In a recent article, I talked about the arrival in Italy of the so-called "second wave" of COVID-19 between the months of August and September (v.link), rather than in October-November, as feared by many parties. The crystal ball is not needed to understand, even net of what is happening in Spain and France, that the detection of several thousand new cases per day in Italy is imminent. And not because of Romanians, Serbs or Bulgarians, considered by some to be the "greasers" of Europe: it will not be their fault if the pandemic will soon raise its head, just as in March it was not the fault of the Italians. We forgot quickly, even if it happened just four months ago, when we were the "contagious" ones and the world disgusted us ...
In the meantime, it is enough to look at what is happening in some countries that have barred the borders for flights from Eastern Europe for months. Take Israel (opening charts): the Jewish state had a peak of COVID-19 between the last ten days of March and the first half of April, then the pandemic seemed to have ended up under control, also due to the widespread use of tracking implemented by the local government. Already at the beginning of June, however, despite the fierce heat of those latitudes and, in fact, the commitment of the Jerusalem authorities, the cases have increased significantly, growing relentlessly to exceed the two thousand "infected" discovered every day , which is more than double the peak of last March. On the other hand, it should be stressed that, on the other hand, the lethality of the disease was equal to or even lower than then, however in the order of 5-10 victims per day. Considering that normal daily mortality in the Jewish state does not usually exceed 150-180 people (including cardiovascular diseases, carcinomas, accidents, etc.), COVID-19 is, although in a peak phase, far from be an exterminator.
Even Australia has not received visitors from Eastern Europe for months, yet after a peak of at most 500 cases detected per day between the end of March and the beginning of April, or in full southern autumn, and after a long period ( end of April - mid June) with a flat and very low curve (positive swabs were often counted on the fingers of one hand), since the end of June has seen the number of cases grow in an important and continuous way, in parallel with seasonal influences, given that there is winter. In the meantime, the dead have also grown, but always in the order of 4-6 victims per day, equal if not less than the flu. In short, for now everything is under control.
The growth of cases, even in the presence of more or less impermeable borders, is also evident in Japan, certainly not a cold country at this time of year. In the Land of the Rising Sun, the peak had been reached in mid-April, with about 500-700 cases per day, and then it went down so quickly as to publish articles and clips about "Japan defeating the pandemic". Too bad that Tokyo now travels to a thousand cases a day. Lethality is not relevant, even in a country full of elderly people and with the air invaded by the miasmas of industrial activities: if between April and May it had settled around 20 victims a day, today it is permanently under five deaths, despite almost a month the cases are growing rapidly and the Japanese health system is considered inadequate to face a pandemic. Hear from what pulpit the sermon comes ...
Let's go back to Old Europe. We are not now dealing with the Spanish or French case, because both countries seem far from serious in the management of COVID-19 data: it is possible that for days they will not release statistics and that overnight they will also arrive with baggage tens of thousands of positive swabs to put on or off the list. We'll see…
It has always seemed serious to us and for this reason we want to mention Switzerland, where the pandemic followed a similar trend to Lombardy between March and April, with over a thousand cases a day for many weeks. The lethality, however, has always remained far from the massacres of Brescia, Bergamo and Milan: the bales about the most aggressive virus in Lombardy collide with the fact that the same strain from Canton Ticino upwards killed at most 75 people a day, albeit with a quantitatively similar population (10 million inhabitants in Lombardy, 8 in Switzerland). The second wave from them started again in July, for now without an increase in the number of deaths per day, steadily in the order of 1-3 people for almost two months.
Finally, here we are with the Romanian case. According to the writer, Bucharest did not conduct a serious campaign of tests and swabs in the spring: however, for many weeks it has been trying to contain the spread of the pandemic, especially at the hospital level. The result is a strange table, in which it is evident that between February and March the Romanian government has culpably underestimated the crisis and where between the first and second waves there is almost no break in continuity, because in fact the first does not appear in the table . It cannot be excluded that, in terms of number of cases, Romania will overtake countries with much higher populations and densities. However, like many former socialist countries, starting with Russia and Ukraine, the health system seems to hold up, albeit with difficulty, also because they have learned from the mistakes of the French, Spaniards, British and, above all, Italians.
Certainly, it is a good thing to force those who come from countries at risk to undergo a fifteen-day quarantine on their arrival in Italy: however, the "dangerous" countries are not only those two, notorious, from the East, which makes us comfortable considering the "greasers" of Europe, but also others, closer to us and invading us again with their tourists: Germany, Spain, France etc. On closer inspection, in fifteen days someone could even put Italy on this blacklist.
In conclusion, what should we do? Little or nothing: the Australian case teaches us that COVID-19, by behaving respectful of others and prudent for ourselves, kills little more than the flu. This usually takes between two and four lives a day in Australia in the five months in which it is active, affecting 1-5% of the population, thanks to distancing, flu drugs and vaccination.
COVID-19 seems to have a lethality of around one percent in countries with an advanced health system (therefore, in Australia, France, Italy, Germany ... but not in Brazil, the United States, Mexico etc.). In hindsight, however, being asymptomatic in the vast majority of cases, it does not allow us to scientifically quantify the actual number of infected people or to qualify as "sick" those who came into contact with the virus, given that in the vast majority of cases they are at all the effects of healthy carriers, probably not even contagious. So, it is better to give up talking about mortality or lethality, limiting ourselves to the mere count of deaths with a positive buffer. In the coming months we will probably have to concentrate on the count of ICU patients: if, as is foreseeable, there will not be many to undermine the system, we can say that the second wave was managed as in Israel, Australia and Japan. If not, very simply it will have been badly managed by our Authorities.
Images: worldmeter / prime minister's office
