Italy

Brendawymms is right, there are huge numbers of Chinese workers in Italy in the fashion business - not just leather but the sweat shops that make all our lovely designer clothes! If nothing else I suspect that this virus will make us look at the way we live in the future.

I read one article about the situation in Italy and it said that there were probably lots of cases which went undiagnosed early on - there were lots of cases of pneumonia amongst the elderly in December and January. The virus was spread to the health workers unwittingly, then spread to the wider community. They were a bit laissez-faire at the beginning too. But now they're not. I have friends who live near Verona and in Turin and Rome and I am worried about them. My friend who lives near Verona has colleagues who have lost their parents to this terrible killer.

Older generation often sharing accommodation..
Consistent and methodical testing.
Interesting what Brendawymms says, sounds probable.

Lots of charts and graphs here suziewoozie
www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

It's probably a number of factors. The elderly make up a very high proportion of the population, they are very sociable and often have large family gatherings...and failure to test and isolate before it took hold.

I was in venice last yr october half term,(returned 1st nov just before the flooding)there didnt appear to be much meeting& greeting like that going on? They do all cram together on the boat buses there though.

Just watched the report on Sky News showing a hospital in Italy. The staff are totally overwhelmed with the number of seriously ill patients. It’s scary and sad to watch.
Stay safe everyone x

One small town “Vo” in Italy has stopped the disease by rigorous testing.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/20/eradicated-coronavirus-mass-testing-covid-19-italy-vo

That’s maybe a lesson to us. If anyone can be bothered to listen.
?

If you have been to Venice recently you will know that there are always hundreds of Chinese tourists there. If they were infected before the crisis they would have infected many people.

WWM2 I am shocked by the scaremongering in the Telegraph. They backed the Conservative government and Boris and now seem he’ll bent on bringing them down!

Like Brendawymms I read about so many businesses in the north being linked to China. Particularly when the Italian economy was struggling, China was a cheap alternative to keep things afloat. I also heard that cheap Chinese labour was used to help restoring the infrastructure after earthquakes and floods. (I dont know how true that is). I also read that when Italy closed the schools, the more affluent in the North who had holiday homes in the South, moved south (at which point more cases began to occur in the South)

To back up what a couple of others have said -

www.altnewsmedia.net/news/corona-virus-exclusive-why-italy/

Well there is a large Chinese population in the U.K., particularly large cities. Plus loads of Chinese tourists and students. We are just a few weeks behind.

The graphs on the Public Health England website show that the UK is following the same pattern as Italy. A consultant interviewed on the BBC has just recommended that everyone over 60 should self-isolate even if they don't have underlying conditions.

Everybody we Brits are stoic and always want to defy authority. DONT DO IT it’s selfish in the extreme. If you are not worried about dying yourself, think of those who have to work and could catch the virus from some selfish git who wants to do whatever he wishes regardless of others. These front line heroes could die and leave little children as orphans. It’s not fair. DO AS YOU ARE TOLD. STAY IN.

On a lighter note, my friend is a front line worker and has been told her child can go to school. She says she doesn’t want to - she is 31!

Back to the jigsaw....

Brendawymms I had heard that too; that there are about 200,000 Chinese nationals in Northern Italy and that Italy has flouted EU rules but no-one bothered.

There are very many Chinese migrant workers and students in Australia but so far the number of cases are relatively few, in the hundreds.

I'm hoping it's nothing to do with eating pasta. I panic bought 45kgs recently.

Perhaps the Italians are being truthful
China is a totalitarian state

Thanks for refs to graphs - will follow up. One general point I don’t think is made enough - despite the health and age of our front line NHS workers, they are at greater risk because of something called ‘viral load’. Apparently, the more you are exposed to it, the more seriously it will affect you if you catch it. I don’t understand the science behind this, but it seems to be an accepted truth.

Fashion industry. Many, many flights to many destinations

An Italian colleague of mine said one of the issues was that closing the Universities meant that all the students went home and increased the spread of the virus..

I did see the chinese yes,(thankfully didnt go too near them!) But there didnt seem to be many more of those than other nations,but was a very wet day in st.marks square (with a lot of low level flooding) at time when i saw them,so its possible many more were there than were out& about i guess.( im convinced the extremely bad chest infection/ cough high temp etc i had at xmas was part of covid19 but my son said it couldnt have been) im not so sure now i didnt pick it up in venice!

There are a lot of Chinese people in Australia, migrant workers, students and generally a lot of tourists but Australia's cases of COVID19 number in the hundreds so far. I hope it doesn't get worse there.

There are approximately 100,000' Chinese leather workers in northern Italy. They were still flying out of wuhan after the city knew they had the virus. There are direct flights from wuhan to northern Italy.

NotSpaghetti I read that article as well. Doesn't seem like rocket science to me. Hey ho BJ is going to send it packing!