Talk:COVID-19 pandemic in Italy/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Semi-protected edit request on 21 March 2020

Matant94 (talk) 17:44, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Sorry for my english, there is a serious error, all our case of CoViD-19 are domestic h2h transmitted and not linked with the couple from China as reported by our High Health Institute (Istituto Superiore di Sanità) page 6, 7: Bollettino CoViD-19 - Istituto Superiore Sanità I think a correction will help to fight the stima Have a nice day, at least better then our Matteo

 Not done I am puzzled of what you are trying to say and PDF might not be reliable to prove your statement. Stay safe. Abishe (talk) 15:39, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Why are deaths shown in black?

I just don't like that. It's like Halloween.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:07, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Graph “Is Coronavirus just like flu?”

Something is very wrong about the graph titled “Coronavirus just like flu?” citations listed as (199 and 200). The weekly numbers of deaths due to “flu” in 2019 shown in this graph are far too low. If one adds the week-by-week total numbers of deaths due to “flu” in 2019, the total for the entire flu season is less than 500. This cannot be the case in a country with a population 60 million. In the USA, with a population of 350 million, between 20,000 and 40,000 typically die of flu each season. Like in Italy, the vast majority that die of flu in the USA are elderly or immunocompromised. So this comparison of deaths in Italy due to COVID-19 vs. typical flu cannot be valid. WashZ (talk) 20:14, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Deaths from flu are nothing like as high as you say they are. Jim Michael (talk) 01:19, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Flu deaths in Italy are up to 25,000 per year, see https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971219303285 'Just' flu is also quite misleading since influenza is a very severe disease. That whole graph seems more like a propaganda piece. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.187.168.217 (talk) 20:38, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Sorry I did not reference: "Seasonal influenza – flu symptoms & severity". CDC. 2009. Retrieved 2009-09-13. “An average of about 36,000 people per year in the United States die from influenza-related causes” This is a CDC report. What is your reference? WashZ (talk) 02:23, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

You'll need to provide an online link to that. Related doesn't mean that it's the sole or main cause of death. Jim Michael (talk) 08:05, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Article from which the graph is taken (http://www.biotecnologi.org/is-coronavirus-just-like-a-flu/) says that: "In the season 2018-2019, flu was responsible (...) and 205 deaths in a span of 33 weeks (...)" For flu cases, the article cites: https://www.epicentro.iss.it/influenza/FluNews18-19#casi On epicentro.iss.it one can find an article about mortality of flu: https://www.epicentro.iss.it/influenza/sorveglianza-mortalita-influenza where they seem to say (I don't know Italian, so I quote automatic translation): "It is thanks to these methodologies that we get to attribute on average 8000 deaths from flu and its complications every year in Italy." and also: "For the reasons described above, neither monitoring system provides the total number of deaths that seasonal flu causes in Italy each year. For the latter, it is also necessary to underline an additional element to keep in mind. If we analyze the specific mortality data due to flu that Istat provides every year in Italy, the deaths due to flu are a few hundred. The main reason is that the flu virus often aggravates the already compromised conditions of patients suffering from other pathologies (for example respiratory or cardiovascular) up to causing their death. In these cases, the flu virus is often not identified either because it is not sought or because death is attributed to general pneumonia." Would be good if someone who speaks Italian and has time for this took a look if the translation was reasonable. 195.150.224.156 (talk) 12:29, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Why it spread so fast

I just glanced briefly at the article and can't tell whether this has been covered, but a radio newscast I just heard stated that there were more older people and testing was not as extensive as in other countries, which apparently means more people spread the disease without knowing it.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:10, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, Copan group, one of the world leading producer of the swabs needed to collect samples, just happen to be right in the middle of the red spot in Italy : [1]. And we never made enough test since the first diagnosed case. Italy is the first country to reach enough tests to cover an amount of deaths comparable to what a common season of coronavirus would be expected to do. Iluvalar (talk) 23:50, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Foreign cases linked to Italy

@Abductive: this is the second time in 24 hours that you have removed a huge established and well-sourced section from the article. Since the first time you got reverted, you should look for consensus on the talk page first, before keeping stubbornly deleting the section. The section stays until new consensus is achieved about deleting it.

Regarding the objections in the second edit message. There is no obvious original research in the section, because the text (or at least the vast majority the text that was deleted) does not imply that the cases were infected in Italy, but states that they are merely linked to Italy (hence the section title), i.e. involving Italian nationals abroad or people travelling to Italy. This is a statement of sourced facts, not original research. One can discuss about whether this kind of list is redundant on this page, but this surely deserves a debate, since the section has been on this article for virtually all its existence. I would say the editor who removed it first should have opened this thread here. --Ritchie92 (talk) 00:23, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

• Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject COVID-19#Foreign cases linked to Italy. Abductive (reasoning) 02:05, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Daily Death and Infections

Can we get a new graph which shows the daily number of new infections and deaths. This is important for readers to show if the the daily number of infections and deaths are going up or down. That way it will show whether coronavirus has peaked. Right now I have to use a calculator to figure out. We should add another graph to show that. Mercenary2k (talk) 18:12, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Look more closely and you will find it. It was there all the time. --Ritchie92 (talk) 18:48, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Oh LOL.

We should mention "Match Zero"

On 19 Feb at San Siro Stadium in Bergamo the game Italian Atalanta Bergamo and Spanish Valencia has been described as one of the big events to spread the virus. We mention it briefly in the section on "Foreign cases linked to Italy" but the article doesn't discuss it in the history of disease's spread in Italy. Sources:

• (in Polish) [2] Sorry its in Polish but the newspaper is reliable and the author is renowned Jerzy Duszyński (biochemist). Quote: "Mecz na San Siro określany jest teraz jako biologiczna bomba lub mecz zero. Uważa się, że dramatyczna sytuacja epidemiologiczna, która zapanowała w Bergamo po kilku tygodniach od meczu, ma z nim związek." Translation: "The San Siro match is now referred to as the biological bomb or zero match. It is believed that the dramatic epidemiological situation that prevailed in Bergamo a few weeks after the match is associated with it."
• (in French) [3] Eurosport article
• there is a bunch of other news for search key 'San Siro "match zero"' but not that much in English ([4]). Term "game zero" is also used but I think less often. ([5]).

I hope editors working on this article can incorporate this into the chronology. Sorry I couldn't find more reliable sources in English. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 12:55, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Hadn't even noticed this when I added it, but it's added now in Lombardy cluster. Vaselineeeeeeee^★★★ 02:33, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 27 March 2020

Italy is one of world's centers

Please change this to

Italy is one of the world's centres

"The" is needed and this article is written in British English, where "centers" is not proper spelling. Thank you. 208.95.49.53 (talk) 14:09, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

 Done --Ritchie92 (talk) 15:33, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

It cured pneumonia yay !

