A fascinating blog post by Andrei Illarionov, considers carefully the infection and death rates due to coronavirus in different parts of Italy. He points out the big differences between different regions and considers various hypotheses that have been used to account for them.

The following explanations have been proposed.
1) Presence & size of a Chinese community & relationship with China
2) quality of air
3) population density
4) proportion of the elderly
5) “lifestyle”
By using the method of “shifted date” he compares different areas of Italy and

comes to the conclusion that none of these factors can explain the differences. He considers in particular hypotheses 3) and 4) and shows that there is only a weak correlation between population density and both infection and death rates. The same is true with the proportion

of elderly population.
Illarionov then makes a remarkable hypothesis: the impact of covid19 is correlated, but not in the way one would expect, with the development level of a region. This contradicts all our modern experience with epidemics, in which more developed regions

suffered less. This time the opposite appears to hold, and not only innItaly but across much of the world. Illarionov writes:

“If compare the levels of coronavirus infections and mortality using our traditional indicators of economic, social, institutional, and political progress, such as, for example, indices of trust, democracy, economic, civil, political freedoms, the rule of law, etc. ,

we find that each of these indicators has a statistically significant stable positive communication the incidence of coronavirus infection and mortality from coronavirus.

In other words, the more developed, free, law governed, open or a society, a region, or country is , the higher, as a rule, are the indicators of citizens becoming infected with coronavirus and mortality from it.”
In fact, the UN “index of human development” shows a strong

positive correlation with both infection and death rates.

Thus covid19 appears to be “a weapon against civilisation”. This suggests that there may be something at the heart of modern civilisation that makes it particularly vulnerable to this disease.
Illarionov promises some answers to this worrying puzzle in following posts.