Nothing is special about Italy; they were just unlucky enough that the spread started there earlier than elsewhere.

According to current trends, France and Spain will be where Italy is now in about week.

Exactly, joering is entirely wrong in his bizarre analysis. Outbreaks have a stochastic quality to them. If a certain individual doesn't hit a certain country first, you are likely to see false evidence that that country hit later has some sort of inborn advantage in fighting the virus. This is nonsense until proven otherwise. Italy has a huge trade with China in textiles, leathergoods, and machine tools. There is a significantly more cross-border travel between the two countries than say France. It is likely only a matter of a week or two before France and Germany and Spain and then the UK experience similar numbers as Italy. That is, unless those later developing countries prepare by implementing social distancing and robust testing early. It looks like they are, so hopefully the growth rate will be a lot slower and health care systems will not be overwhelmed. In the U.S., we are a bit behind and it may go quite badly or our isolation and lower density may provide the needed slowing to implement effective systems. We shall see.