Hello, I'm highly suspecting all the pneumonia cases caused by complications of the COVID are falling in the COVID-19 bucket at the moment ? Meaning we should have on paper an abnormal low amount of cases leading to pneumonia ? As the level where the deaths seems to be capping, it would most likely impact the fatality rate by at least 5% ish ? Which would be relevant to know. Any source ? Iluvalar (talk) 19:00, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Number of death

The Civil Protection did not include in its daily bulletin 50 deaths from Piedmont, so the correct number of victims is 8,215. (BBC, Worldometers, Lorenzo Pregliasco). I think they "simply" forgot to include them in the death toll, let's see if they'll include these 50 victims in tomorrow bulletin (as I hope so). -- Nick.mon (talk) 20:04, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Ritchie92, I’m quite sure that even the total number of cases is incorrect. Worldometers counts 80,589 cases. Moreover if you look to the bulletin’s table you’ll se that they did’t add the 50 deaths even in the totals column. -- Nick.mon (talk) 23:41, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Ok. Fixed in the tables. --Ritchie92 (talk) 23:49, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Death cases map

Hello, I would suggest to include a map of Italy that show the death cases per million by sub-national divisions. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.39.208.224 (talk) 12:10, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Breakup by region (with new cases per region)

The breakup per region was very useful to compare growth rates. Very unwise decision whoever changed/recreated the article — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.165.91.213 (talk) 10:42, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Logarithmic scale

Can someone add the log scale into this, in line with other articles? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.1.81.53 (talk) 12:54, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

"Corona in Italy" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Corona in Italy. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 19:41, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Graph: "No. of new cases" seems to show wrong count

Hello,

I'm looking at the chart showing "No. of new cases" . I think that the numbers shown there are not the right ones. It's a while I'm looking at them. These are always higher than the ones of national official report .

It seems that to the actual number of registered new infections, the number of deaths and new recoveries are added. That's not correct. Deaths and New Recoveries should not be counted as "new cases".

For instance:

       date    |    official new cases count   |   new recoveries   |   deaths   |     value showed in "new cases graph"
               |                               |                    |            |
       03-25   |             3491              |        1036        |     683    |          (3491 + 1036 + 683) = 5210  BUT should be 3491  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stanoc001 (talk • contribs) 18:25, 28 March 2020 (UTC) 

No, the number given in sources (3491) is the "new active cases", meaning: total_new_cases - new_deaths - new_recoveries. --Ritchie92 (talk) 18:31, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the answer.

Yes, that's exactly what I meant. Would you kindly point me towards some web resource explaining what's the purpse of summing new active, recovered and dead cases per day ?

I mean, every dead and every recovered person should have been already counted as "new active case" in the preceding days . Thanks :)

The total new (i.e. the sum) is the number of new positive cases tested in that day. The number of currently active cases is the cumulative count of the positive cases minus the recovered and the deaths, i.e. the number of people that can still spread the virus. --Ritchie92 (talk) 22:45, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks

I also made the same comment when the page was still called "2020_coronavirus_outbreak_in_Italy", unfortunately I cannot find it anymore. I think that the tricky part of the discussion is related to the "new_active_cases" that does not mean what the common sense would associate to it, i.e. the number of new positives discovered that day (that could be both alive or already dead). But "new_active_cases" is not strictly greater than zero and can infact turn negative, as I understand. This clarified for me the point, I hope it helps you too. 93.65.223.112 (talk) 23:35, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

First thing first, thank you both for your answers.

So, thinking to a given person "A", let's say on monday he gets the infection, it's counted as "new active". Then, a couple of days later, this person "A" recovers and gets counted again as "recovered" . This is, obviously, counting twice the same person.

So, what I'm getting from this graph is the covid-19 people status-change events for a given day . Is that right?

Education and School Closures

In the article, it states that:

"On 4 March, the government announced the closure of all schools and colleges until 15 March.[369]

With the enactment of the lockdown of Lombardy and 14 more northern provinces on 8 March, the re-opening of schools in these areas was delayed to 3 April.[370] On 9 March, the government extended the lockdown to the national territory, closing all schools and universities until 3 April.[371]"

While this is mostly true, the government of Italy did not close all schools in the country, but rather all Italian schools. Because of this, many US DoDEA schools that were in Italy (Such as the ones at the Naples and Sigonella Naval bases) remained open longer (with the Sigonella school open the longest, until March 11). Here are some sources, from the schools social media pages in which they announced their late closures:

Sigonella: https://www.facebook.com/SigonellaCS/posts/2955018554545972?__tn__=-R

Naples: https://www.facebook.com/DoDEA.NaplesMHS/posts/2558674457709800?__tn__=-R

TheSupremeStalin (talk) 17:05, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Adding sentence in introduction about the numbers of Infected likely to be higher than cases

Twice I have tried to add a key sentence to the introduction that the numbers of infected are likely to be much higher than cases, as those with only mild or no symptoms are unlikely to have been tested. This is a vitally important point and was supported both times by key references: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1684118220300736 and https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-response-specialre-idUSKBN20Z27P

Twice this sentence was removed, and the explanation for removing it was that I was "removing large chunks of information". But I did not remove anything. I merely ADDED this sentence.

Apologies if I have somehow misunderstood something here, or done something silly. But can anyone explain why my added sentence is not OK? Thanks!

Pinging GoPats Pinging Starzoner Surfingdan (talk) 17:57, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Take a look at this diff: [6]. Make sure to scroll down below the sentence you added, there's a chart that your edit it removing. That's why it's been reverted twice. Please try adding your sentence again, but take care not to remove other sections. GoPats (talk) 18:00, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Agree with GoPats. I'm not sure its Visual Editor but I think you can just copy paste the sentence. Be a little delicate about editing with it as mishaps can occur very very easily. Otherwise, :) Starzoner (talk) 18:25, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

GoPats and Starzoner Thanks for pointing out this problem, but I still don't understand why it is happening, and how it can be avoided. All I have done both times is add text. I did not delete anything, or even edit anything else, so why would this affect the graph below? I did it both times with the visual editor. I could try with the source editor. Apologies if I am missing something technical here.Surfingdan (talk) 19:04, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

I did it again with the source editor. Is it OK now? GoPats and Starzoner Surfingdan (talk) 19:17, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Looks good here. Iluvalar (talk) 19:19, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

