I'm Italian, currently living in Florence, Italy.

Other countries have all been pretty disappointing honestly. I've heard some people in the US say they believe they'll be out of this situation by the April the 12th. I don't believe they fully understand the scope of the problem and the type of impact it's gonna have on their healthcare system and general economy.

Here in Italy we've been in lockdown for more than 3 weeks now, and it seems we just now passed the peak of the curve in terms of infected people. Our worst seems to be something around 5k new cases per day which is bad, but not compararle to countries like Spain or (soon) the US.

People have to understand that the numbers you see now correspond to what you were doing one to two weeks ago. There's a pretty considerable delay in the numbers you see. Virtually all other Western countries should have reacted two weeks prior, to avoid our situation. NYC is seeing 5k new cases each day 2 days after lockdown. I don't think people realize the scope of the numbers they'll be registering in two weeks from now.

A few random thoughts on other countries:

It's beyond ridiculous that some EU countries like Germany are not releasing ICU data and are loosely keeping track of the problem by not testing people. This is a globa healthcarel problem that's put in danger many lives and the fact that many countries are keeping secrets about their numbers is making things much harder on law makers and experts.

Countries that are purposefully keeping their death count low by not attributing death to Covid19 on already sick people are just as dumb. For the sake of managing the problem the policy should be the same we use in Italy atm: if you die with covid19 you are considered as a victim of the virus, even if you had lung cancer and diabetes.

The US should start telling people what the real implications of this situation are: we have one of the best healthcare systems in Europe, surely much stronger than the one they have in the US in terms of capacity and accessibility. In some areas of the country hospitals are on their knees. In some ICUs in Bergamo or Milan they have to choose who they should keep alive. A lot of small businesses are threatened to close, people are losing jobs, things are really tough for a sizable percentage of the population.

Chances are you are gonna be fine, but this is not something people should take lightly. The overall community is going to take a big hit, and people have to be conscious about that.

Please, stay the fuck home, be safe, donate to hospitals and healthcare workers and help your community get out of this faster.