Norway releases prisoners, admits young people in intensive care, undemocratic crisis law suggested

a reply to: Boadicea

Italy is hardly representative as they have a very large elderly population compared to other western countries. Norway is not a good source either since about 2/3 of the infected were younger people infected abroad while on ski trips.

-MM

originally posted by: MerkabaMeditation
a reply to: Boadicea

Italy is hardly representative as they have a very large elderly population compared to other western countries. Norway is not a good source either since about 2/3 of the infected were younger people infected abroad while on ski trips.

-MM

I'm kind of lost here... representative of what exactly?

Of course there are always outliers. At this point, I would consider Italy an outlier, but to understand why we would have to know much more than we currently do. But it still has value both in specific and in general. We really don't know why their numbers are so high. For example, Italy could be experiencing additional issues like infected ventilators causing Ventilator-associated pneumonia. Perhaps it's a adverse reactions to combining medications with other medications the patients take for pre-existing conditions. Perhaps Italy's elderly are disproportionately Type A blood type.

Experience and the law of averages also tells us that there will be outliers on the opposite end of the spectrum... countries who are barely touched by the virus. Or, at least, have few hospitalizations and deaths. Neither is representative of the whole. And hence the value of mathematical and statistical averages. No one nation is necessarily representative of the whole. But all must be considered both individually and collectively.

I didn't know about the young and the ski trips in Norway.

a reply to: Boadicea

Representative when it comes to what age groups are hit the hardest. Since Italy has a large elderly population, it would be expected that their statistics would be dominated by elderly. And, since 2/3 of the norwegians where relatively younger (