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Italy, Germany and the virus: A numbers game

已有 126 次阅读 2020-3-31 11:26 系统分类:英语学习

Italy, Germany and the virus: A numbers game

Is Germany really better than Italy at treating covid-19?

A NEW PASTIME has emerged among people stuck at home. obsessively tracking how their country’s covid-19 death toll compares with those of their neighbours. Some divide the deaths by the number of reported cases of the disease to get a supposed fatality rate. That, in turn, often leads to the premature conclusion that some European countries are spectacularly better than others at keeping people with covid-19 alive.

被困在家里的人中出现了一种新的消遣方式。痴迷于追踪自己国家的covid-19死亡人数,并与邻国的死亡人数相比。一些人将死亡人数除以报告的病例数,得到一个假定的死亡率。这样往往导致一个草率的结论,即一些欧洲国家在维持covid-19患者的生命方面比其他国家要好得多。

Take Italy and Germany. On March 25th Italy had recorded 74,386 cases of covid-19 and 7,503 deaths, the highest number in the world. Germany’s tally that day stood at 37,323 cases and just 206 deaths. Going by these figures, the fatality rate would seem to be around 20 times higher in Italy than in Germany. In fact, this is a spurious number, for several reasons.

以意大利和德国为例。325日,意大利共记录到74386covid-19病例和7503例死亡病例,居世界之首。德国当天的统计数字是37323例,死亡人数只有206人。从这些数字来看,意大利的死亡率似乎是德国的20倍左右。事实上,这是一个虚假的数字,有如下几个原因。

First, in any country the number of confirmed covid-19 cases is an unknown fraction of the actual number of cases. Both Italy and Germany have been testing lots of people. In Germany, where different doctors and regions have different practices as to whom they test, accurate national figures on the number of tests done are hard to verify. That makes comparing the two countries tricky. But the broad consensus seems to be that there has been a greater degree of testing in Germany, meaning that it is spotting more mild cases of the disease than Italy. Severe ones end up in hospital, where they are obviously easy to count.

首先,在任何国家,确诊的covid-19病例数都只是全部实际病例数的部分而已。意大利和德国都在测试很多人。在德国,不同的医生和地区对检测对象采用不同的做法,很难核实全国准确的检测次数数字。这就使得国家间的治疗效果比较很复杂(tricky:棘手)。但广泛的共识似乎是,德国进行了更大程度的检测,这意味着德国发现了比意大利更多的轻症病例。同时,重症患者死于医院,也使得死亡人数更易于被统计。

What is clearer is that the first wave of covid-19 infections in Italy was predominantly among older people, who are far more likely to die than younger people, even with the best of care. The median age of those diagnosed with covid-19 in Italy is 63 years, compared with 47 in Germany. The two countries have a similar share of older people in the general population. But only 20% of cases reported in Germany are people aged over 60, compared with 56% of those in Italy. The early German cases seem to have contracted the disease at carnivals and ski-resorts, which explains why the initial profile is so young.

相对更明确的是,意大利的第一波covid-19感染主要发生在老年人中,即使有最好的护理,老年人的死亡率也远远高于年轻人。意大利被诊断为covid-19患者的中位年龄为63岁,而德国为47岁。两国老年人在总人口中所占比例相似。但德国报告的病例中只有20%60岁以上的人,意大利却有56%。早期的德国病例似乎在嘉年华和滑雪胜地感染了这种疾病,这就解释了为什么德国最初的患者如此年轻。Another reason why Italy’s death rate looks much higher is that its epidemic began earlier. Covid-19 deaths lag behind infections by several weeks. That means that for quite a time the disease can spread unnoticed. Italy’s first deaths were on February 22nd, Germany’s two weeks later. So a large number of Germans who are already infected will become sicker and die in the coming days and weeks. That is starting to happen. On March 23rd Germany’s cumulative number of covid-19 deaths jumped by 56%; the next day’s increase was 33%.

意大利的死亡率看起来高得多的另一个原因是它的流行病开始得更早。Covid-19的死亡比感染推迟数周。这意味着,在相当长的一段时间内,这种疾病可能会不知不觉地传播。意大利的首例死亡是在222日,德国则在两周后。因此,在未来几天和几周内,大量已经感染的德国人将变得更加病重并死亡。这已经开始发生了。323日,德国covid-19的累计死亡人数上升了56%,第二天上升了33%

Lastly, Italy’s deaths would not be so numerous if its covid-19 patients had not overwhelmed its hospitals. The country’s epidemic has been concentrated in the Lombardy region, whereas Germany’s cases have been distributed more broadly across several hotspots. As the disease spreads in both countries, it will become clearer whether the German health system really is so much better than Italy’s at keeping covid-19 patients alive. 

最后,如果意大利的covid-19病人没有超过医院承载的话,意大利的死亡人数就不会这么多了。意大利的疫情主要集中在伦巴第地区,而德国的病例则分布在几个热点地区。随着这一疾病在两国的蔓延,德国的医疗体系在维持covid-19患者存活方面是否真的比意大利好,将会变得更加清晰。


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