New coronavirus losing potency, top Italian doctor says
The new coronavirus is losing its potency and has become much less lethal, a senior Italian doctor said
“In reality, the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy,”
“It is clear that today the COVID-19 disease is different.”
“The strength the virus had two months ago is not the same strength it has today,”
“We’ve got to get back to being a normal country,” he said. “Someone has to take responsibility for terrorizing the country.”
If Covid-19 is possibly already weakening in a short period of time to just the strength of a common cold, perhaps a vaccine will not be of significance in the future
I can confirm this from colleagues working in our hospitals. What people in other countries do not grasp is HOW BAD was the virus at its beginning here in Italy (and in Spain and Belgium). In other western countries, for example US, the virus outbreak was already of the "mild" type we are also getting here now. But for two months, the virus here was REALLY BAD.
This is demonstrated by the very different value of the Case Fatality Ratio: above 14% here in Italy, less than 6% in the US (and reducing).
Also inside Italy the situation is very different, with Lombardy being anomalously bad, and the center and south of Italy in much better situation.
There are not yet clear explanations of these variations in morbility and and mortality, both spatially and temporally.
I think that the alarm caused by the initial outbreak was fully justified, as the situation here was a nightmare. Who was not here cannot understand!
The lockdown prevented this to spread everywhere, and is now evaluated as not necessary in places where the situation has never been terrible, as it was here in North Italy in March.
But if no action had been taken and this bad situation had expanded to much larger areas, now we were counting several millions of deaths, instead of just 376.000 worldwide.
Better having exceeded with lockdown and safety measures than leaving the virus to spread uncontrolled.
Now, if the more aggressive version of the virus has converted everywhere in the mild form, possibly removing these lockdown measures will become possible everywhere. I really hope that this happens shortly...