This time from The Intercept:
Why I’d Rather Be in Italy for the Coronavirus Pandemic
Please, do tell me why. I would love to know.
Wait. Let me guess… Trump?
I HAVE SPENT the last week looking for flights from New York to Italy — not because of coronavirus-inspired flash sales, but because I would rather go home to a country that’s currently in the grip of one of the worst outbreaks in the world than stay in the United States, where life is about to get infinitely worse.
How is it going to get infinitely worse? Italy can’t handle body disposal right now.
More than 15,000 people have tested positive for the new coronavirus in Italy, more than 1,000 have died, and hospitals are at a breaking point. Hundreds of medical staff have been infected, and overwhelmed doctors are reporting having to choose which patients to treat.
Suddenly that socialized healthcare doesn’t seem all that great.
Even as the death toll back home continues to climb and the lockdown gets stricter by the day, I would much rather weather this pandemic in Italy than here. I just can’t shake the terror that the United States, my adopted country, is fundamentally unequipped to handle what lies ahead.
I’m still waiting for the “T” word…
In the U.S., despite weeks of notice, officials are scrambling to get a grip on a quickly approaching disaster. Trump’s press conference last night was the most terrifying public statement I have ever heard, even from him. Days ago, as the number of infections rose at home, I began hearing about friends of friends here in New York who were struggling to get tested despite worsening symptoms. And yet as cases multiply in the U.S., the number of people tested here remains abysmally low. No one knows what’s coming, but we know far less here in the U.S. than people do back home.
It is a tragic irony that a public health emergency unlike anything we have seen in generations would come as Americans are constantly told that the idea of health care as a fundamental right is entitled, radical, crazy talk. What is crazy, to anyone outside the United States, is that it’s even a question.
Does she read what she wrote? “[O]verwhelmed doctors are reporting having to choose which patients to treat” means that the Italian national healthcare system was totally unprepared too and is over max capacity. The Italian system is now at the point where some government-appointed doctor decides who he can try to save and who is more likely to die.
That might work in Europe but not in the US.
The Italian government has tentatively approved a $28 billion plan to help Italians through the crisis, and mortgage payments and bills are on hold. The U.S. government will have to step in to mitigate the crisis too, but some politicians are already balking at the prospect, and I can’t blame my fellow Americans for going into this with low expectations. If the 2008 financial crisis is any indication, regular people won’t see much of any future bailout. Italians know that they’ll get through looming hard times because their government will do its part — not because it is a particularly good, generous, or even functional government, but because that is what governments are supposed to do.
Um… you are welcome Italy. I guess. Also, thank the English and the Germans while you are at it.
I wonder how many Britons are happy for Brexit at the moment because Italy may bail out its citizens but it’s going to be the rest of Europe and the US that bails out Italy.
And in some ways, the responses to the virus in my two countries have been similar: late and misleadingly reassuring. But for all of Italy’s flaws, I would still rather be there than here. I have no confidence that the U.S. will do what is right during and after this pandemic. This country is structurally incapable and fundamentally unwilling to put people over money, and all people over just some.
Yeah… Americans are just the worst.
Whatever myths my family in Italy held about the United States, they have largely come undone over the years I have lived here. I have found myself explaining countless times how everything from the U.S. criminal justice system to health care regularly fails to do what Italians expect of their institutions, no matter how much they criticize them. I have explained to incredulous friends used to complaining about Italy’s crippling bureaucracy just how unjust and racist U.S. bureaucracy can be.
Please go back to Italy, I’ve heard enough.
And yet even with people locked up in their homes away from family and neighbors, a strong sense of solidarity has emerged. Italians know they’ll get through this because they have each other’s back. I am not sure we Americans can say that.
I’m big enough to admit when I’m wrong. I thought this would be another example of TDS. This is much worse than that, this is full Woke anti-Americanism.
There is a website howmanygovernmentshasitalyhad.com and it is at 66.
The Economist published an article titled Why is it so hard to form a government in Italy? They designed it that way.
Euronews has an article titled Why do governments in Italy change so often?
This is an article from the Washington Post: Why do Italian governments so often end in collapse?
Mark my words, the end result of this virus outbreak in Italy will be government collapse and moving onto government number 67.
But the author here doesn’t care about that, because in her mind what makes Italy great is that it is prepared to make the entire country take a sick day, and the government will pay for everything while people stay home.
America isn’t rushing to cover the mortgage payments and rent checks for people with Coronavirus, so it must be an evil, racist, greedy nation.
This woman would rather risk dying of Coronavirus in European hotspot of a global pandemic because the current incompetent Italian government is handing out free money.
If that is her metric, she is welcome to go to Italy. I wish her the best.
When her corpse is finally removed from her hotel five days after she’s died, I hope it is consolation to her family that the Italian government will foot the bill for the hotel room.
Well… Bye.