That's a relief. But just for future reference, is there maybe a bug here with the visual editor that caused this problem? I don't see why adding a sentence - without editing anything else - should make a graph disappear? Surfingdan (talk) 19:26, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

So now the sentence has been removed a third time, this time because it is apparently "basic and obvious" but it is not. This is a huge issue right now, and I provided two very reliable references. Most people do not understand the difference between "infected" and "cases". Wikipedia needs to be very careful here. We are quoting numbers for cases without adding clear caveats that the number of infected is likely to be much higher, and most readers do NOT understand that. Again I have provided two clear references, and all I added was one sentence, so how can it be justified to remove it? GoPats and Starzoner and Ritchie92

Please see:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1684118220300736?via%3Dihub https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-response-specialre/special-report-italy-and-south-korea-virus-outbreaks-reveal-disparity-in-deaths-and-tactics-idUSKBN20Z27P

There is no need to say explicitly and even provide sources to prove that the number of confirmed cases is not the number of total real cases, this is a pretty straightforward and natural notion that comes with the meaning of the word "confirmed" (implying that there are cases that are "unconfirmed", therefore not counted in the figure shown). And by the way this is common to all countries in the entire world. It is not something specific of Italy, and specifying it like that is actually confusing and misleading the readers. I would think of another way to convey the message that the confirmed cases are just a fraction of the total infected, it might be a footnote, or a small subordinate sentence in the already existing text. Or, if one wants to expand on the statistical differences on the COVID cases for Italy vs other countries due to testing policies, population age, etc, then it's probably worth to have a proper section or subsection in the article that focuses on the issue and includes all reliable studies on the topic. --Ritchie92 (talk) 20:41, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Ritchie92 I am sorry, but I strongly disagree. Just because something may be "obvious" to you, does not mean it is obvious to most readers. There are lots of things written all over wikipedia which I already know and find obvious. This is no justification for removing them. You are right of course that this applies to most countries, and the pandemic as a whole. The main pandemic wikipedia page already addresses this issue, as do some of the other country pages, but the Italian page does not yet. It needs to urgently. GoPats and Starzoner Surfingdan (talk) 20:50, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Might I suggest that there’s a better way to make the point. Something along the lines of: “Italy has not extended testing beyond those with symptoms indicative of infection, making it impossible to establish the overall rate of infection.” Instead of saying “higher” which is pretty obvious, state the policy that limits the data available. Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 21:17, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

making it impossible to establish the overall rate of infection this is true for all counts that have been performed in all countries. What Surfingdan wants to add does not depend on the testing strategy of Italy, it is something inherent to the concept of "not testing 100% of the population", which is something that all countries cannot do. --Ritchie92 (talk) 21:56, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

I added a fairer sentence that I hope matches the purpose of the first edits that were done earlier. I hope the wording and sources are good enough for the other editors interested. --Ritchie92 (talk) 22:19, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Many thanks for resolving this Ritchie92. Your sentence looks fine to me. Surfingdan (talk) 06:22, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Liguria figures

Please check and correct the numbers in Liguria, the total cases are 3426, but if you add the numbers, the total are 3416. Coronagr (talk) 10:43, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

wrong numbers

No. of cases for 2020-03-26 is 80539, not 80589 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jarni (talk • contribs) 17:46, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

The given number was the consequence of a typo on the Piedmont total deaths number (499 real number instead of 449). This is reported here in the "Latest updates" section about the 26 March. Officials from Piedmont confirmed it. --Ritchie92 (talk) 17:56, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

But this didn't mean that they also didn't count 50 addition cases in the total (the correction should have been made only on the active cases (-50), not on the total by adding 50).--79.44.25.206 (talk) 14:54, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

No, the error was in the Excel data sheet that they , where the total number of cases is the total of deaths + recovered + new_active. Again, see what is written and reported here. --Ritchie92 (talk) 17:36, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

The data of Piedmont reported by PC is 6.534, the same of the region last update (at 13:00) before the bulletin, the error of PC was only in the number of deaths. Both PC and worldometers are wrong, instead in this case (like how it was done with Lombardy on 26/02) we should use data directly from the region.--79.44.25.206 (talk) 21:35, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Ok thanks for the source. I think this settles it, and the correct number of cases should be 80539. Pinging Nick.mon. --Ritchie92 (talk) 10:15, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Excuse me, but as you can see in the table, 6534 was given from 5950 + 135 + 449, but the correct number of deaths was 499 not 449. So I think that there's an error in the total number of cases too. -- Nick.mon (talk) 10:21, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

I think the way they do it in the regions should be thought as the other way around: new_active = new_total - deaths - recovered. The table of the Protezione Civile is only a summary table so it is not the primary source of data. The regional bulletins are, and the regional bulletin for Piedmont says that the total is 6534, and the deaths are 499; this means that the 5950 active is also wrong (but not mentioned in the regional bulletin because only the PC weirdly works with that number), but we don't care about that. --Ritchie92 (talk) 10:27, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

I will be more clear: the region Piedmont sends their 13:00 bulletin to the PC with the raw data: number of deaths, number of new positives, number of recovered. The 5950 is not a primary data, it is obtained from the raw data; so it is more likely that there is a mistake there than on the primary data, which is by the way confirmed in the website of the Regione Piemonte given above: [7]. --Ritchie92 (talk) 10:29, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Please check and correct the numbers in Liguria, the total cases are 3426, but if you add the numbers, the total are 3416 Coronagr (talk) 10:45, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Which date?

From "Background":

In late January 2020, following the developments of COVID-19 outbreak in mainland China, on 3 February, Italy set up enhanced screening measures, including thermal cameras and medical staff at airports.

Late January or 3 February?--Jack Upland (talk) 21:22, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Transmission occurred in January : source from Arxiv TGCP (talk) 21:18, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Recoveries are miscounted / mislabeled

The source for most of the data seems to be the daily bulletins by Protezione Civile, hosted here https://github.com/pcm-dpc/COVID-19/tree/master/schede-riepilogative/regioni

In those sheets the number of recoveries (= people who have actually healed, according to the Italian definition) is aggregated with the number of people discharged from hospitals -- most importantely, even if they're not healed yet, but don't require hospitalization any more. This is clearly indicated in the green column in the daily bulletins. However, the total in the bottom part of each bulletin is mislabeled: it's indeed the recoveries+discharged patients total. I think it's important to therefore clarify this on the page somehow.

