१२ मार्च, २०२०

"I have my sister in bed, dead, I don’t know what to do. I cannot give her the honor she deserves because the institutions have abandoned me. I contacted everyone, but nobody was able to give me an answer."

Said Luca Franzese, an Italian actor and mixed martial arts trainer, after more than 36 hours of trying to find a funeral home to take care of the decomposing body — quoted in "‘Italy has abandoned us’: People are being trapped at home with their loved ones’ bodies amid coronavirus lockdown" (WaPo).

Franzese spoke on a video posted on Facebook that has over 9 million views, and the attention did work to get a funeral home to come collect the body.
Yet another disturbing scenario played out this week when a woman was quarantined alongside the body of her dead husband. Giancarlo Canepa, the mayor of Borghetto Santo Spirito in northern Italy, told CNN that the man died at 2 a.m. Monday, but that nobody would be allowed to remove his body until Wednesday morning....

The man, who has not been publicly identified, tested positive for coronavirus before he died, but refused to be taken to the hospital, Canepa told CNN. After he passed away, quarantine measures prevented anyone from entering the house and collecting his body.

The decision prompted an uproar, with neighbors telling television news station IVG.it that it was painful to know that the grieving widow was alone with her deceased husband’s body. The woman had been standing on her balcony and crying for help, they said, and the man’s relatives were desperately pleading for someone to interfere....

५९ टिप्पण्या:

Nonapod म्हणाले...

My theory for why this has hit Italy particularly hard is that Italians are a naturally gregarious people. They love gatherings. They commonly embrace and kiss as a greeting. They also have a higher percentage of smokers than we do in the US.

mockturtle म्हणाले...

My daughter & SIL's friends in Tuscany who run a B&B are really hurting right now even though the virus is pretty much confined to the north. The effects on all of Italy will be huge but those people who are dealing with death and lack of basic services are cause for compassion and prayer.

elkh1 म्हणाले...

Same thing happened in Wuhan.

glenn म्हणाले...

Back to the third world. “Bring out your dead, bring out your dead”

ckmishn म्हणाले...

Dude, this is pretty f!cked up right here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAxXoMrMzi0

Inga म्हणाले...

Not something that happens with the seasonal flu. Poor man, poor sister.

Ignorance is Bliss म्हणाले...

My deepest sympathies to those who are in this situation, but resources should go to saving those who can be saved. The government should suspend any red tape that might be slowing down the process, and limit regulation to only those needed for public health and safety.

narayanan म्हणाले...

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/not-a-single-eu-country-responded-to-italian-plea-for-help-with-coronavirus

rhhardin म्हणाले...

Gahan Wilson cartoon, long ago, garbageman talking to widow about husband in the trash, "It's not so easy, Mrs. Virgo."

stevew म्हणाले...

Terrible situation. There is a part of this caused by the panic of some in reaction to the virus. Compassion and prayer are good, but resumption of basic services is better. Tough to do when you are practicing social distancing and self-imposed quarantine.

Freeman Hunt म्हणाले...

I have a friend who is a funeral director. She is concerned that the system might be overwhelmed.

Ken B म्हणाले...

It’s not like dead bodies lying around are a health risk.

Bill, Republic of Texas म्हणाले...

Third world shit-hole.

William म्हणाले...

"Bring out your dead." Medieval governments used to be more efficient at removing corpses. This doesn't inspire confidence in government services and priorities.

JaimeRoberto म्हणाले...

At least they aren't bricking up the building with all the occupants, sick and healthy, leaving them to die like they did during the plague.

tim maguire म्हणाले...

Nonapod said...
My theory for why this has hit Italy particularly hard is that Italians are a naturally gregarious people. They love gatherings.


Plus they're old and have a creaking teetering society in the best of times.

JaimeRoberto म्हणाले...

It seems that some commenters are like viruses destroying the comments section, and every now and then Althouse has to enforce some social distancing.

Lars Porsena म्हणाले...

In a blink it's 1347 again in Italy.

cubanbob म्हणाले...

JaimeRoberto said...
It seems that some commenters are like viruses destroying the comments section, and every now and then Althouse has to enforce some social distancing."

True. I wonder which miscreants are responsible for the current moderation. Moderation takes a bit of effort and my fear is our hostess will eventually tire of this and this blog will be gone.

Fernandinande म्हणाले...

I just got back from picking up some pilz at a hospital - first you had to stand in a big crowd around the pharmacy window, then you were supposed to touch and use the same electronic signature gizmo that everyone else was touching and rubbing their fingers on (I made her forge my sig), then the girl handed me the bag o' drugs in such a way that I almost had to grab the part she'd just been holding.