Well, it’s not the Italian government paying for the holiday- they expect the Germans to cough up the cash (yet again!)
Dear Alicia: Vai propiamente fanculo, fascista di merda.
Ask a leftist which is worse: the closing of our borders to prevent the spread of disease or the opening of our borders and at minimum 1 million, possibly up to 7 million American citizens dead before the end of the year. I suspect most Democrats will say that they prefer the dead Americans. Because that’s what Democrats want: dead Americans. And the reason they want it? To make Donald Trump look bad and possibly lose the election. That’s it. And it’s insane that a large portion of the country doesn’t seem to realize that.
The democrats WANT the stock market to collapse, they WANT the economy to crash, they WANT an overwhelming percentage of American citizens to be infected, they WANT millions of American citizens to die of disease and the ONLY reason they want it is to be used as an instrument to attract Trump, possibly make him lose the election and seize more power. And not only do they want it they are openly stating with orgasmic glee. You realize it, I realize it, I wonder when the majority of Americans will realize it.
Italians were leaving Italy even long before the Corona-Virus (“The Red Menace”) because the country is on the edge of a collapse. No jobs, no future, corruption, nepotism…
Except for a few economical strongholds, mostly in norther Italy, the country just lives because they get subsidized by the EU.
As long as this article-writing person goes back and STAY there, she should do so. One way ticket, coming up!
I would also point out that the author of that drivel is upset that their friends are not being tested after demanding so. People are idiots. My son works in the ED of a large hospital. Yesterday, he had a woman who stated that she had eaten Chinese food the day before, and felt like she was getting a fever and a tickle in her throat, and wanted to be tested for the Wuhan flu. These morons are wasting valuable resources over their own ridiculous paranoia.
Doctors are not going to do a test on you unless you meet the criteria for possible infection.
Yeah yeah.
Unfortunately, when the dust settles, she’ll probably come back (or will never have left), but nobody will call her on this public declaration to want to leave. Same as all the Hollywood celebs who were so gonna move to Canada (or Australia, or Europe, or wherever) if Trump got elected.
I can’t recall a one that actually followed through.
1thousand 67 case in the WHOLE USA…. all the bullshit plugs was bleating we gotta do NOW, Trumpy has already done. Geezus I wish people would just shut the F up.
Today’s WSJ has an op-ed about European health care systems, describing that the ones most stressed by all this are Italy and the UK. Not just because the number of cases. Especially not for the UK because it doesn’t have that many. But because they are the most government-dependent systems around, with very low per-capita spending. It mentions that the UK spends less on health care than even Italy, which in turn spends only about 2/3 of what Germany does (and the US is higher than any of them). Similar comparisons show up in beds per 1000 people, so this spending thing isn’t a question of expensive care per person.
Something to throw back at these people: the United States is one of the oldest, continually operating governments in the world. All the EU countries have had multiple constitutions and organizing principles while we’ve had one.
Somehow we managed to get our trains to run on time without having to put millions of people into death camps.
Actually, most EU countries don’t have constitutions. They may have a piece of paper marked “Constitution” but it typically doesn’t do what we Americans think a Constitution does: limit the powers of government.
I like to point to the Dutch constitution (my native land): it doesn’t impose meaningful limits on the government, and quite apart from that it says explicitly the courts have no authority to judge the constitutionality of any law or regulation. What do you call a “constitution” that says explicitly “article 120: this constitution is void” ?
Typical toddler, errr….. I mean leftist.
“It is not PERFECT!!!! I am going to throw a tantrum!”
Yawn… I say we all laugh at her. No, seriously. Laughter. Not offers to buy her a ticket, not invites to just go ahead. Ridicule. Point… laugh…. repeat.
In her opinion, the US is awful because they did not respond perfectly to this viral outbreak. Yet, she refuses to acknowledge that no country in the world will ever respond perfectly to any outbreak at any time. Ever.
It is not possible to actually perfectly respond to the emergence of a new disease. Won’t and can’t happen. By the time it is even identified as a new disease it has already spread.
Yet, as children tend to do, the leftists will deride what they have, and idealize what they do not have. “The US sucks. They do not have enough test kits… Italy is perfect. They are treating their citizens with dignity.” (Completely ignoring the fact that Italy, like every other country in the world, does not have enough test kits to meet demand either.)
Governments can’t afford to waste money (counterintuitive, I know, but it’s true), so socialized health care systems are always operating at peak capacity, with no empty beds or stockpiled drugs or test kits that cost money but might never be used. So any emergency overwhelms them in a big hurry. And overworked doctors, nurses, and administrators are encouraged to push people through the system, because every treatment is an unplanned-for expense that drains the normal operating budget. Not a good way to handle a “pandemic.”
The kinder, gentler Italian government in action:
https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/elderly-will-be-denied-intensive-care-as-coronavirus-overwhelms-italys-national-health-system-experts-warn/?
Yes.. the US is the evil ones…