COVID-19 vs. US Daily Average Cause of Death

Gary K

New member
Banned
Why is Italy's death rate so high? Because their medical system is so bad and their population has such high numbers of very elderly people.

For Italy, multilateral globalism, plus socialism, equals death


By Monica Showalter
Italy's in dire need of help.
Its health care system is collapsing. The coronavirus has put the whole country in quarantine. There are now 15,000 cases, along with 1,018 deaths, the last 24 hours bringing in 188 more. The casualty count is the highest outside China. And it's spreading fast. Until a few days ago, the problem was concentrated in the north. Now, it has spread throughout the whole country.
Anyone with a heart can feel pity and an urge to help them. They need help, bad.
But don't go asking the European Union.
Turns out this open-borders globalist set-up is stiffing the Italians in their hour of need:
First, the EU created the problem by failing to shut down their borders with China, enabling its spread into Italy in the first place. While President Trump was acting swiftly to protect America from the lethal virus, the European Union was saying there was no crisis and calling Trump a xenophobe.
Now, with Italy hit hard based on that hate-Trump 'logic', its medical system is overwhelmed. Its doctors and nurses are exhausted. There's not enough equipment, there's not enough supplies, and the patients keep coming. The Italians are appealing for help with masks, surgical equipment, doctors, anything that will enable them to get through it and save human lives -- and the EU is not giving it.
David Freddoso of the Washington Examiner (hat tip: Instapundit) has a must-read column on how the EU is leaving Italy to fend for itself in its hour of need.
Maurizio Massari, Italy’s permanent representative to the European Union, wrote an opinion piece for Politico Europe Tuesday evening publicly shaming fellow EU states for their failure to help, and once again asking them to come together. Instead, European countries are banning the exportation of face masks and other medical equipment needed to deal with the crisis. Germany's health minister, quoted by Politico, argued that this was necessary: “The market is such at present that masks are not going where [they're most] urgently needed, it’s where people pay most money for them.”
This is absurd. First of all, if Germany's government is really so worried about masks not getting where they're needed (as opposed to covering its own backside), they can donate masks to the Italians, can't they? This complaint about profiteering is really just cover for their own fearful selfishness.

Why is that a problem? Because the European Union is supposed to be all about lovey-doviness, nations giving of their surplus to help others in the name of the greater good. Everybody sharing, the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Helping the poor out, putting people first (remember how Angela Merkel 'volunteered' the rest of Europe to take in some of the migrant masses she herself invited in? -- I invite, you pay?) But so much more virtuous than that cowboy regime across the pond.
Freddoso continues:
And it may be perfectly understandable for Germany to want to protect its own national interest in a time of crisis, but it runs counter to the entire concept of the EU that we've been hearing so much about during the debate over Brexit. Member states are supposed to benefit by putting aside their own selfish needs. French President Emmanuel Macron has [called] for an even more united post-Brexit EU. What happened to that? Right now, his government is seizing control of masks throughout France. I haven't seen anything about them ending up in Italy.

And as Freddoso notes, all the Italians are getting is empty EU words, nothing more. So much for all that 'sharing.'

Everyone's a conservative about things they know best.

The hard reality here is that nations act in their own self-interest whether they say so or not. That so much propaganda to the contrary has been mouthed by the European Union in the name of preserving its stateless bureaucracy, and is often believed by local citizens, is a sad story. Up until now, the Italians had to have been confident their association with the EU would help them. Turns out that is a load of hooey, it hasn't. That's reason enough to leave the EU as if the restive nation didn't already have enough such reason. Open borders for disease, closed borders for help with disease, what a bargain. One hopes the Italians will get wise to this and finally pull the plug.

That's not the only thing that's being discredited, though.

Globalism of this EU sort, as it turns out, is absolutely lethal when combined with local socialism.

Italy has socialized medicine, the kind Bernie Sanders seeks to push on America, leaving the country way less prepared to handle the pandemic than countries with free market health care systems.