See also https://www.ilpost.it/2020/04/02/guariti-coronavirus-protezione-civile/ (in Italian) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:E0A:13E:AAB0:2DB8:837C:B57B:33E3 (talk) 12:55, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Is Coronavirus just like a flu chart shows different figures from its own reference page

At the Management / First measures section there is a chart titled "Is Coronavirus just like a flu?". It says peak of deaths from flu 2019 is at week 5, with 29 deaths, and references www.epicentro.iss.it/influenza as source.

If you check at https://www.epicentro.iss.it/influenza/FluNews18-19#mortalita, the peak is at week 3, at 260 deaths, almost 9 times bigger.

Also, if you go to https://www.epicentro.iss.it/influenza/FluNews16-17, the death is 329 in a week (week 2, 2017). So it appears that 2019 is not a particullary bad year.

the comparison with flu is important, but should not be done with wrong information.

179.209.142.85 (talk) 17:19, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Covid-19 template

I have tried to add the standard template, as in other countries' articles, but it doesn't appear correctly. What can I do? Rijikk (talk) 14:12, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Post-expand Include Size

Wikipedia has a limit on how much data can be included in pages that comes from template. This is called the Post-expand include size. Using the {{Graph:Chart}} and {{Medical cases chart}} templates on this page makes the it exceed that limit, which causes templates at the bottom of the page (including citations) to not be rendered properly, and causes the page to show up in the error category Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded. Do not revert any edits or add any templates to this page without first previewing the page to make sure that the "Template size exceeded" error message does not appear at the top. If there is objection to using {{Bar box}} and <graph></graph> instead of {{Graph:Chart}} and {{Medical cases chart}}, the only other option is to remove the charts and graphs from the page altogether or replace them with PNG images. Both those formats, while taking up slightly more room in the source of the page, are just as editable as the templates without causing the page to have fundamental errors. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:35, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

We can certainly discuss merging or removing some graphs. But an article with hundreds of lines of CSS native code is definitely not the solution to the problem. --Ritchie92 (talk) 16:56, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

By the way, the page looks fine to me, nothing is broken. The only issue is the template at the end of the page, which surely can be removed if the only other option is removing data or having hundreds of lines of CSS inside a Wikipedia article source code. --Ritchie92 (talk) 17:01, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

@Ritchie92: I added exactly 0 lines of CSS code. If you are so vehemently opposed to directly using mw:Extension:Graph on this page, please comment out the charts altogether or replace them with images. Right now, the page as you left it is fundamentally broken. Period. Making WP:COSMETICEDITs that break the page is vandalism. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:01, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Sure, you added 0 lines... Again, the page is not broken, it's working perfectly fine except at the end of the page. The problem is probably the Template:COVID-19 which is huge. I would remove that. --Ritchie92 (talk) 17:03, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

@Ritchie92: None of those lines were CSS (although there is a single use of the WP:TemplateStyles extension to call an external CSS page). Navboxes are desirable on pages, having them broken is not working perfectly fine. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:22, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Fine not CSS but whatever, it's obviously not the point. My point is about the uneasiness of maintaining code and the subsequent length of this article's source. Editability is paramount in an article like this one which needs constant updates and on which many editors are working. If someone changes something on those new lines, and something else breaks, this is a disaster because large chunks of this article could really break and make such an important article as this one unreadable. Navboxes are desirable on pages but not essential; the navbox can be temporarily removed (or even be temporarily kept broken as it is now) until the issue is solved on the side of that template's code. I strongly oppose clogging the source code of this article with hundreds of lines for each little graph we have. --Ritchie92 (talk) 17:33, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

You're talking about a page that's aready over 300kB. Another 44kB is just a drop in the bucket. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 23:07, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Yes, which is 15% more of superfluous weight. But again, you are missing the point, that is not the size of the article, but the format of those code lines: it's a terrible idea to replace all data templates in the article with that kind of raw code, and I think I already explained myself above sufficiently. --Ritchie92 (talk) 00:39, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Team of Italian scientists in Milan says analysis shows Italian Outbreak must have started between 25-26 January 2020

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-scientists-idUSKBN20Y35B

This Reuters article talks about a team of scientists in Milan who has done analysis which leads them to believe Italy’s coronavirus epidemic might have come to Italy from 19-22 January 2020. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Penseess (talk • contribs) 21:16, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Statistics Chart

Comment about the chart. In the statistics by region chart, why are we listing 19 out of 20 regions, then splitting the 20th region, Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, into its two provinces (Trentino and South Tyrol), thus having a chart of 21 columns. I suggest we combine the Trentino column and the South Tyrol column into one Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol region column for consistency.MicroManagingAH (talk) 03:42, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

The two autonomous provinces of Trento and Bolzano (i.e. Trentino and South Tyrol) are de facto and de jure two separate entities, similarly to two different regions in Italy. So usually they are listed separately when it comes to classification in regions. The region of Trentino/South Tyrol is in fact not a very relevant institution, but just a geographical identification (other more expert editors e.g. Checco can possibly confirm). Furthermore, the data provided by the Ministry and Protezione Civile separates the two autonomous provinces as we do in the table here. So instead of "elaborating" the data ourselves by summing the counts of Trento and Bolzano, keeping them separated would be more faithful to the source. --Ritchie92 (talk) 10:18, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

I completely agree with User:Ritchie92. Trentino and South Tyrol should always be mentioned this way (per consensus) and should always be treated separately (as I have argued also in other contexts—see Talk:List of political parties in Italy/Archive 1#Regional presidents in infoboxes). --Checco (talk) 17:29, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

But you are leaving the titles of both the chart and graph as "by region" when it's really by region AND two autonomous provinces. Are you now considering them two regions, so we have now 21 regions in Italy? What consensus?MicroManagingAH (talk) 21:23, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

