Read why Italy is hit so hard... many of the fashion-related industrial plants in northern Italy sold to Chinese companies... almost all headquartered in Wuhan... and well over 100,000 Wuhan Chinese now live in N Italy and travel back and forth...
One of my co-workers was comparing the populations of Italy (60M people, hard hit) and Japan (120M, virtually unaffected). The population distribution across age-groups is eerily similar...virtual mirrors of each other. Currently Italy has 3,400 COVID-19 deaths while Japan has a grand total of 32 deaths. This means that since Japan has double the population of Italy yet only 1/100 the number of COVID-19 deaths, Japan's death COVID-19 death rate is 0.5% that of Italy's. During our discussion of why there would be such a huge disparity, we came to several conclusions:
1. Difference in social norms:
a) Japanese do not touch each other when greeting--they bow from a distance, while Italians have high school-level petting when greeting each other
b) Japanese have all been wearing masks since day one, while Italians haven't (as far as we know)
2. Immediate reaction. Japan was on it from day one, while Italy took a while to take he threat seriously
This suggests that the spread of the virus in Italy is less about the potency of the virus and more about general personal sanitation. Also, Japan looks like they just may have leveled of in their infection rate:
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