Italy's central planners didn't plan for enough beds. There's not enough staff. There's no free market to step in and pick up the slack, because it's not allowed. According to this disturbing piece in the Wall Street Journal, there are signs of a medical system failure, the same kind of thing that in previous socialist hellholes, has triggered man-caused famines: the crops were there, the delivery system was disrupted. Now it's a health-care famine for Italy, because, same as Venezuela's oilfields, the cash was spent on today-needs and political crowd pleasers such as "free" stuff, instead of investment in to increase "production" (read: profitability) in the operation itself, the way the private sector does. The net result in Italy is the same result seen in Venezuela and all socialist hellholes: underinvestment, leading to shambling, subpar, shortage-brimming results. Ain't party-elites making all the decisions grand? According to the Journal:
Italy lags other large European countries in provision of acute-care hospital beds, furnishing 2.62 of them per 1,000 residents as of 2016, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In Germany it’s 6.06 and in France and the Netherlands it’s 3.15 and 3 respectively. That year, Italy devoted around $913 per capita to inpatient acute and rehabilitative care, compared with $1,338 in France, $1,506 in Germany, and $1,732 in the U.S.



The writer, Joseph Sternberg, notes this:
What accounts for these divergences in health-care resources requires more study than a single newspaper column can provide, but a few early hints emerge. One is the observation that the U.K. and Italy are significantly more dependent on direct government financing of health-care than is France or Germany.

Government accounted for 79% of total health-care spending in the U.K. in 2017, according to Eurostat, and 74% in Italy. Germany and France both rely on compulsory insurance schemes with varying degrees of subsidy and government meddling, but outright government expenditure amounts to only 6% of total health spending in Germany and 5% in France. Covid-19 in this sense is a test of how much one trusts central health planners to make wise long-term decisions that boost resilience in the face of unusual dangers.
Health officials in Italy have issued guidelines for rationing care as hospitals there struggle to keep up with the surge of patients infected with the coronavirus. Doctors are being told that they'll likely need to deny care to senior citizens and those with other health conditions as the virus explodes across the nation.
Italy has been rocked by the still not-well-understood COVID-29, with more than 1,200 confirmed cases and 827 deaths—second only to China—and 16 million residents currently under quarantine.
An article published by the Italian College of Anesthesia, Analgesia, Resuscitation and Intensive Care (translated here by Yascha Mounk) warns that "It may be necessary to establish criteria of access to intensive care not just on the basis of clinical appropriateness but inspired by the most consensual criteria regarding distributive justice and the appropriate allocation of limited health resources." The report goes on to recommend rationing care to certain populations.



Imagine paying high taxes for socialist health care all your life only to be told in your hour of need 'too bad, you're too old, no health care for you'?

There must be a tremendous sense of helplessness and being cheated. It's enough to make one hope that Italy snaps to attention on what the EU's multilateral globalism combined with socialized medicine, have done for it. At some point, the customer, the human being, has to count.

If the Italians can't recognize that and get out of both socialism and the EU, it remains a lesson for the rest of us, as Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other socialist siren-singers promise the world from all their socialization schemes, always done with the best of intentions, and always collapsing into rubble right when it counts. Socialism fails every time it's tried. Wrap it in the European Union and it fails spectacularly.

http://tmp.americanthinker.com/blog/...icine_too.html
 

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond



"It may be necessary to establish criteria of access to intensive care not just on the basis of clinical appropriateness but inspired by the most consensual criteria regarding distributive justice and the appropriate allocation of limited health resources."



"inspired by the most consensual criteria regarding distributive justice and the appropriate allocation of limited health resources"

1. Whose consensus?
2. What on earth does "distributive justice" mean?
3. Who decides what is "appropriate allocation"?
 

Aimiel

Well-known member
Do you consider Southern Baptists to be pagans?