In fact, according to the Constitution of Italy, Trentino and South Tyrol are practically equalized to the other 19 regions. The Trentino–AA/ST region has little power and, in most cases, the two entities are treated as separate, in most constitutional provisions and for statistical matters. The Presidents of the Autonomous Provinces have similar powers of Presidents of Regions and have the same order of preference (ordine delle precedenze). It is quite idle and redundant to make it more complicate than it is: let's leave "by region" and add just a note. --Checco (talk) 19:20, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I completely disagree with you Checco, and in turn support the observation by MicroManagingAH, we may have different copies of the Italian Constitution at hand. Italian Regions are crystal clearly defined in art. 131 and there is no reference to any whatsoever "practical equivalence". If you really want to keep the distinction, whatever is your reason, then you can insert the two autonomous provinces in two indented rows just after the Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtyrol one. I don't buy the "per consensus" thing proposed by Ritchie92, who actually advocates what "should always be mentioned". Italy has a Constitution since 27 December 1947 and does not need any consensus on the Internet on how data are to be made public. Following your practicalities (ultimately, avoiding 5 minutes extra work - hint: you may simply copy the data from the wiki page in Italian...) you're losing the real point on this page, which is viewed by many people who do not even know where Italy is on the map and whether it's a republic or a monarchy: you're giving wrong information which will very likely be retained. Also a footnote or a note under the table won't help. I suppose the percentage of users who read footnotes is very low. On the not very relevant institution represented by Regione Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtyrol, I would recommend reading the statute . finally, the data provided by Italian Protezione Civile, clearly indicates PA before the two provinces, which could also be an acceptable solution (putting the whole prefix Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtyrol, PA: xxx). --Rain.ITA (talk) 17:20, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

the data provided by Italian Protezione Civile, clearly indicates PA before the two provinces, which could also be an acceptable solution yes, that was a similar solution to the one I implemented, before somebody else removed the "Autonomous Province" from the table. --Ritchie92 (talk) 17:23, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

But I strongly oppose that. There have been year-long discussions on en.Wikipedia and it was decided to name and always refer to the provinces simply as Trentino and South Tyrol. I stick to that consensus. --Checco (talk) 19:30, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

Blatant Proselytisation

How come "Samaritan's Purse" twice receives special mention? It seems like Wiki is getting conned by evangelicals.

200.68.142.27 (talk) 03:03, 14 April 2020 (UTC) Baden K.

Edit warring

Abductive, Ritchie92, please stop edit warring. Per WP:ONUS, the status quo ante version is the version that should be displayed while the dispute remains unresolved. I ask you both to please observe that principle and discuss your dispute, here, on the article talk page. Thank you both in advance for your close attention. El_C 19:21, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

• Very well. It's quite simple: cobbling together a list of individual cases of transmissions from primary sources is WP:OR, and it bloats up the article WP:UNDUEly with a huge list of little interest to most readers. Abductive (reasoning) 19:27, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Sure, however the established status quo ante is the one where the section is in place. See history for verification. --Ritchie92 (talk) 19:28, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

At any case, if you both reach an impasse on the article talk page, I recommend you make use of any dispute resolution request you see fit to advance the dispute toward resolution. El_C 19:31, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

I agree. I was waiting for the user's reply in the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject COVID-19#Foreign cases linked to Italy, but they kept reiterating their edit, removing the whole section once or twice a day. My reverts where just a restoration of the previous state of the article until a consensus will be reached. --Ritchie92 (talk) 19:37, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Anyway at the time the news quite focused on the spread connected to Italy, similar to the situation with Iran. There were serveral studies using those exported cases to estimate the true number of cases in Italy and Iran. Agathoclea (talk) 21:48, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

To be clear per WP:BRD the original state should be restored. The content is relevant, but the presentation can/should be trimmed. Especially the flags should go. Agathoclea (talk) 21:54, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Ok then can someone restore it, and then we can open a discussion about what to keep and what to throw out? --Ritchie92 (talk) 10:14, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

I will restore it myself then. --Ritchie92 (talk) 07:55, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Now you are removing banners in an attempt to exert ownership over this article. One banner was not even applied by me. I urge you to stop. Abductive (reasoning) 08:18, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

I think it's honestly too many banners in the "Foreign cases linked..." section. The "disputed" and "undue weight" tackle the same exact issue. The one about the "external links" is unjustified and ridiculous: there are not too many external links, every sentence is sourced as it should be. The trivia one is also superfluous. I propose removing at least two of them (disputed, and external links) --Ritchie92 (talk) 08:24, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

I added a number of secondary sources about the spread of the virus infection from Italy to other countries. Now there is even a note from an authoritative peer-reviewed journal (the BMJ) attributing at least some of the cases in other countries to the spread from Italian regions.

Also, just for fun, I even found a Wikipedia essay about Abductive's addition of numerous banners: Wikipedia:Tag bombing, and "Tag bombing is a form of disruptive editing", so... most of those tags can indeed be removed without it being "vandalism". I will wait anyway. --Ritchie92 (talk) 08:40, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Great, now remove the whole list and leave only the material sourced to secondary sources. Abductive (reasoning) 08:43, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

There is no reason to do that: the secondary sources are there to prove that it is meaningful to have a list of countries where the virus spread from Italy. What can be done is to limit the list to the countries listed in the secondary sources, i.e. Europe, and at least also Israel, Azerbaijan, Nigeria, and a few more (see the Guardian map and text, for example). --Ritchie92 (talk) 08:46, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Then your concept of a secondary source is wrongheaded. Abductive (reasoning) 19:29, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Just looking at the banners. Which References are classed as primary sources? Maybe whoever objects could list those for discussion. Maybe check WP:PRIMARY first as well. Agathoclea (talk) 09:39, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

@Abductive: So at the moment I would say there is no reason to keep the banner about the "miscellaneous information" (which is definitely inappropriate because all information in the list is related to the same single subject), and the one about the too many external links (where are these "too many" links??). If there aren't any serious and motivated objections to the removal of each of these banners I would proceed and remove them. --Ritchie92 (talk) 13:23, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Removal will be reverted. Abductive (reasoning) 19:24, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

when there is no obvious reason for the tags and you are not providing any they are simply disruptive. Disruption is equal to vandalism Agathoclea (talk) 20:07, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

There are obvious reasons: the giant list is WP:OR and a collection of trivia and must go. Abductive (reasoning) 20:17, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

You so far have not identified one primary source. You have just made a sweeping unproven statement. We get it that you do not like the section. But without your proving the point and just threatening to continue to editwar, you will not find much support with other editors. Agathoclea (talk) 20:26, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

All individual news clippings about a person carrying the virus out of Italy are by definition primary. Furthermore, concentrating on listing all such instances is WP:Original research, since its not like any reputable secondary sources are doing such a list, and it gives the section and the idea of attempting to list cross-border transmissions WP:Undue Weight. Abductive (reasoning) 02:03, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

if all individual newsclippings indeed were primary as you claim, we could not use them in the articles of the individual articles. The clue here is actually in the term you use newsclippings. News reporting is almost ever considered secondary. There are some exceptions like so called opinion pieces and articles out of newsarchives from many decades ago which are often considered primary as we do not have context. Current news articles are not usually primary. That is why the onus is on you to show any reference in this section to be primary. The fact that you do not like the section does not make it "all primary". You will need to look at the sources. As long as you cannot produce any primary reference in that section the corresponding tag is clearly disruptive and has to go. If you can produce one then it can be replaced by a secondary source and the tag must equally go. Agathoclea (talk) 06:37, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Also you claim that no reputable secondary sources are doing such a list. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51638095 for example documents the spread from Italy within Europe up to 26 February. Agathoclea (talk) 06:48, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