The only things missing was a "Please rub your eyes when you leave!" sign.

joshbraid म्हणाले...

"In a blink it's 1347 again in Italy."
Wow, 75% to 100% of the people in any town dying, hundreds of bodies rotting in houses within days of the start of the contagion, all the clergy dying in a region, total loss of the means of production.

Wow, such ignorance. What is the death rate in Korea, the best numbers we have?

I agree, the problem is one of coronapanic leading to such horrendous situations.

Char Char Binks, Esq. म्हणाले...

Third-World problems

Big Mike म्हणाले...

Dead people can’t cough in your face. Send someone around with a Hazmat suit and a body bag.

Owen म्हणाले...

Horrible. Prayers up for these people. These could be entries in a diary from the time of the Black Death.

Society is a kind of technology that enables us to survive and thrive; and it is being jammed by the virus. The actual jamming by the virus is compounded by the virtual jamming of our own fear, uncertainty and doubt.

mockturtle म्हणाले...

Cuban Bob ponders: I wonder which miscreants are responsible for the current moderation.

The usual suspect, I suspect. M.E.G. She's Althouse's Moriarty. Hard to believe that with the advanced technology at our command it's not possible to permanently block someone from a blog comment section.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves म्हणाले...

Media hysteria have nothing to do with it.
EU there to the rescue!

Oh wait.

Richard Dolan म्हणाले...

We're from the government and we're here to help. Same in every language.

Andrew म्हणाले...

This might be why the Chinese sent mobile incinerators to Wuhan.

rcocean म्हणाले...

Would people stop attacking Italy. I'd live in Italy (Northern Part) in a second. Its not a "3rd World country".

pacwest म्हणाले...

Isn't a lot of China's Belt and Road initiative centered in Northern Italy? Who does Iran do a large part of its petroleum business with?

TickTock म्हणाले...

I think you will all be interested in this article from a health news website. The authors model the affect of social distancing on virus transmission, infection rates, and mortality. It strongly suggests that significant social distancing can spread out transmission dramatically, thus buying time. While the paper does not claim that social distancing will directly lower overall mortality by the time the virus has run its course, it does suggest that it can prevent hospital overload and avoid triage by spreading infection over a longer period of time. This is also likely to have indirect benefits to communities with respect to health outcomes.

https://institutefordiseasemodeling.github.io/COVID-public/reports/Working%20paper%20–%20model-based%20estimates%20of%20COVID-19%20burden%20in%20King%20and%20Snohomish%20counties%20through%20April%207.pdf


For easier reads, see also: https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/11/flattening-curve-coronavirus/; and
https://towardsdatascience.com/social-distancing-to-slow-the-coronavirus-768292f04296

Drago म्हणाले...

Joshbraid: "Wow, such ignorance. What is the death rate in Korea, the best numbers we have?"

In South Korea, as of today, .6%, and declining as more people get tested and are found to have had the virus with zero or minimal symptoms.

Other health researchers are saying it will likely end up in the .1% to .3% range for industrialized nations.

Of course, those numbers are not high enough for the dems to pull off their "Katrina Strategy", so expect to see more anger at the lack of deaths as we saw with Don Le-Mon on CNN last night and our own Althouse lefties/LLR-lefties over the lack of deaths from the Iranian rocket attacks some weeks ago.

Ken B म्हणाले...

“ Third world shit-hole.”

Only the Ritmo threads.

Dust Bunny Queen म्हणाले...

I just got back from picking up some pilz at a hospital - first you had to stand in a big crowd around the pharmacy window, then you were supposed to touch and use the same electronic signature gizmo that everyone else was touching and rubbing their fingers on (I made her forge my sig), then the girl handed me the bag o' drugs in such a way that I almost had to grab the part she'd just been holding.

Our little town grocery store is really stepping up with the precautions. All the checkers are wearing hospital type gloves so they won't be touching the filthy money or handling the groceries. They are sanitizing their stations AND the atm card reader pad between customers. There is someone outside sanitizing the carts when they come back to the cart stand. They hand you a Lysol wipe and tell you to sanitize your hands AFTER you load your groceries into your vehicle....and after you have returned the cart. Good preventative actions on their part.

There weren't very many people in the store...but that is usual. Being rural and low population, our idea of a big crowd is about 4 to 6 people.

Hubert the Infant म्हणाले...

