It is a really depressing situation and I truly don’t recommend it to anyone.
Basically, the virus is not spreading like wildfire in Italy because it is different from any other virus we have ever seen before. This is happening because a lot of people seem to be doing everything they possibly can to spread it. Not on purpose, just sheer stupidity and irresponsibility. This might seem totally ridiculous and surreal, but the measures that the Italian government is taking are not to handle the virus itself, are to handle the irresponsibility of the Italians. And that is also why this government measures in Italy are all failing, and will keep on failing. Because no matter what measures the government takes, no matter how much information people have available, many Italians still choose to adopt irresponsible behaviors. None of this would be necessary if Italians would just simply adopt a responsible behavior for a few weeks. Let me empathize this part: A FEW WEEKS!!!! No one is asking them to radically change their lifestyles from here to eternity. Just “lay low” for a few weeks, that’s all.
So, my advice to all my friends living in other countries:
- Please, please, please, don’t make the same mistake of underestimating this virus just because “it is like a normal flew and it is only dangerous for old people or people with a weak immune system”. You also don't need to go into panic, that doesn't help much. But YOU DO NEED to be intelligent on handling this situation before the health care system of your country collapses. Yes, I know you are young and healthy, so in theory you have good chances to survive the virus without much problems. But you don't just go to the pharmacy and buy a medicine to cure this, like a normal flew. What if when you catch it, there isn't a ventilator and/or a bed available for you? What if your doctors and nurses are so tired from working 20 hour shifts non-stop that there is no one available to assist you? And by then it is not just you that is infected: it is also your children, your husband, your old parents, your entire family. There are good chances one of you might die in a scenario like this. And it is not a scenario from a movie: it is happening in Italy right now, in 08/03/2020. Just don't take the risk and simply adopt a responsible behavior for a few weeks. If you can avoid the risk of infection, JUST DO IT!!!
For a short follow up on this post, I strongly recommend everyone to read this post where you can see a video of the scenario I have described before:
Every day I will update this post with the official statistics for Italy. The current situation is as follow:
07/03: 5.883 Confirmed cases
08/03: 7.375 Confirmed cases
09/03: 9.172 Confirmed cases
07/03: 233 Dead
08/03: 366 Dead
09/03: 463 Dead
07/03: 589 Recovered
08/03: 622 Recovered
09/03: 724 Recovered
07/03: 3.96% Death Rate
08/03: 4.96% Death Rate
09/03: 5.05% Death Rate
Confirmed cases means people that have been tested positive. For all we know, there can be twice as many asymptomatic walking around and spreading even more the virus.
You can confirm this numbers and see the official numbers for your own country in this map:
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps ... 7b48e9ecf6
ik had dat niet meegekregen dat hij getest zou zijn. 