There is no list of cases transmitted from Italy in that BBC article. They do it in prose, and they are not trying to be exhaustive. Abductive (reasoning) 20:31, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

As it might be inferred, I completely agree with Agathoclea. The definition of WP:PRIMARY states Primary sources are original materials that are close to an event, and are often accounts written by people who are directly involved. They offer an insider's view of an event, a period of history, a work of art, a political decision, and so on. Primary sources may or may not be independent sources. An account of a traffic incident written by a witness is a primary source of information about the event; similarly, a scientific paper documenting a new experiment conducted by the author is a primary source on the outcome of that experiment. Historical documents such as diaries are primary sources. This is not the case for the newspaper sources that are cited in the text (many of which not even local newspapers, but international agencies like Reuters). If there are some primary sources used in that section, it would be better to point at them only, and not have a generic banner on top of the section. After all, now that there are reliable sources talking about the spread of the virus from Italy to other countries in general terms, and gathering examples and episodes from other news, it is legitimate to have such a section. If there are a few problems with some references, those should be marked explicitly.

I would add that the "miscellaneous information" tag is also a mystery to me: what is miscellaneous in that list? The list is completely and only about one topic! Also, the trivia banner suggests to then relocate the material in the section into other sections (the guideline about WP:TRIVIA does not in fact suggest to remove such trivia lists). Is this the case? Where do we have to relocate it? I say that banner is another way for the editor to express their dislike of the section, but it is nonetheless pointless and we should remove it too. --Ritchie92 (talk) 07:58, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Tags dispute. I looked at this edit of 08:21, 30 March 2020. I can see the point of the Undue weight tag; I do not agree with it - but I can see why a reasonable person might think this was the case. I cannot see the point of the trivia section and External links tags. The only explanation for them that I can think of is that the poster misunderstood the policies. As for the disputed tag - that is another way of saying that the editor thinks that the section should not be there or places undue weight on what sources say. It seems unreasonable to have two tags that express the same thing in slightly different ways. Toddy1 (talk) 09:45, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Undue weight

with Undue weight being the last tag left, we need to tackle this. Like Toddy1 I can see the argument in there, but cannot follow it myself. Initially Italy like Iran was a country super-spreader, where in fact there where studies trying to assess the real number of infected within Italy (or Iran) by the number of exported cases (and other factors like traffic connections). By the time Germany declared South Tyrol as a danger zone there where hardly any known cases in South Tyrol compared to the number of exported cases. So the subject matter is relevant for Italy, and for all the countries which either had their initial cases or the first major clusters through a connection to Italy (Germany's first cluster was through China, but that was already under control when Italy hit). Today, at a time where every Tom, Dick, and Harry gets the virus from Uncle Bob, it is no longer relevant where the initial infection came from, now we (and media) worry about numbers, growth ect. So from a current perspective this section has lost some of its relevance. But the information is still important for the reader, maybe more so again when this all is history, as this part of the why things happened the way they did. What I would agree to is to split the section into its own article and leaving a short summary here. Then we can worry further about content. So far I think relevance sorts itself out as the newsreporting of such cases only was at the time when the information was really relevant. In future there will be more compact information, which will be a preferable source. My question is regarding the title of the article: List of countries ...., Spread of Covid-19 from Italy, Ideas / Suggestions? Agathoclea (talk) 08:39, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

At present, I think the best thing to do is to leave this section in place, but to resist additional instances of "__ people from ______ caught the virus after one of them visited Italy." Have a look at the historical perspective section of the article: Plague of Justinian#Historical perspective. Evidently hindsight tells us that contemporary versions of how the plague was spread from country to country are worth having. Toddy1 (talk) 06:54, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

That is a prose version, as this one should be. And WP:NOT expressly forbids using Wikipedia as a first publisher. Wikipedia must follow the secondary sources. Abductive (reasoning) 00:35, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not the first publisher of this information. Secondary sources are used. Agathoclea (talk) 07:44, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

@Abductive:. The word "prose" in English means "not poetry". I think you maybe used the wrong word in you comment. What word did you mean to use? Toddy1 (talk) 07:52, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Agathoclea, and it has already been explained many times but Abductive pretends they can't hear: all sources cited in that list are secondary sources (per definition of WP:PRIMARY), because they are mostly news articles, from national or international news agencies. They are not records from people who are involved in the events. And moreover, there are reliable sources (academic and news) at the top of the section that are showing examples of how this information can be gathered in the topic "spread of coronavirus from Italy to other countries". So there is no WP:OR, it is perfectly fine to gather news about the spread from Italy. --Ritchie92 (talk) 10:22, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

They are primary sources for the topic, "Foreign cases linked to Italy". You have demonstrated this by adding secondary sources and here on this talk page by calling those sources secondary. So you know what a secondary source is for the topic. Abductive (reasoning) 00:01, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

No, I added those sources because it looked like the issue was the lack of a source showing an aggregated list or lists of countries where the virus spread from Italy. This does not imply that all other sources mentioned in the section are secondary. Please read WP:PRIMARY. --Ritchie92 (talk) 00:33, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

WP:Primary states "A secondary source provides an author's own thinking based on primary sources, generally at least one step removed from an event. It contains an author's analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas taken from primary sources". The news items about transmission events do not provide analysis and are therefore primary. WP:Primary also states "Do not analyze, evaluate, interpret, or synthesize material found in a primary source yourself; instead, refer to reliable secondary sources that do so." What you are doing is WP:SYNTHESIS of a bunch of primary sources. Abductive (reasoning) 02:49, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

