Devastated Italy?
March 16, 2020
HERE is an article about “bodies piling up” in morgues in Northern Italy. But with a national death toll of 2,100, the vast majority in advanced old age, in a country of 60 million, “piling up” is, at best, a colorful exaggeration and, at worst, pernicious fear-mongering.
Strange, how this virus from China bypassed more than a billion people living in Third World conditions in India and showed hardly any interest in Israel to find its way to Italy and other European nations. It has very little interest in Mexico or Canada, but likes the United States. Germs are mysterious. [Update: It’s not so mysterious why Italy has been harder hit. Many Chinese have bought up textile businesses in the Lombardy region and travelers from China apparently brought the virus to the area. Read more here:
The COVID-19 outbreak in Italy spread mostly from Codogno, a small town in southern Lombardy, at the border with the Emilia-Romagna region, with a second localized outbreak in Veneto. Since Lombardy is one of the wealthiest, most densely populated, and most globalized areas in Europe, the coronavirus circulated very fast and easily, and now all 20 regions in Italy register cases of infected people. It did not help that the Codogno economic district hosts large companies and multinationals – making it a hub for production and international trade. Workers, salesmen, managers, and consultants of all sorts travel daily to their workplace, many of them commuting to nearby cities. International partners visit from abroad. And of course, Milan – the sprawling and thriving capital of Lombardy, and a crucial railway node – is a mere 70 kilometer drive from Codogno.]
It is sad that Italy is experiencing such infectious illness. But the illness itself, while serious and causing death in a small minority of those infected, does not appear catastrophic yet despite everything you are being told.
