" Yet, by March 9, when Italy imposed its first lockdown, the country had suffered only about nine thousand coronavirus cases and five hundred deaths. With one of the world’s oldest populations and harsh northern winters, Italy regularly suffered severe winter flu epidemics. In the winter of 2014–2015 and again in 2016–2017, influenza and other flu-like illnesses had killed more than forty thousand Italians—eighty times as many as had died from the coronavirus at the time of the lockdown. "

― , Pandemia: How Coronavirus Hysteria Took Over Our Government, Rights, and Lives