Data Visuals

Corona virus in Italy in perspective

Effect on the life span and rate of deaths in the region

4 min readMar 8, 2020

133 is the number of people who died in Italy of Corona virus in 24 hours on 8th March 2020.

It is difficult to say if the number is high or low unless we get the perspective of normal death rates in the region. Until recently the majority of people died in 3 regions.

In Lombardy 67% of deaths
In Emilia-Romagna 21% of deaths
In Veneto 7% of deaths
Rest of Italy 8%.

So lets look on these three regions and compare them with the average rate of deaths that can be obtained from Eurostat. Latest available data are from year 2016 and I have calculated daily average deaths in those regions. I also used the share of previous COVID-19 deaths in the regions to estimate the number of today’s deaths in those regions (which were not available yet). You can check my data here:

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database

Total number of deaths

In Lombardy 89 (estimated) people has died in 24 hours to COVID-19 that is 34% of daily deaths in 2016.

Common Flu comparison

Flu kills more people than Corona virus globally. And old people are especially at risk. Let’s compare flue and COVID-19 in affected regions.

If you don’t see the daily deaths of flu, it is because is in Lombardy 0.162, in Emilia-Romagna 0.077 and 0.101 in Veneta.

I might be very careful in using this argument.

Old people

OK, I hear you say: “So old people don’t die from flu so much, but they are still more likely to die, because they are old and have many diseases.”

That is true. In the selected regions many old people (over 75 years) are dying daily. But in past 24 hours almost half of the people died of COVID-19 then average daily deaths of old people.

What is actually happening (how to think about the epidemic)

So far it is only speculation. But I will take into account two facts.

Number of deaths in China has significantly decreased
Data in the tables above

In Italy (and also everywhere else) the number of deaths will probably decrease. Either by the government measures, or because most likely victim of the epidemic will be death already.

Let’s look on two scenarios:

Scenario 1

COVID-19 attacks the weakest and sick people who died of COVID-19 instead of their preexisting medical condition, those people would likely to die within a year. Which is a tragedy for individuals, however the total effect on death in a year is zero.

Scenario 2

In the second scenario Corona virus is killing people who will probably live more than a year, sometimes much longer, but they get the COVID-19 during their weakest time. This will have significant effect on death rate in the region.

Both scenarios are extreme. What is happening is somewhere between them. To assess the severance of this epidemic we should estimate how much it will shorten expected life. It is very difficult to estimate. What we need are numbers of all deaths in the regions during in the coming months to estimate the impact of COVID-19 on the life span.

Short notes to the end

What we can say with certainty is that COVID-19 is significant cause of deaths in the affected regions.
If you are older then 75 it is probably good idea to buy supplies and don’t meet people now. It can shorten your life.
Current news does not say anything about severance of this epidemic. Only the future data will tell us more.