Anybody seen this report in the FT? Not specifically about Italy but it offers a very different view of the situation.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/5ff6469a-6dd8-11ea-89df-41bea055720b
If you click on the link it may appear to be behind a paywall but it is syndicated news that can be accessed via Google.
Coronavirus may have infected half of UK population — Oxford study
New epidemiological model shows vast majority of people suffer little or no illness
If the results of the study are confirmed, they imply that fewer than one in a thousand of those infected with Covid-19 become ill enough to need hospital treatment © Tolga Akmen/AFP
March 24, 2020 4:19 pm by Clive Cookson , Science Editor
The new coronavirus may already have infected far more people in the UK than scientists had previously estimated — perhaps as much as half the population — according to modelling by researchers at the University of Oxford.
If the results are confirmed, they imply that fewer than one in a thousand of those infected with Covid-19 become ill enough to need hospital treatment, said Sunetra Gupta, professor of theoretical epidemiology, who led the study. The vast majority develop very mild symptoms or none at all.
“We need immediately to begin large-scale serological surveys — antibody testing — to assess what stage of the epidemic we are in now,” she said.
The modelling by Oxford’s Evolutionary Ecology of Infectious Disease group indicates that Covid-19 reached the UK by mid-January at the latest. Like many emerging infections, it spread invisibly for more than a month before the first transmissions within the UK were officially recorded at the end of February.
The research presents a very different view of the epidemic to the modelling at Imperial College London, which has strongly influenced government policy. “I am surprised that there has been such unqualified acceptance of the Imperial model,” said Prof Gupta.
i have actually been wondering about this.
All the asymptomatic school children busily swapping it and spreading it to parents and friends. Spreading and spreading.
So many people here on the forum have been mentioning virus symptoms that hit one or two of the list of C-19 symptoms, then say ‘but of course it isn’t that. I don’t have the fever!’
I myself had a One Day Wonder mini virus last Saturday, insignificant. Of course it wasn’t C-19.
but what if it was? Maybe I was one of the lucky ones? I would have picked it up in the vets waiting room 4 days before, and maybe given it to my hairdresser 2 days later... before any symptoms emerged.
Only way to tell is a test for antibodies.
As soon as the tests come out on private sale, I will get a test done.
