All the damage caused by the incompetence of our politicians
by Davide Gionco
We have been used for too long to be ruled by politicians who do great damage even in normal situations. The country had already been in a substantial economic crisis for almost 30 years, with an increase in the number of poor, unemployed, with the collapse of savings, the collapse of the birth rate, with the few remaining young people who emigrate, with multinationals and large financial companies they do what they want with a country they have plundered of its main wealth.
With the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, however, we are reaching the heights of incompetence and damage, with a government that, in addition to failing to manage the situation from a health point of view, is causing immense economic damage to the country, leading to hundreds of thousands of small businesses fail, plunging millions more into poverty, with no prospect of getting out of it. In addition to the "coronavirus" deaths, many people are dying of "ordinary" diseases as public health facilities, after the vigorous cuts requested by the European Union in recent years, are undersized compared to the health needs of the moment.
In addition to the economic damage, there are also social damage. The country is split between protected people (pensioners, public employees, employees of companies not affected by the crisis) and unprotected people. Our society is disintegrating, impeding social and family relations. The domestic confinement of lonely and frail people is causing serious psychological, if not psychic problems, to millions of Italians who are unable to adapt to the situation, aggravated by the daily media terror of the news. People die alone in hospitals and homes for the elderly, without the comfort of family members.
For the "noble health goal" of protecting a few thousand people who could get sick and die of covid-19 we are all giving up, millions of people, to live.
We are human beings, we are not plants. We cannot limit ourselves to "surviving" for months, without a horizon of the end of the emergency, until the arrival of the hypothetical vaccine, of which there is no certainty about the timing and its effectiveness.
Human beings are made to socialize, to fall in love, to work together with others, to share their experiences. The question is not having to behave with greater responsibility (masks, distancing from people) to limit infections, but having to give up on social life. This is something that kills us, not as living beings, but as human beings.
It is not a "personal pleasure", but it is the very essence of our humanity.
This is something that has never happened before in history.
Someone will oppose these considerations to the "reasons of force majeure" of medical needs. More or less like when Mussolini "for reasons of force majeure" took Italy to war. When you want to impose something unpopular (and unconstitutional) on the people, you always do it for "reasons of force majeure".
Where is the greatest incompetence of those who are governing us?
Last March the government found itself objectively unprepared for a disease that no one knew about. Of course, it is not the fault of the current government if in 2016 Matteo Renzi decided, for reasons of "budgetary discipline" requested by the EU, to close the National Center for Epidemiology, Surveillance and Health Promotion , which, observing the statistical data on the causes of death in Italian hospitals, could have detected the beginning of the epidemic as early as November 2019, as detected by ATS Bergamo and ASST Bergamo Est . However, it must be said that the current government, like everyone else from 2016 to today, had not even thought of restoring that important prevention body. Indeed, it has not yet done so.
It is not even the fault of the current government if in 2015 the always enlightened Renzi government decided to impose important cuts in healthcare spending on the regions, which led to the drastic reduction of hospital beds, including intensive care, analytical laboratories. of the staff. However, it must be said that the current government, like everyone else from 2016 to today, had not even thought of re-increasing current spending on public health to restore these services.
The risks of saturation of intensive care have already occurred "ordinarily" even in recent years, only that the news was not put on the daily front page of the newspapers.
Naples, 23.01.2017
Milan, 10.01.2018
Pordenone, 12.01.2018
Como, 02.02.2019
In recent months, something has been done to recover, for example virological analysis services have been strengthened (but not enough), but current health services are well below what would be necessary to cope with the growing spread of the coronavirus , both from the point of view of spaces, equipment and personnel.
Errors in the current management of the health crisis
If last spring Conte's confinement measures and improvised DPCM could be justified by the lack of knowledge of the new virus covid-19, in recent months many studies and statistical data have been produced useful to develop a more effective and perhaps less impactful health strategy from an economic and social point of view.
