The Ministry of Hope

If Covid-19 disappeared from our sight, and from our lungs, with the same speed with which Minister Speranza's book disappeared from bookstores, hope with a lowercase s would quickly return to the top of the list of the most practiced virtues. What are we talking about? Of an aspiring best seller cut off in the bud: the essay of our immeasurable (in the sense that its ineffectiveness in the fight against Coronavirus is immeasurable) Minister of Health. Who – partly unfortunately partly because not to say cat if you don't have it in the bag – found the time to write a text on the epidemic with the suggestive title “Why we will heal”. Which, in itself – it must be said without offense – brings bad luck.

In fact, he assumes that we are all sick. Otherwise, what need would there be to explain to us why we will "heal"? In any case, ours has seen fit to block the sale of the prestigious volume. Today he is too busy fighting Covid-19 to be able to present a tome in which he explains how he managed to defeat Covid-19. Perhaps, the right title could have been: "The famous last words …", but by now it has gone to print and can no longer be remedied. However, the minister could still add a few chapters. For example, one on the fact that it is possible to arrive at a synthesis (on the reasons for this cursed contagion) shared both by the few, and reviled, "deniers" and by the numerous, and commendable, panicked.

If there is one thing – I say one-thing-one, which cannot be denied by anyone – learned in ten months of living with the virus from China, it is that it does not put stress on either individual health or collective health. It puts stress on the health system. Because, net of inessential inaccuracies, this disease forces a certain percentage of infected people to intensive care. If these poor Christs did not go to saturate the (too small) number of beds (five thousand or so) destined for artificial respiration, rest assured that there would be no trace of the hysteria now widespread at every level, political and media.

The damned problem is that the system goes haywire as soon as the "sick" curve crosses a certain critical threshold. At that point, health facilities explode because they are undersized in relation to the demands for care. In a world obsessed with the logic of the market and competitiveness, it is perhaps right – however cynical it is to underline it – that the most popular disease has to do with the concept of "demand" and "supply"; there are too many potential consumers of a right too quickly cut by the sharp shears of austerity: Article 32 of the Constitution.

Here, Speranza could start from here for a serious reflection on his next "novel". From the fact that the party in which he plays is the main responsible for the "savings" on our health system in the last ten years. Do you know what the unmet "need" 2010-2019 of the NHS amounts to according to the fourth report of the Gimbe Foundation? At 37 billion. And how much does the halter loan of the ESM "share"? 37 billion. Deadly, right? Obviously it's a fucking coincidence.

Yet, if lorsignori had done their dirty duty in recent years, they would not even need to appeal to a solution, in and of itself masochistic, like the MES. And by "their duty" we mean: think about the priorities of public affairs and not those of banks, markets and Brussels. But, in reality, there is more and worse: if in the last six months, not in the last decade, they had implemented three or four times the critical care places and the doctors and nurses necessary to make them work – instead of playing with the spritz on the canals, with the "States General" and with wheeled benches – today the possible partial or total block of our day and night lives would not be incipient, but much to come.

To conclude, we have a title to suggest to the next editorial effort of any minister of our Republic: " How we will heal". But not from Covid, but from the wicked ignorance and blindness that has led millions of Italians to continue voting for the heirs of the deceased, and never regretted, PCI. If the work sold millions of copies, we would no longer have Hope. Only hope. A "tiny" revolution that makes all the difference in the world.

Francesco Carraro

www.francescocarraro.com

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The article The Ministry of Hope comes from ScenariEconomici.it .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/il-ministero-della-speranza/ on Sat, 24 Oct 2020 13:43:03 +0000.