The reaction to this reminds of the climate change hysteria. COVID-19 seems to be a huge problem for people who fear that they will be personally affected. There is very little altruism being displayed. I have seen nothing about people - -perhaps those who have already had the disease and recovered -- volunteering to ensure that elderly people have their needs taken care of without being exposed to risk.

LYNNDH म्हणाले...

Ignorant - "My deepest sympathies to those who are in this situation, but resources should go to saving those who can be saved. The government should suspend any red tape that might be slowing down the process, and limit regulation to only those needed for public health and safety."

Are advocating that the old and infirm be abandoned for the younger?

Two-eyed Jack म्हणाले...

It is always hard to envision what is about to happen and to imagine that things will be different here than they are there, because, after all, things there are so different.

For me, "here" is the immediate environs of US Ground Zero. Please note that of the 120 patients at Life Care in Kirkland WA on Feb 19, 2020, 26 are now dead and an additional 26 have tested positive. These were elderly people, by and large, but they were not distant people.

https://lcca.com/downloads/kirkland/Kirkland-Update-03112020.pdf

I hope that this is somehow something that will leave "us" untouched, but everyone needs to, at least, imagine what could happen to us and accept that it could happen to us.

mockturtle म्हणाले...

We'd all have been better off if we'd used the same tests they are using in China [and that WHO recommended] than to wait for the CDC to bungle their way to a viable test that is still difficult to obtain and continues to be highly restricted in its use.

John Ray म्हणाले...

JaimeRod: In the times of the plague, people acted out of ignorance and fear. Fancy that, we in the 21st Century are doing the same. That's progress, my friend.

Char Char Binks, Esq. म्हणाले...

"Would people stop attacking Italy. I'd live in Italy (Northern Part) in a second. Its not a "3rd World country".

I won't stop attacking Italy until Italians figure out a way to get rid of an actor/mixed martial arts trainer's dead sister in less than three days.

FullMoon म्हणाले...

Please note that of the 120 patients at Life Care in Kirkland WA on Feb 19, 2020, 26 are now dead and an additional 26 have tested positive.

The good news is, all of the patients are not infected, in spite of the virus being more easily spread than any other.

The linked pdf is interesting,thanks TwoEyed Jack
Here it is Again

n.n म्हणाले...

Planned Parenthood or a similar corporation offers subsidized services to sequester her carbon remains and cannibalize/recycle her profitable, colorful clumps of cells.

mockturtle म्हणाले...

The good news is, all of the patients are not infected, in spite of the virus being more easily spread than any other.

Last I heard, neither all the residents nor all the staff had been tested!

MaxedOutMama म्हणाले...

Chris Rea "Truth" from Santo Spirito
https://youtu.be/0V4as0sYEhs?t=34

MaxedOutMama म्हणाले...

Drago, Joshbraid -

Current number in South Korea will be updated in about 5 hours, but yesterday's (the 12th, they are updated late at night when it's a day later in SK) numbers are here:
https://www.cdc.go.kr/board/board.es?mid=&bid=0030

The current blended fatality rate is 0.84%. It goes up a bit each day. 0.6% was a few days ago. It is already 1.27% for men, offset by the 0.57% for women.

SK is doing a great job. The new case counts are rising much more slowly, because they have succeeded in finding and isolating a large number of the infected. To find 7869 infected people they have tested 234 thousand people, of which 209 thousand were negative, and 17 thousand of the tests are still being processed.

But that also meant that they found many cases very early, before they had even begun to show signs of sickness, and since it generally takes ten days to get really sick after the symptoms begin, that means that their case fatality rate is due to grow for probably at least a week more. It will end up being greater than 1%. That's really very bad. Of course their death rate is relatively low because they still have good ability to treat their victims.

Assuming that without "panic" measures, 1/3rd of the US population were infected (the lowest epidemiological estimate), and 1% of that group died, the expected death rate, calculated from what we are seeing in South Korea, would be 1,100,000, or 1.1 million. Compare that to the estimated 2019-2020 estimated US deaths of 20K to 52K for flu. Can you grok the difference?

This is much, much worse than the flu, and if what you think are "panic" measures are not taken to control the spread, and if the medical system becomes overwhelmed, then indeed the mortality rate both from COVID-19 will rise and all-cause mortality will rise, because of course people with other illnesses won't get treated in time and will die as a result.

The end fatality rate of the SK experiment looks like it is going to be in the range of 1.2% to 1.9%, so my previous numbers are substantially low. And mind you, the Koreans ARE taking extreme and pretty early measures, and in doing so, they are giving people the best chance for recovery. It's not beyond possibility that the end fatality rate will be over 2%.