The first fact is that China has managed to eradicate covid-19 in the province of Hubei and in the city of Wuhan, where today people live normally, without resorting to all the social distancing measures adopted in Europe.
They succeeded by intervening drastically: rapid interventions, rapid tracing and isolation of the city for 76 days. That is: the isolation of infected people works, but only if it is total. Military. In Wuhan, people could not even leave their homes. No contact with the outside. It was the army that brought them what they needed to live. And the rest of the country continued to produce what was needed to keep the people confined.
The second figure that emerges from the statistics on deaths from covid-19 is that among people under 70 the mortality rate is 0.05%. And this 0.05% mainly concerns people with previous pathologies, thus being a contributing cause of death.
The vast majority of covid-19 deaths are people over the age of 70. People under 70 and in good health, who represent over 80% of the population, come into contact with the virus, become infected, heal and develop antibodies, as Mother Nature has predicted for the human species.
The third fact is that the great majority of people who recover from the infection develop antibodies that avoid reinfection , as is found in the province of Bergamo, which avoid getting sick or falling back into a serious form of the disease. Moreover, the future vaccine that, one day or another, will arrive can only be based on the development of antibodies and the strengthening of the immune system. It is not clear why the help provided by a vaccine should be more effective than the immune defenses naturally developed by the human body when it recovers from the disease.
The fourth fact is that the virus is in fact uncontrollable. This is demonstrated by the spread of the virus, despite the use of masks.
This image shows that if we all wear masks, the risk is not zero, but is reduced to 1.5%. So it can't be a sufficient measure. And in fact it was enough for autumn to arrive, with fewer hours of sunshine equal less vitamin D, with lower temperatures equal to greater permanence of the virus in the atmosphere (like all influences), to see the contagion and hospitalization curve go up hospital: absolutely predictable.
The fifth fact is that blocking the entire country entails very heavy economic and social costs. It might have made sense to have confinement for 1-2 months in the spring, but it is inconceivable to adopt confinement for many months, with no prospect of resolving the health crisis. Yet this is precisely what the government is doing now, having failed to follow other paths.
On the basis of these considerations, the government should not have confined 100% of the population, including the "healthy" one, avoiding damaging the economy and social stability of the country.
Instead, it should have concentrated the confinement measures on the categories at risk, adopting "Chinese-style" measures or preventing these people from running any risk of contagion. That is, do not force the elderly to have to leave the house to do the shopping, go to the doctor, etc. Protocols could have been envisaged to guarantee these people the necessary psychological and social support. For example by allowing close relatives to visit them, with appropriate protection.
Meanwhile, the virus could have circulated without causing harm among the non-at-risk population, which would have recovered and developed antibodies. With widespread herd immunity, confinement measures for people at risk could have gradually been eased.
Moreover, such a proposal was endorsed internationally in the Barrington Declaration , which was signed by over 11,000 doctors and scientists in the health sector, by over 33,000 professionals in the sector and by over 617,000 citizens.
Some have objected that it would be "unfair" to confine only the elderly, but it must be understood that this is not a "punishment", but a health security measure.
What sense does it make to confine for months and months 50 million people who are at no risk of dying if they contract the coronavirus, when the goal is to protect the health of 10 million people, most of whom are not older work and do not have to train in school to become adults.
To talk about the disasters of the government on the economic side, at least one more article should be written. For the moment we limit ourselves to sharing this table taken from a recent Eurostat survey (October 2020), which shows that 89% [ eighty-nine_per_cent! ] of Italians consider the economic situation of their country to be "totally bad".
The question remains whether we are governed so badly by simple incompetence or if, on the other hand, behind certain absolutely illogical choices there are no other reasons for social manipulation and the enslavement of the country to interests other than those of the Italian people.
Thanks to our Telegram channel you can stay updated on the publication of new articles of Economic Scenarios.
The article All the damages of the incompetence of our politicians comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/tutti-i-danni-dellincompetenza-dei-nostri-politici/ on Fri, 06 Nov 2020 20:13:34 +0000.