Italy first in Europe for booster (but it is among the countries where more people die from Covid)

After two years of pandemic it is emerging that mortality from Covid is different, in Europe, from one country to another. Premise: to think about the impact of the disease, it is not enough to dwell on the lethality of the virus, which we have seen to have diminished with the years. Lethality is the percentage of deaths compared to the total number of infected (infection-fatality ratio, IFR).

“There is another indicator that sheds light on the virulence of an infectious disease – ” he explains Stefano Petti, epidemiologist and Professor de wisdom – and is the number of infected needed to have a Covid death. The formula for expressing it is the inverse of IFR, then 1 / IFR. If this number is small it means that Covid is very aggressive. Example: a value of 100 means that 1 person dies of Covid for every 100 infected. If it is large, the disease is less aggressive”.

From 2022 data published by Ouror, which appear in the table below, referring to the countries of Western Europe that are similar to each other by characteristics (socio-economic level, cultural level, efficiency of public health) it emerges that in Italy Covid is very aggressive because 1 person per 387 infected dies (second column). A similar trend to us there is only in Sweden, the United Kingdom and Spain.

In countries such as Austria, Switzerland, Israel and the Netherlands, one in over 1,000 people infected dies: “this means that Covid is three times milder than in Italy,” Petti notes. And in all other Western European countries only one person per 500-850 infected dies”.

Why these differences?

How much do vaccines protect?

While it is true that vaccination protects against death from Covid, in countries with higher vaccination coverage the number of infected needed to have a Covid death should be higher. Petti notes:”In a country with high vaccination coverage the number of Covid infected necessary to have a Covid death must be higher than in a country with low vaccination coverage”. The table below shows, however, that in the most vaccinated countries, deaths are by no means few.

Italy in second place for vaccination coverage (second only to Denmark)

Looking at the data of vaccination coverage in Italy that are very high – we are second only to Denmark for the number of doses and first for the booster – it is legitimate to wonder what justified the hunt for no va va

See the third column, updated on April 14, we are almost at 226% vaccination coverage, in second place after Denmark.

Only 3 countries with vaccination coverage below 200% are noted: Switzerland, Israel, Holland. And toh … in these nations the number of infected needed to have a covid death is higher. It is deduced that, unless in 2022 unvaccinated people have always and only become infected, a high vaccination coverage does not correspond to a reduction in the ability of the virus to cause the death of infected people but, indeed, at least in the case of our country, an increase.

Italy in first place for booster (cycle + booster)

If it is emerging that vaccination coverage is no longer enough, because of the variants and that the complete vaccination cycle would actually be cycle + booster look at the fourth column indicating the percentage of people who did the booster on the total population. Surprise: Italy has the highest value ever, 65%! Two-thirds of the population has carried out (or had to carry out) the booster.

Least of all, again, Switzerland the only country with a percentage of people who did the booster below 50% (only 42%), but in Switzerland only one person per 1500 infected dies.

Italy in fourth place for testing

Ours is also one of the countries where the most tampons are made, the first is Austria. We are well over 100% testing done in 2022, see the last right column. So it is more unlikely to think that the asymptomatic infected escaped (which would have increased that 387 to similar values to the rest of Europe).

Summarize

Italy is one of the countries in western Europe where those infected with Covid have the highest probability of dying from it. But we are also the country that has the least no va va (“in January we also received the compliments of Fauci” recalls Petti).

Petti concludes: “in the other steps with a few exceptions, only one person dies each 700-1000 with a vaccine coverage and a percentage of booster coverage significantly lower than in US”.

Will explanations come?

Convincing explanations, we mean.

Here is the table with the data referring to the period between 1 January and 14 April 2022

Original source: https://blog.ilgiornale.it/locati/2022/04/19/italia-prima-in-europa-per-booster-ma-e-fra-i-paesi-dove-si-muore-di-piu-di-covid/