Score

Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to make sense of the numbers of registered infected people and deaths. The number of people being tested, and so the ability to detect the virus, is not constant in time, depending on the availability of test kits and on many other factors, including delays in communication due to the technical time needed for analysis. It is sure that the number of registered infected people and deaths both largely underestimate the real numbers, so variations from one day to the next are not extremely significant. And even if we had a perfect ability to correctly identify all cases, the curve of deaths would start to decrease much later than the curve of infections. If we expect to see a decrease in the number of symptomatic infections 3-4 weeks after the beginning of the lockdown (but who knows for sure? the period of incubation is variable), the decrease in the number of deaths might occur in 4-5 or even 6 weeks (assuming deaths occur 7-10 days after the onset of the symptoms - but again, who knows?). Anyway, the difficulties in the detection make a day-by-day analysis rather difficult and potentially misleading. A more reliable indicator seems to be the daily number of people requiring hospital care (both "soft" and intensive), as it's almost impossible that someone who has such bad symptoms as to require hospitalization will not even contact the hospital - and then, the case would be registered. But these numbers are not communicated with the same emphasis in reports. Mmm... not really, no. At least, not everywhere. Social isolation is essential, numbers would doubtlessly be much worse without that. Unfortunately, the effect is slow, and difficult to analyze right now. The impact will be easier to assess when the damn thing is over.

The above sentence is not the same (neither in content, nor in tone) as saying that we had many casualties because we have many old people.

Thank you very much for this precious insight and sympathetic comment on our current situation (we will surpass 5000 deaths today). You have written several ignorant and cynical comments in this thread, but this one is also offensive and racist. And, needless to say, based on nothing. Look at any table on life expectancy by country and judge by yourself the worth of your stereotypes. Nobody needs nonsense right now.

I don't know where you took those numbers from, but the numbers given by our national Institute for Health are much smaller. It is not possible to have the exact counting, because people who die due to the flu almost always have other serious patologies. However, the average number of people who die because of the flu in Italy is estimated to be around 8000 each year (resulting from a statistical analysis that attempts to realistically assess the suspected cases as well; the cases which are certainly due to the flu are just few hundreds each year). By comparison, the coronavirus has killed 1500 people in a couple of weeks. And I've never heard of IC units becoming overcrowded during the flu season. However, independently of how you feel about this (if you are optimistic, good for you! I'm also optimistic that we will eventually get out of this mess), the only important thing is that everybody take it seriously in their behaviours. As publicist said, most people do behave safely, independently of how worried they are.

No, it wouldn't. Let me tell you what's happening here in Italy. First of all, the percentage of deaths might be low (in your view) compared to the number of infected people, but the number of infected people is huge, so the number of deaths is high, even in the regime where hospitals are fully working. In Italy, today we will surpass the number of 1500 deaths, probably even 1600. It means that little less than 1500 families have already lost someone because of coronavirus. And we haven't reached the peak of infections per day yet. So, please, don't underestimate the problem by saying that the proportion of deaths will be low. Second, if the intensive care (IC) units of a hospital are exhausted, people who would survive the virus (or other problems, such as a stroke) upon application of the IC protocol, will be denied such protocol because it will be physically impossible to apply it to them. Suppose there is one place left, and two patients arrive at the same time (and remember, we are not only talking about those with coronavirus, but literally about anyone who needs IC - the other problems do not disappear just because a new virus has appeared). By necessity, the doctors will have to evaluate the probability of survival upon treatment of the two candidates. There are standard protocols to do that, based on the clinical history of the individuals, and the one with the higher survival probability will get the place in the IC unit; the other one will stay out or, in the best case, sent to another hospital, if available. Now, if the two candidates have, say, 90% and 4% survival probabilities, respectively, this will not make a huge difference. But what if a candidate has 90% and the other one has 80%? Someone who would most likely survive in IC, will not get it. You see, I'm not talking about people who go to GP for a sore throat, I'm talking of people who objectively need hospital treatment. Another important issue is that hospital personnel is undergoing unprecedented levels of stress, and some of them are getting infected as well, but I'm not going to overload this post. The reason why I've spent some time writing this is that I am a bit worried that the entity of the problem might be underestimated by those who are not seeing it close to them. We surely did underestimate it in the first days of the outburst, when it seemed to be happening far away.

Ok, but you typically don't perform a surgery on hundreds of thousands of people in a few weeks. And if you shake hands with someone who just had a surgery, you don't have to undergo a surgery yourself (unless his/her hands are very, very strong).

For example, being a bit worried (within reason) might lead people to observe a few principles of caution and avoid risky behaviors.

Believe me, right now you should be more worried about the virus. The mortality rate is quite worrying in itself (combined with the rapidity of the spread), but it's likely to increase as hospital places get filled and there is no more room to accommodate the new patients. That is, people who would heal in ideal conditions after receiving proper hospital treatments, will not receive them because there will be no physical place to give them such treatments. Moreover, it's not that, because of the virus, the other kinds of accidents for which one needs to get hospitalized will suddenly stop happening. Suppose a 60-year old arrives at the hospital for a stroke, and a 70-year old arrives at the same time with serious conditions due to the virus, and there is only one place left at the intensive care unit. If there were more places, both would receive treatments and probably survive. But with only one place, one will have access to the treatments, and the other one will die. So yes, it is serious. It is difficult to visualize it when it's happening far from you (and that's why the threat was underestimated by some at the beginning), but those who are seeing it happening close to them can witness to this.

Good luck Maurizio! I also live in the locked-down area, so I can relate. I think the biggest issue is that, initially, the entity of the problem was strongly underestimated by many politicians who should have known better (not just in Italy). It didn't help that some virologists gave contrasting opinions for a while, with some downplaying the virus as "little more than a flu" - of course, the pessimist ones were right, as almost always happens. It is now clear that the lockdown should have been done a couple of weeks ago.

I haven't read it yet, but I am sure it is - John Williams is great at everything he does!

What some might not know is that Williams is also a talented writer! He even won the 1973 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction for his novel "Augustus": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus_(Williams_novel) Later, starting with Jaws, he decided to focus on composing (and playing guitar, of course). Happy Birthday, Maestro!!

The symbol that can be seen inside the lens could be Harry Potter's scar.

Also, Muti is the greatest Verdi conductor, he loves operas, and would probably enjoy conducting JW's "operatic" scores. I wonder if Muti has ever had the time or a chance to get acquainted with JW's work in some depth.

I don't think Muti has ever performed JW. However, he has recorded Rota and Prokofiev (Ivan the Terrible), so he is definitely open-minded about film music. I would be very curious to hear a JW-Muti recording!

1) ANH 2) ESB 3) TPM 4) ROTJ 5) ROTS 6) TROS 7) TFA 8) TLJ 9) AOTC