RJM posted:Italy is a tough comparison. It’s one of the countries with a larger percentage of older, more vulnerable people. Stats can be misused. Maybe one in a thousand high school players in Mike Trout’s graduating class had a shot at pro ball. But Mike Tout’s odds weren’t 1/1000.
Stealing this from someone who posted in another thread.
Italy has roughly 60 million people total. Their largest age bracket is 45 to 55. They may have an older average age, due more to low birth rates than a huge number of older citizens, they have roughly 13 million people over 65. The US has roughly 49 million people over 65. We have 70 plus million baby boomers, that is more people 55 and older in the US than the entire population of Italy. It could be that our death rate ends up higher both by number and percentages than Italy based on the number of Americans in this vulnerable age bracket if we don't do a much better job of slowing infection rates.
As for Italy's healthcare, they rank 3rd in the world in number of critical care beds per capita behind only Germany and the US. To assume our superior healthcare capacity is enough to treat 4 times the vulnerbale population is a stretch.
Not to mention our world leading rate of comorbidites such as diabetes and heart disease that impact the death rate from Covid-19 dramatically.
