Coronavirus: Italy Locked Down
March 9th, 2020Update: Payments on Mortgages to be Suspended Across Italy After Coronavirus Outbreak
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My personal assessment of this situation is that it’s somewhere between a total hoax and a possible risk to people who are already ill with other respiratory conditions. The chaos in supply chains, however, is real, at least to some extent.
Via: Daily Mail:
Travel restrictions are being imposed across Italy nationwide as the whole country goes into lockdown to try to halt the spread of the new coronavirus.
Italian premier Giuseppe Conte said on Monday night that a new government decree will require all people in Italy to demonstrate a need to work, health conditions or other limited reasons to travel outside the areas where they live.
Conte said he is extending restrictions on travel from the north to the entire country of 60 million people in a new move to try to stop the spread of the virus that has so far killed more than 460 in Italy.
The premier also took to task young people in much of Italy who have been gathering at night to drink and have a good time during the public health emergency that started on February 21.
‘This night life…we can’t allow this anymore,’ Conte added as he announced the restrictions will take effect on Tuesday and like those in northern Italy will last until April 3.
He told reporters, referring to a lockdown of areas in northern Italy instituted over the weekend, ‘There won’t be just a red zone. There will be Italy’ as a protected area.
When it was in China, I strongly suspected a hoax to suppress street protest. Hong Kong was already in turmoil. Even a hint of protest spreading to the mainland threatened the state, and quarantine fixed that.
Explaining a hoax in the west is harder. Best guess: credit markets are strained and it’s time for a 2008-style liquidation, but the political fallout is too threatening. Coronavirus gives governments both an excuse for economic failure, and a tool to suppress protest.
How serious of a health threat do you think it is?
I’m finding this to be an extremely baffling question.
I’d like to understand how the variability of effects can range from no discernible symptoms to brain damage to death???
https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-03-09-coronavirus-brain-damage-so-severe-victims-forget-to-breathe.html
I have no insight into the health threat! Personally, I’m doing the sensible minimum: avoiding travel, crowds, and working remotely. Seems a reasonable precaution until we understand the threat.
My family is in the NE Seattle suburb where most of the U.S. deaths are occurring at Kirkland Life Care Center. They still haven’t been able to test all the patients and employees. They spread it to everyone inside. Epidemiologists say that if you have resources, you should immediately remove and isolate infected people rather than locking everyone together, like with that cruise ship. The cost and complication of facilitating this isolation will still be less than having more and more infected people later. You could excuse not having test kits of it was truly novel, but there is a whole story of prepared labs being stopped from working on it. Now, there are like 10 nursing homes that have infected staff or patients, with the staff pretty much being the vector. They also haven’t been able to test 11 people who died and aren’t included in the toll.
https://komonews.com/news/coronavirus/coronavirus-testing-starts-for-life-care-center-employees
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/10/politics/coronavirus-washington-life-care-center-nursing-home-testing/index.html
I was in that place twice- once with my mom visiting an acquaintance who just had knee surgery, and then last summer when Kaiser steered my father into a nursing home, saying my mother couldn’t leave him alone 45 min to go to a store because he could fall, (and she can’t lift him). Me or my sister would have to leave jobs. He was never diagnosed with a condition, but had declining walking strength over 2 years until he could barely get out of a chair, with some peripheral neuropathy. Just took a statin and a blood pressure med that they prescribe everyone. (By the way – we’re pretty certain that a beta blocker is what was causing strong insomnia for him – when they finally allowed him to stop taking it, his normal sleep returned right away). Anyhow, Life Care is the $7000/month option that has mostly medicare patients, and had 3-4 people per room, lots of noise and activity. There are a lot of $8-9000/month homes that are run as private businesses in residential houses that have a maximum of 6 people, and are much better to block disease spread. It makes you question ever saving for retirement. Someone younger quitting their job is ‘cheaper’.
“They spread it to everyone inside.”
They spread what, exactly?
You see, this is the Bozo the Clown narrative I wrote about before. There’s almost no testing, and when the test does happen, it’s not reliable.
Something strange is happening here.
“New Zealand’s first coronavirus case: Person had to be tested three times”
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/front-page-top-stories/news/article.cfm?c_id=698&objectid=12312708
Is that test a coin toss?