>There were several interesting things about the Italian outbreak which got downplayed or ignored (at least in the English-speaking world) because it didn't help with the preferred political narratives.

Not in the UK, the situation in Italy was all over our news.

Probably the biggest criticism I have of the UK media was their overemphasis on young people succumbing. The stats said that young people were unlikely to die but we were presented with cases of that almost daily.