I played around a bit with data on COVID-19 in Italy vs China. Here’s a few interesting findings (more will hopefully follow in a more formalised output). Obviously, I'm not a virologist/epidemiologist, so take this for what it is - i.e. a simple exercise at statistics #COVID19:
1) Hubei and Italy have almost the same population (58mln vs 60mln), so Hubei is an obvious case against which to assess the situation of Italy as a whole. I compared the progression of cases since inception (day of significant outbreak) and to date it's an almost a perfect fit. 
2) Wuhan has almost the same population of Lombardy (around 10 mln). The progression has been slower in Lombardy than in Wuhan since inception – which makes total sense because despite same population, the density is going to be much higher in a metropolitan area such as Wuhan.
3) So the higher dispersion appears to be playing to our advantage in terms of containment in Lombardy. If we were to see an outbreak in Milan, though, it'd probably behave differently (i.e. in a way more comparable to the outbreak in Wuhan than to what we see today for Lombardy)
4) Based on data till yday, I threw in a forecast of today's daily change in total cases. A polynomial & an exponential function yielded +705 vs +878 respectively. Actual print (+787) seems to be in the mid of the range between the 2 (not tracking exponential = pffiuu! but still)
ccing The Fellowship of Nerds :) in case of interest @ojblanchard1 @AlvaroISLM @jzettelmeyer @nicolas_veron @LauBooneEco @Isabel_Schnabel @davidealgebris @VMRConstancio @jfkirkegaard @upanizza @FabioGhironi @monacelt @FPanunzi @ungattodipiombo @Shahinvallee @COdendahl @AngelUbide
