Part of the reason mortality rates are so high among the elderly, though, is the fact that they are de-prioritized in cases when there is a scarcity of beds, ventilators, or other stuff. Doctors are forced to concentrate efforts on people with better survival chances, which are typically the youngest.

> home confinement has increased a lot once they understood not everyone was in need of medical attention

This is a double-edged sword though. My father has some contacts in the health service near Bergamo (he was a nurse himself etc etc), and he was told some cases don't even make it to the hospital - they go from cough to full-on pneumonia in less than two hours, and die on the ambulance. They now refer to late afternoon as the critical shift, when the stream of intakes spikes and ensuring they are all treated becomes extremely hard. A lot of these cases might have been saved had they been monitored full-time in a hospital.

From cough to full pneumonia in few ours sounds made up

But people with severe pneumonia that die in the ambulance is not rare

Pneumonia still kills 13 thousands people every year in Italy

Pneumonia has a very high mortality rate, the average for EU is 25/100 thousands while covid-19 is at 2/100 thousands

The flu kills between 9 and 10 thousands people every year in Italy

Most die home because nobody goes to the doctor for a flu usually

If they did, even with light symptoms, we would have the same situation we are having now

In bad epidemic years it kills way more in Italy. 24k in 2017 epidemic

You are absolutely right

This is absolutely NOT TRUE

They died because prior conditions made them weaker and a pneumonia at 84 is as deadly as a bullet in the head

Nobody is left to die in Italy

My parents have worked in the healthcare for 40 years before retiring, here we try to save everybody at the best of our abilities