American Thinker:
Italy’s in dire need of help.
Its health care system is collapsing. The coronavirus has put the whole country in quarantine. There are now 15,000 cases, along with 1,018 deaths, the last 24 hours bringing in 188 more. The casualty count is the highest outside China. And it’s spreading fast. Until a few days ago, the problem as concentrated in the north. Now, it has spread throughout the whole country.
Anyone with a heart can feel pity and an urge to help them. They need help, bad.
But don’t go asking the European Union.
Turns out the open-borders globalist set-up is stiffing the Italians in their hour of need:
First, the EU created the problem by failing to shut down their borders with China, enabling its spread into Italy in the first place. While President Trump was acting swiftly to protect America from the lethal virus, the European Union was saying there was no crisis and calling Trump a xenophobe.
Now, with Italy hit hard based on that hate-Trump ‘logic’, its medical system is overwhelmed. Its doctors and nurses are exhausted. There’s not enough equipment or supplies, and the patients keep coming. Health care is being doled out by triage, old people being told ‘no health care for you.’ The Italians are appealing for help with masks, surgical equipment, doctors, anything that will enable them to get through it and save human lives — and the EU is not giving it.
David Freddoso of the Washington Examiner has a must-read column on how the EU is leaving Italy to fend for itself in its hour of need. read more
They must have a lot of old people in nursing homes/with lung problems.
They can always suckle from Mommy Merkels big Boobies!
Uncle George Soreazz was a Hitler SS Officer, hje has no use for Italians.
It also doesn’t help that Chinese companies are being contracted to run a number of their ports. After the Chinese New Year, many Chinese workers returned to Italy to resume work. Italy’s ties with China have been developing for quite a while:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/06/world/europe/italy-ports-china.html
Between Venezuela and the fallout from the coronavirus panic, we are watching socialism fail in real time. But our own home-grown socialists continue to promise that “this time, they will get it right.”
And exactly how will they do that? On this site, we have articles detailing how some politicians are threatening and trying to declare martial law, the failure of Italy’s socialized medicine, the Democrats trying to sneak in abortion funding in an emergency coronavirus bill, Biden and Sanders promising unconstitutional gun confiscation, and criticism of the one man, Donald Trump, who has been out in front of this panic for weeks now. In the meantime, I have heard no arguments for why “new” socialism would be anything other than an eventual disaster like traditional socialism, nor have I seen anything to suggest that our current socialist proponents are any different from the self-centered, egotistical and corrupt leaders of yesterday.
Many medical experts believe that this coronavirus panic is overblown – it certainly pales in comparison to the European black plague, the post-WW1 Spanish flu and the diseases that killed millions of North American Indians. Yet socialized medicine in areas such as Europe and Canada is barely able to keep up with the ordinary needs of citizens, much less cope with a potential or actual pandemic. Modern socialized medicine seems to be as ineffectual at fighting a pandemic as the world of 1918.
The best hospital systems in the world are in Singapore, Japan and South Korea. Outside of China, they are going to be first to beat the bug.
Italy’s a beautiful country with beautiful architecture, art, landscapes, beaches, volcanoes, mountains, &c.
Italy’s also full of Italians.
They (literally) killed each other over their socialist(Fascist)/communist disputes, have the strongest mafia influence on Earth (Duh), and the greatest government corruption outside of declared socialist states (China, Venezuela, Cuba, NoKo, &c.).
If there’s anything we can do for them, we should do it – not that it will redound on us, but because, well … Hell, they’re Italians!
izlamo delenda est …
social distancing appears to work to reduce disease
there is a great graph comparing phila vs st louis in 1918…take a quick peek
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1238057882597416960.html
[snip]
In 1918, Philadelphia chose to not cancel a parade as the flu was just impacting the city. 3 days later their hospitals were filled, we have learned the hard way that discounting a disease because it is in the early stages of it’s spread is how to spread it.
[snip]
Spread out the time of infections is critical to saving lives, as the system can handle a low level of infections for a long time but not a high level for a short period. We don’t want more people needing respirators at any given time than we have respirators.
correlation between covid-10 and latent tb
some very interesting statistics
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/03/no_author/italy-is-second-country-with-coronavirus-outbreak-preceded-by-a-tuberculosis-epidemic/
the first was china
What Wyatt, Insensitive Progressive Jerk said.
Also, my sister and hubby went to Italy on their honeymoon and she said it was rare for any building to have AC and it was always stuffy. Now imagine no air circulating, no regular cleaning, everything’s moist and you have a cold. Gaaah.
Big problems happen when you don’t have control of your own border.
The condemnation of socialized medicine is appropriate, however, capitalist-based medicine can be as, or more, callous, inefficient and unable to adjust to a crisis. Remember the HMO’s? Ever try to get a procedure pre-approved with your insurance company, especially something time-critical? Where are most of our pharmaceuticals and other healthcare products manufactured (and who is threatening to cut us off now out of pure spite)?
When you apply economies of scale, you often lose sight of the original goal, in the case of medicine, providing patient care. Cost-cutting measures, whether motivated by budgetary concerns or the bottom-line, always result in rationing, and, facility, staff and inventory shortfalls.
The argument for socialized medicine is facilitated by the failings of the current system (well, the pre-Obama Care system). There needs to be some profit motive and free-market competition in healthcare, however, there must also be some regulation to compensate for the excesses of capitalism. The trick is finding the right balance. Given human nature, I don’t think that balance will ever be easy to establish.
A trap we fell into (well, maybe our parents and grandparents) back in the Post-War era was the beginning of modern health insurance and employers offering insurance coverage as an incentive to workers. This served to anesthetize the patient from the true costs of treatment, which began to remove free-market mechanisms from the industry and the growth of oligopolies and monopolies. Their growth and dominance was facilitated my heavy-handed regulation that protected them from competition, as the system favored large, well-capitalized corporations.
So, in a sense, the trend toward monopoly control and pricing in healthcare legitimized the cry for nationalizing healthcare, which is simply the logical end to what was started in the ’50’s.
Still, as cumbersome and bloated as the current structure is, because there remains a clear profit motive, global innovation in healthcare is driven by the US healthcare system. Can it be improved without breaking it?
thank God for socialized single payer healthcare, right?
even with failure right in their faces the commies here still fail to see it
One of the biggest causes for concern in all this Kung Flu panic is “not enough hospital beds”. Hospitals are designed like highways; they have a capacity for normal volume, not rush hour+MLB game traffic. I don’t know how other states work, but here in Oregonistan, hospitals cannot do major construction or buy a piece of large equipment without approval from the state, after showing a need. And “we might need it someday if there’s a pandemic” won’t cut it. But I am sure it will all be Trump’s fault.
See you at Nuremberg, EU!
The Europeans (and remaining Italians) will be bringing rope.
Tim –
Well said!
Italy is Corrupt, Lazy, and Entitled.(my relatives included)
The Mafia runs most of the south and the government is as USELESS as an Italian Car!