First of all, I am not doing anything. The section is not my creation. Second, no: a secondary source does not need to contain an analysis to be secondary (otherwise 90% of the sources of Wikipedia would be not secondary). If you read carefully what you cite, you will see that is says that a secondary source contains "evidence" taken from primary sources: and that's what news websites and news agencies do. Also a news source is definitely not a primary source, if you also cared to read the specific point about primary sources in WP:PRIMARY. But since you appear to not understand, I will paste it here again for everyone to understand what a primary source is: Primary sources are original materials that are close to an event, and are often accounts written by people who are directly involved. They offer an insider's view of an event, a period of history, a work of art, a political decision, and so on. Primary sources may or may not be independent sources. An account of a traffic incident written by a witness is a primary source of information about the event; similarly, a scientific paper documenting a new experiment conducted by the author is a primary source on the outcome of that experiment. Historical documents such as diaries are primary sources. Obviously, a Reuters news article about the spread from Italy to Cuba is definitely not an "insider's view of an event" or "original material close to an event". It is not a primary source, as all other sources in the section. Third, this is not WP:SYNTHESIS. You say WP:Primary also states "Do not analyze, evaluate, interpret, or synthesize material found in a primary source yourself; instead, refer to reliable secondary sources that do so." and indeed, from WP:SYNTH: If no reliable source has combined the material in this way, it is original research. I would say the list is not an analysis, nor an interpretation, nor a synthesis of other material. Nevertheless, as of a few weeks ago, we now even have reliable sources at the top of the section showing that combining news sources to talk about "spread from Italy to other countries" has been done and is legitimate. --Ritchie92 (talk) 08:03, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

If it is not your section, then why do take such an interest in it? Clearly it is your section now. If the section were to follow the secondary sources (and follow WP:MEDRS, it would not be an exhaustive list. Instead, it would analyze the topic. So, in the end, there will be a paragraph or two and perhaps the map. Abductive (reasoning) 20:53, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

Apparently I am not the only one who has taken interest in it, and ownership is not determined by interest. The section is properly sourced, no source there is primary, and in the end it can stay largely as it is now, with some improvements. --Ritchie92 (talk) 22:13, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

List format

User Abductive has now raised the objection that he/she thinks that the section in question should not be a list.[8] I think that should be discussed. Toddy1 (talk) 10:13, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

It's always been that problem; undue weight. Abductive (reasoning) 23:44, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it looks like now the problem is prose vs list. I don't think there is a need to translate the list into prose, of course it could be done, I'm not strongly against it, but at the same time I don't think this must necessarily be a prose and not a list. Indeed our case does not match with the example and the description given in the MOS:PROSE guidelines, so I think the tag is superfluous. --Ritchie92 (talk) 10:27, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists#Embedded lists
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Trivia_sections#Not all list sections are trivia sections - Agathoclea (talk) 10:58, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Strange how your interpretation of the policies and guidelines always looks like WP:ICANTHEARYOU. Abductive (reasoning) 22:22, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Below is the subsection on Africa in the list format and the paragraph format. Does anybody think that the paragraph format is better? Toddy1 (talk) 08:06, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Example showing list format and paragraph format for the same information

List format

Paragraph format

Algeria – On 25 February 2020, Algeria confirmed its first case, an Italian man from Bertonico, Lombardy who arrived in the country on 17 February. Central African Republic – On 14 March, the Central African minister of health announced the first confirmed case in the country, a 74-year-old Italian citizen coming from Milan. Côte d'Ivoire – On Tuesday, 10 March, Côte d'Ivoire confirmed its first case, a 45-year-old Ivorien male who had sojourned in Italy. Morocco – On 2 March, the Moroccan Ministry of Health reported its first case, a man who had lived in Italy. Nigeria – On 28 February 2020, Nigeria confirmed its first case, an Italian man who tested positive at Lagos University Teaching Hospital and was treated at the Infectious Disease Hospital in Yaba, Lagos. He entered Nigeria from Milan on 25 February for a brief business visit, then fell ill the next day. Senegal – Senegal confirmed on 12 March that their fifth confirmed case was a Senegalese national who returned from Italy on 6 March. Seychelles – Seychelles confirmed its first two cases on 14 March. Both were people who were in contact with someone in Italy who tested positive. South Africa – South Africa confirmed that its first seven cases were South African residents returning from Italy. Tunisia – Tunisia confirmed its first case on 2 March 2020, and identified the patient as a Tunisian who had returned from Italy.

The arrival of the disease in some African countries has been attributed to people coming from Italy. On 25 February 2020, Algeria confirmed its first case, an Italian man from Bertonico, Lombardy who arrived in the country on 17 February. On 14 March, the Central African minister of health announced the first confirmed case in the country, a 74-year-old Italian citizen coming from Milan. On Tuesday, 10 March, Côte d'Ivoire confirmed its first case, a 45-year-old Ivorien male who had sojourned in Italy. On 2 March, the Moroccan Ministry of Health reported its first case, a man who had lived in Italy. On 28 February 2020, Nigeria confirmed its first case, an Italian man who tested positive at Lagos University Teaching Hospital and was treated at the Infectious Disease Hospital in Yaba, Lagos. He entered Nigeria from Milan on 25 February for a brief business visit, then fell ill the next day. Senegal confirmed on 12 March that their fifth confirmed case was a Senegalese national who returned from Italy on 6 March. Seychelles confirmed its first two cases on 14 March. Both were people who were in contact with someone in Italy who tested positive. South Africa confirmed that its first seven cases were South African residents returning from Italy. Tunisia confirmed its first case on 2 March 2020, and identified the patient as a Tunisian who had returned from Italy.

Extended content

The problem as I see it is that we have loads of insignificant detail in either format. Given the focus of the article and its overall length, why do we include this sort of thing "tested positive at Lagos University Teaching Hospital and was treated at the Infectious Disease Hospital in Yaba, Lagos"? We don’t care if the patient was male or female, business or pleasure traveler, where tested. It’s just the IDing that’s of interest. I’d suggest we boil this down to what matters.

The following countries identified someone who had recently been in Italy as their first case: Country1 (date case identified); Country2 (date); etc.

The following countries identified someone who had recently been in Italy among their earliest cases: CountryA (date case identified); CountryB (date); etc.

All the other info is available in the refs for anyone who is interested.

This phrasing would also require some added info, rather than, to cite an egregious example, the undated info now in place for Australia: "At least one case has travel history to Italy."

Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 12:51, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

References

I see no reason why, if the source gives some details, we should not (if briefly) state them. I agree that some like the one in Australia, and also other countries listed, can be removed because very unclear or badly sourced. However I think Bmclaughlin9's proposal is even more of a "list" and less a "paragraph". I would support either two of the options in the table above. --Ritchie92 (talk) 13:41, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Sure you can call it a list. I’d call it two sentences, each lists a number of countries. Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 14:22, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

I think at a minimum the date needs to be included. Also it does make a distinction if the case is the first, one of the first , or one amid many others and/or if the case had some wider implication. So some of the text will need to stay. Then I would rather go with the current list and just trim down the individual items a bit. Agathoclea (talk) 12:19, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

I like the paragraph format. It may be possible to trim in some places and mention things that secondary sources find interesting in others--the list format precluded such niceties. Let's move forward with this and remember to just follow the secondary sources. Abductive (reasoning) 21:59, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

I have already started with the trimming, but I still cannot find any primary sources in that block. Agathoclea (talk) 13:01, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Number of confirmed cases by province Map

All regions now have more than 100 cases. Time to update the Number of confirmed cases by province map? --Spaastm (talk) 13:15, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

Graph of daily mortality from all causes

Daily deaths from all causes in Italy for the years 2015-2020; based on a sample of 1689 cities covering 32% of the Italian population. From Istat data.

