Flu in Italy, 2013-2017: 68,000 Deaths
March 31, 2020
FROM the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, Volume 88, November 2019, Pages 127-134:
•In the winter seasons from 2013/14 to 2016/17, an estimated average of 5,290,000 ILI [influenza-like illness] cases occurred in Italy, corresponding to an incidence of 9%.
•More than 68,000 deaths attributable to flu epidemics were estimated in the study period.
•Italy showed a higher influenza attributable excess mortality compared to other European countries. especially in the elderly.
Source: ScienceDirect
— Comments —
Steve writes:
As somebody who has extensive family throughout northern Italy, I can attest to what is being presented here.
For one thing, whatever this viral infection going around actually is, it certainly seems to be very concentrated in rather small, rather than broader, general areas of Italy.
As the graph shows, it is overwhelmingly concentrated in the province of Lombardia, with a much lower scattering of cases elsewhere in Italy — including the rest of the provinces of the Italian north (which have per-capita population levels similar to Lombardy).
If this really was a true, out-of-control ‘Justinian-level Plague’, the numbers of the potential population infection rate would be much higher across the board, and impossible for them to be so narrowly concentrated in a few scattered areas.