Of course not. Most who are Christian would still be lost without the Baptists. Every single denomination only provides the parts of the Body of Christ that they are. The hand can't say to the leg: "I don't need you."
 

Gary K

New member
Banned
"inspired by the most consensual criteria regarding distributive justice and the appropriate allocation of limited health resources"

1. Whose consensus?
2. What on earth does "distributive justice" mean?
3. Who decides what is "appropriate allocation"?

Policies like those are noting but socialist policies. People aren't looked at as individuals, but as groups. Then their medical/societal value is based upon the "worth" of their group. Old people? Very little worth because they are not going to live very long and contribute much to society, at least in the eyes of a socialist.
 

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
I don't see slavery and Christianity being the least bit compatible. Not unlike a queer Christian, adulterer Christian or a pedophile Christian: the terms are mutually exclusive.

Slavery is kidnapping, a capitol offense

so, more like a murdering Christian


and a sinning "Christian" who rejects being told that his sin is sin, who intends to continue in his sinning ways, is no Christian
 

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
Policies like those are noting but socialist policies. People aren't looked at as individuals, but as groups. Then their medical/societal value is based upon the "worth" of their group. Old people? Very little worth because they are not going to live very long and contribute much to society, at least in the eyes of a socialist.

"Distributive justice" caught my eye - it's the kind of language you hear from the folks promoting reparations for slavery, or hiring quotas, or affirmative action


ah, ok - i remember where i've encountered it:


... feminist critiques of existing distributive principles note that they tend to ignore the particular circumstances of women, so feminists tend to argue for principles which are more sensitive to facts such as that women often have primary responsibility for child-rearing and on average, spend less of their lifetimes than men in the market economy.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/j...-distributive/



Feminists who lack the ability to reason tend to use it as an emotional argument to "prove" inequality
 

Gary K

New member
Banned
[h=1]DJ Jazzy Jeff describes his experience with coronavirus[/h] Grammy-winner DJ Jazzy Jeff says he's suffering from COVID-19 -- https://www.cnn.com/videos/entertai...-jeff-coronavirus-experience-elam-pkg-vpx.cnn

LOL. Way to rip my words out of their context....

Your concern over the yearly 14+ million deaths by abortion is noted. Oh, you express such sorrow and sadness for those being mass murdered every day. What a heart o' gold..... I'm really happy to see you express your regret at such a depth of sorrow for those victims of premeditated murder.

Oh, that's right. I just made all that up. You care so little you won't even mention them.
 

jgarden

BANNED
Banned
Why is Italy's death rate so high? Because their medical system is so bad and their population has such high numbers of very elderly people.

balism of this EU sort, as it turns out, is absolutely lethal when combined with local socialism.

Italy has socialized medicine, the kind Bernie Sanders seeks to push on America, leaving the country way less prepared to handle the pandemic than countries with free market health care systems.

Italy's central planners didn't plan for enough beds. There's not enough staff. There's no free market to step in and pick up the slack, because it's not allowed. According to this disturbing piece in the Wall Street Journal, there are signs of a medical system failure, the same kind of thing that in previous socialist hellholes, has triggered man-caused famines: the crops were there, the delivery system was disrupted. Now it's a health-care famine for Italy, because, same as Venezuela's oilfields, the cash was spent on today-needs and political crowd pleasers such as "free" stuff, instead of investment in to increase "production" (read: profitability) in the operation itself, the way the private sector does. The net result in Italy is the same result seen in Venezuela and all socialist hellholes: underinvestment, leading to shambling, subpar, shortage-brimming results. Ain't party-elites making all the decisions grand? According to the Journal:
Italy lags other large European countries in provision of acute-care hospital beds, furnishing 2.62 of them per 1,000 residents as of 2016, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In Germany it’s 6.06 and in France and the Netherlands it’s 3.15 and 3 respectively. That year, Italy devoted around $913 per capita to inpatient acute and rehabilitative care, compared with $1,338 in France, $1,506 in Germany, and $1,732 in the U.S.