In practice, since the deaths really begin piling up for those in their 50s, for any country you can calculate the fatalities by infection% X decade of age of infected, and that leads to some pretty awful results. SK already reports a fatality rate of 4.8% for those in their 70s and over 8% for those in their 80s or above, so we are looking at quite a pile of bodies. For those in their 60s, it is currently 1.44%.

To summarize: Ann is right, you are wrong.

Two-eyed Jack म्हणाले...

mockturtle said "Last I heard, neither all the residents nor all the staff had been tested!"

This is no longer correct. See the pdf. I was wrong about the positives, it is 63 not 26. So at least 63 cases out of 120 original residents.

Tests Completed: All residents tested
Test Results for On site Residents: 26 positive, 12 negative, 5 pending, 4 inconclusive Total Resident Test Results, including in Hospitals: 63 Positives

FullMoon म्हणाले...

Last I heard, neither all the residents nor all the staff had been tested!

Link says everybody tested. News didn't report that? Why not? link is a day old, so info out there

FullMoon म्हणाले...

Disgusting, but not really surprising because Democrats only care about making Trump look bad.Not the first ime and won't be the last. Dems are very disappointed there are not more deaths and have already created talking points to take credit for dearth of disaster.
Tyrant Pelosi Smacks Her Hand on Podium, Says It’s Her Way or Nothing When it Comes to Addressing Coronavirus (VIDEO)

FullMoon म्हणाले...

Of course, need to keep those baby parts coming;
REPORT: Demon Pelosi Pushed to Include Federal Funding For Abortion Into Coronavirus Response Bill

mockturtle म्हणाले...

My older daughter has spent quite a bit of time in Italy and, while she loves the country, she says the hygiene practices there leave a lot to be desired.

Marc in Eugene म्हणाले...

I held my tongue on the other thread (about the Holy Father's homilizing) but will point out here that this is precisely the set of circumstances in which a strong Pontiff on St Peter's Chair could be guiding the always querulous and quarrelling politicians in Italy. On the other hand, it may well be that contemporary Italians have the pope they deserve.

Am listening this afternoon to Orlandus Lassus's setting of the Penitential Psalms, sung by the Collegium Vocale Gent.

FullMoon म्हणाले...

eighth grade peripheral and three classmates home from school with flu two weeks ago. Was it Corona? Not tested, so who knows?

Bernie says everyone should be tested for free. Is anyone being charged for test? Most Insurance companies foregoing co-pay last I heard.

mockturtle म्हणाले...

Per Two-eyed Jack: Tests Completed: All residents tested
Test Results for On site Residents: 26 positive, 12 negative, 5 pending, 4 inconclusive Total Resident Test Results, including in Hospitals: 63 Positives


Does this include those who are already dead?

Two-eyed Jack म्हणाले...

Does this include those who are already dead?

Please refer to the release.
Latest is here:

https://lcca.com/downloads/kirkland/Kirkland-Update-03122020.pdf

Several people died before the link to coronavirus was identified. I don't think that they were able to establish the cause for these early deaths through testing, so I don't know if any of these unattributed deaths have been included. It is really not of great importance, because the percentages are quite high either way.

FullMoon म्हणाले...

Does this include those who are already dead?
Here is link, for the third time.
Not exactly like you to miss it every time it is posted.
Link Again

mockturtle म्हणाले...

Full Moon---Sorry. I finally found the data you linked. It had gone to my download file [X7]. I find the following disturbing, don't you?

"Number of Employees Showing COVID Symptoms: 67 (-3)
Employees who show symptoms are no longer working in the facility

Employees Returned to Work: 2

Employees Tested: 30 +/-

Employee Results: Unknown"

wbfjrr2 म्हणाले...

For maxed out mama, you don’t understand the difference between imagined and real.

wbfjrr2 म्हणाले...

Oh, and by the way, those who wondered why Italy is second only to China in deaths and incidences, look no farther than dead bodies lying around for days for indication of the state of their health systems.

Also understand these people’s homes are tiny compared to most of ours in the US. Horrific proximity to dead loved ones’ decaying bodies.

At what point, I wonder, does the stench set in?

wbfjrr2 म्हणाले...

Oh, and by the way, those who wondered why Italy is second only to China in deaths and incidences, look no farther than dead bodies lying around for days for indication of the state of their health systems.

Also understand these people’s homes are tiny compared to most of ours in the US. Horrific proximity to dead loved ones’ decaying bodies.

At what point, I wonder, does the stench set in?