Fraction of the population of each province covered by the Istat dataset from which the "Daily deaths from all causes" graph was generated.

The national institute of statistics (ISTAT) publishes and updates weekly a dataset of daily deaths from all causes for the years 2015-2020:

https://www.istat.it/it/archivio/240401.

From this data it is possible to plot daily deaths by year: [edit: graph linked below is obsolete, see figures on this page]

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/allaisandrea/mortalita-covid/master/figure.png

The results are striking: there is an unprecedented peak for this year (2020) starting at the beginning of March. Given the prevalence of the opinion that COVID-19 is "just like the flu", I think it would be useful to include this plot or a similar one in the page, to emphasize the exceptionality of the COVID-19 outbreak. However, I cannot publish the graph myself because the page is protected and my account is not confirmed, so I am appealing to the administrators.

Allais.andrea (talk) 21:27, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

You need to define "all cause" in this graph, because seems like this graph suggest the 60 millions Italians alive at the moment have a life expectancy of about 400 years. Very interesting data, if we substract COVID from this one, this suggest an abnormally low case of other infections, which is a great news. Iluvalar (talk) 23:53, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Good observation Iluvatar. The explanation is that the dataset does not cover the entire national population, but only a subset of about 1000 cities for which data was available at the time of publication. With some work it would be possible to figure out what fraction of the population those cities represent, but I have not done it yet. Allais.andrea (talk) 18:43, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Allais.andrea, the figure is very interesting but seems to disagree with the z-score graph for Italy from https://www.euromomo.eu/, for year 2017. Why would that be? --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:03, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

More in the line of the Iluvatar comment: per ourworldindata.org, in 2017 Italy had 608455 deaths in total, when one sums deaths from different causes. Calculated per day, we get 1667 deaths per day in Italy on average, while the graph shows about 500 deaths as a baseline. It would be critical to know which regions or cities are included in the graph and which regions or cities are excluded, and the code used to produce the graph should ideally be published. --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:04, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

Dan Polansky, I was able to include population data, so I can plot per-capita numbers, and I also have a heat map showing the geographic coverage of the dataset. Regarding the Euro Momo comparison, I am not familiar with that dataset; just looking at the plots there, I can see a substantial peak in 2020 as well, albeit not as tall as in the Istat dataset. The Istat dataset is biased towards the most heavily infected parts of the countries, so that may explain the discrepancy. Regardless of which dataset is used, I think it would be important to show graphically the exceptional impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on total mortality. The code used to produce the plots is at https://github.com/allaisandrea/mortalita-covid. Allais.andrea (talk) 22:11, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Updated plots with data published 2020-04-16. Dataset now extends to 2020-04-04, covers 1689 cities and 32% of the national population. Allais.andrea (talk) 15:18, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

@Allais.andrea: Let me tell you that the work you have done, with the updated graph and the map showing the dataset distribution, is very interesting. I am no epidemiologist, but I think the all-cause death statistics are going to prove more reliably indicative of the covid impact than anything else. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:03, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

@Allais.andrea: Would you be able to provide the totals underneath the curves for the years? That is to say, would you be able to provide the total deaths from Jan 1 to Apr 16 for years 2015, ..., 2020? --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:08, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Dan Polansky I am reluctant to include absolute death counts. I did that at the beginning of this conversation, and it caused a lot of confusion and even cast doubts on the reliability of the data. Maybe I'll do that if/when it will be possible to safely extrapolate the counts to the whole population. Allais.andrea (talk) 15:38, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

@Allais.andrea: Frankly, if the numbers cast doubt, it is even more important to have them. I think the doubt should be dispelled once we take into account the percentage of the population covered by the data set, which is indicated above as 32%. To remove any confusion: I do not ask you to redraw the graph; I ask for six cumulative figures, one per year. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:32, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Czech

Why doesn't Italian La Repubblica apologize for false charges against Czech authorities?— Preceding unsigned comment added by 171.23.6.111 (talk) 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Graph Change

The change from bar graphs displaying values of deaths/new case/recoveries to a line graph that doesn't show those values is a loss of information. I am interested in the numerical daily values. -R 75.157.179.170 (talk) 13:02, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

They are already in the tables above the charts. --Ritchie92 (talk) 13:12, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

In Chart "COVID-19 cases in Italy" please change the order of the bars (Deaths, Recoveries, Active cases) to (Active cases, Recoveries, Deaths). This way the evolution of active cases is better visible, which is an indicator for the challenges to the health system. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 153.100.131.96 (talk) 05:57, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

"Corona in Italy" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Corona in Italy. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. -- Tavix ^(talk) 13:30, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

Phylogeny

The phylogeny (thousands of viruses sequenced from all the over the world, a few nucleotides of difference allows to reconstruct the likely spread from regions/lineages to others) show that in the large European lineage most early sequences have travel history to Italy, often to ski stations. A few outliers traveled from Spain, Germany, Egypt, France. Reuns (talk) 18:12, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Invitation to edit

You are cordially invited to edit Draft:Mismanagement of the 2019-20 COVID-19 pandemic. Calmecac5 (talk) 20:19, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Huge tables and duplicative graphs

These tables and graphs have gotten too numerous and overlarge. What can be done to streamline the article? Abductive (reasoning) 18:05, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

The largest table can be collapsed or hidden as default, in my opinion. I did it some time ago and got complaints, so I reverted myself. Some graphs like number of daily cases, deaths and recoveries, could also be merged into one graph. I don't know if Nick.mon, who is the main maintainer of the graphs, agrees with such merging. --Ritchie92 (talk) 10:03, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I think that last graph is almost a duplicate of the daily number of deaths, recoveries and new cases, I would keep them in distinct graphs, but if we had to eliminate some of them, I would start with the last one. -- Nick.mon (talk) 10:12, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I disagree, the last graph is among the most important ones because it shows the behaviour in logarithmic scale, which is the correct scale to show epidemics. In this sense, I would rather remove the first graph, which is in linear scale, and keep the log scale one. --Ritchie92 (talk) 10:27, 28 April 2020 (UTC)