The writer, Joseph Sternberg, notes this:
What accounts for these divergences in health-care resources requires more study than a single newspaper column can provide, but a few early hints emerge. One is the observation that the U.K. and Italy are significantly more dependent on direct government financing of health-care than is France or Germany.

Government accounted for 79% of total health-care spending in the U.K. in 2017, according to Eurostat, and 74% in Italy. Germany and France both rely on compulsory insurance schemes with varying degrees of subsidy and government meddling, but outright government expenditure amounts to only 6% of total health spending in Germany and 5% in France. Covid-19 in this sense is a test of how much one trusts central health planners to make wise long-term decisions that boost resilience in the face of unusual dangers.
Health officials in Italy have issued guidelines for rationing care as hospitals there struggle to keep up with the surge of patients infected with the coronavirus. Doctors are being told that they'll likely need to deny care to senior citizens and those with other health conditions as the virus explodes across the nation.
Italy has been rocked by the still not-well-understood COVID-29, with more than 1,200 confirmed cases and 827 deaths—second only to China—and 16 million residents currently under quarantine.
An article published by the Italian College of Anesthesia, Analgesia, Resuscitation and Intensive Care (translated here by Yascha Mounk) warns that "It may be necessary to establish criteria of access to intensive care not just on the basis of clinical appropriateness but inspired by the most consensual criteria regarding distributive justice and the appropriate allocation of limited health resources." The report goes on to recommend rationing care to certain populations.

Imagine paying high taxes for socialist health care all your life only to be told in your hour of need 'too bad, you're too old, no health care for you'?

There must be a tremendous sense of helplessness and being cheated. It's enough to make one hope that Italy snaps to attention on what the EU's multilateral globalism combined with socialized medicine, have done for it. At some point, the customer, the human being, has to count.

If the Italians can't recognize that and get out of both socialism and the EU, it remains a lesson for the rest of us, as Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other socialist siren-singers promise the world from all their socialization schemes, always done with the best of intentions, and always collapsing into rubble right when it counts. Socialism fails every time it's tried. Wrap it in the European Union and it fails spectacularly.

http://tmp.americanthinker.com/blog/...icine_too.html

DOCTORS per 1000
**************************************
Germany 4,2

Italy 4.1

South Korea 2.4

United Kingdom 2.8

United States 2.6

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.PHYS.ZS

NURSES/MIDWIVES per 1000
**************************************
Germany 13.2

Italy 5.9

South Korea 7.0

United Kingdom 8.3

United States 7.6

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sh.med.numw.p3

HOSPITAL BEDS per 1000
*****************************************
Germany 8.3

Italy 3.4

South Korea 11.5

United Kingdom 2.8

United States 2.9

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sh.med.beds.zs


HEALTHCARE EXPENDITURES $US per capita (2018)
************************************************** ********************
Germany $5986

Italy $3428

South Korea $3192

United Kingdom $4070

United States $10586

Given what America currently spends for healthcare on a per capita basis, one questions as to where the money went and as to why it was never reinvested in creating more doctors, nurses/midwives and/or hospital beds!

GRAPH: HEALTHCARE COSTS BY NATION - $US PER CAPITA (2018)

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1) Italy is widely recognized as having one of the best healthcare systems in the world and ranks higher than the United States in terms of doctors and hospital beds per 1000!

2) The problem doesn't reside with the healthcare system, but the failure to introduce early, comprehensive testing in an attempt to control the COVID-19 pandemic in its initial stages!

3) Once the Italian healthcare system was confronted by a dramatic surge in cases testing positive, even a good healthcare system can be overwhelmed!

4) One Italian survey found that while 25% of those testing positive had influenza-like symptoms, the other 75% were completely asymptomatic - they were totally unaware that they were spreading the virus because they weren't exhibiting any symptoms!


https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/coron...taly-1.5504780

https://www.numbeo.com/health-care/r...by_country.jsp
 
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