Jack: Lying- a tad harsh,perhaps? The seminal numbers in the link are
"The worldwide death toll crept toward 10,000 as the total number of infections topped 220,000................".
IMO, this should have read "confirmed infections" - I'm sure that the "actual infection" numbers are much higher than reported making the morbidity rate lower.
Using the quoted numbers, that's a morbidity rate of about 4.5% - compared with the previously calculated rate of 3.7%. Yes it's a 22% increase but perhaps not surprising given Italy's ageing population (and yes, on a personal level because I come from Italian peasant stock-still an absolute tragedy for each death).
I don't want to demean the potential impact of the virus - but if the gaze is changed and the pandemic is viewed from an epidemiological perspective (and admittedly it's still early days in the progress of the worldwide infection) - with a world population in 2020 of about 7,800 million - the infection rate for mankind (is this a PC term that I can use in Uwe's bar -or, should I use "personkind"?) is 0.0028%.
The other interesting take-out from the link is this:
Italy, with a population of 60 million, recorded at least 3,405 deaths, or roughly 150 more than in China — a country with a population over 20 times larger.
If I use these numbers and if I assume that the Communist Government isn't fudging the figures - it means that strict population control results in a reduced death rate of about 2,000%. I know that it's heresy to suggest this - but I hope democracy can achieve the same type of population control that is evident in the Communist system

. Perhaps even Americans (Mike Ross?) will agree that in a pandemic, this may be the singular advantage of Chinese style government?

Of course, I'm only teasing and it's a rhetorical question - but a valid point IMO, nevertheless !
Code:
[b]Population Deaths Morbidity rate[/b]
Italy 60,000,000 3,405 0.00568%
Wuhan 1,200,000,000 3,255 0.00027%
Change 2,092%
Don