Drifting Fate

This morning, numbers came out from Italy and China.  Surprisingly, they were very similar.  Mortality rates are low until the 60's at which point they climb precipitously, upwards of 20%+. However, a bit of caution must be maintained when we look at these numbers.  First, Italy was barely hanging on economically and was expected to be one of the falling dominoes of the EU.  Their health care, socialized, of course, was pretty much being held together with bubblegum and hope.  China, manufacturer to the world, has never realized population-wide health care which came anywhere near to Western standards. China is a closed country and while we can only guess how they have treated their corona virus patients, we know life is cheap within those borders and we have no reason to believe that an overstressed system was when those standards would change. Multiple reports have come out of Italy that the dramatic lack of ventilators meant anyone over 60 was literally...

Yesterday morning, Italy released new numbers as reported by Fox News . You can do the math, but it comes out to a 9% mortality rate, much higher than the rest of the world. In fact, somewhere else on the interwebz, where exactly I can't remember, think it was BBC, reported a world wide death rate that comes out to about 4%.  That is much higher than has been modeled, but a few things are going on here from what I can see. First, Italy's health system appears to be overwhelmed with people being triaged and wheeled into corners to die without any medical care.  Those are the stories which are coming out, and these numbers are on the heels of videos coming out of Italy saying the media is under-reporting (of all things) the severity of the illness. This brings up stories of the Spanish Flu and how the death rates from the same contagion today would be lower now simply due to the care, rest, fluids, and sanitation we can provide in a modern society... or can we?  Ita...