They are denied treatment, but also a place in victim statistics. As if not only had they lost the right to life, but as if they didn’t exist.
By Giulio Meotti, INN
It is a question of a dominant mentality, not of a judiciary that now investigates and inspects nursing homes in northern Italy. It is a sort of social euthanasia, of “seniorcide,” of large-scale triage so it is considered wrong to ask to be put on a respirator for oneself if one is “old and sick.”
According to a Sunday Times reconstruction of a Boris Johnson government meeting in late March, Prime Minister’s advisor Dominic Cummings exposed the government’s plan before “BoJo” fell ill: “Herd immunity, protecting the economy and if that means that some retirees die, too bad” (Cummings later denied saying so). On the one hand there is an informal protocol, whereby the “elderly”, especially those with pathologies, are not treated but accompanied to death with sedatives in nursing homes, as if Covid-19 was a terminal disease for them.
On the other hand there are formal protocols. The latest was released by the Financial Times.
NHS, the British Health Service, assigned patients a sort of “score” to decide who is unfit for intensive care. Age, frailty and previous conditions. Patients with eight points in the three categories must not be hospitalized. A patient between 71 and 75 would have 4 points for age and 3 for the fragility index, bringing the score to 7. Any additional disease, such as dementia, heart disease, lung disease or high blood pressure, will add 1 or 2 points, thus excluding intensive care.
“The elderly are abandoned like lambs in the slaughterhouse”, said conservative Ros Altmann, former minister for pensions under David Cameron and member of the House of Lords. “I have never seen anything like this”. We are abandoning the elderly because we have decided that their lives are not worth as much as those of young people.
Meanwhile, charitable organizations accuse the British government of not tracking deaths in retirement homes. “The official figures are wiping out the elderly as if they didn’t matter,” said Caroline Abrahams, director of the charity Age UK.
They are denied treatment, but also a place in victim statistics. As if not only had they lost the right to life, but as if they didn’t exist. In a document from the Karolinska university hospital in Sweden (the largest university hospital in Europe) disclosed by the newspaper Aftonbladet, it is specified who remains outside the intensive care unit: who is over 80, over 70 years old and with a significant disease and those with between 60 and 70 and at least two heart, lung and kidney diseases. The idea is simple: the “herd” will survive, but the “weakest” members of society must be “sacrificed”. The famous epidemiologist Marcello Ferrada de Noli who worked at the Karolinska in Stockholm said that Sweden is sacrificing the elderly.
In France, the decision to grant the use of the Rivotril drug at home and in rest homes – and no longer only in hospitals – triggered a debate. Used in palliative therapies for terminally ill patients, Rivotril is now also used outside because in hospitals they cannot cure everyone.
Risk of surreptitious euthanasia? “Have we decided to sacrifice the old?”, asks France Culture. It is not a matter of the judiciary, but of the prevailing mentality, explains Éric Ciotti in Le Figaro: “How can we let such a massacre affect our elderly? They were handed over to certain death, which is absolutely unacceptable in a democratic nation where one life should always be worth another, regardless of age. A society is judged by the way it takes care of its elders. It is a true indicator of civilization.”
Spain has also put it in writing, advising against treatments for those over 80 years of age and with previous pathologies. These are the recommendations of the Catalan Generalitat. Dutch doctors asked the elderly to think twice before asking for intensive care.
This is how we arrived at the data just released by the London School of Economics: half of all Covid-19 deaths in Europe occurred in nursing homes. They call it this, “geriatricide”. And we were very ready for all this.
Not even two months ago, Holland spoke of a pill with which the elderly could commit suicide and in Spain the procedure for passing the euthanasia law had already started. All frozen, for now, there are already enough coffins around. For years we have discussed “quality of life” and “compassion”. When the viral tragedy hit society, all we had to do was raise our hands. Charles Darwin called it “the survival of the fit.”
@ Shmuel Mohalever: Thanks, Ted, for fishing this out of trash for me.
https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/the-massacre-of-italy-s-elderly-nursing-home-residents-35575. This article describes in detail how the Italian government removed large numbers of elderly people suffering from coronavirus from hospitals and sent them to nursing homes where the staff did not have either the training or the medical equipment and supplies to care for seriously ill patients. They also didn’t have the personal protection equipment, such as surgical masks and gowns, they needed to avoid getting sick themselves. A very large number of these abandoned elderly patients died. Prosecutors have begun a criminal investigation of the government officials who ordered the elderly patients “deported” to nursing homes where they did not receive medical treatment.
Ted, sorry to have to bother you once again. Please detrash the comment I just posted, with a quotation from an article describing the “muder” and “massacre” of elderly COVID-19 patients in Italian nursing homes. THanks for your consideration.
NEWS MAGAZINE
The ‘massacre’ of Italy’s elderly nursing home residents
In the early days of March, when northern Italy faced a severe health crisis from the coronavirus outbreak, the scarcity of available hospital beds brought the public health system to its knees.
On March 8, a resolution by Attilio Fontana, president of the Lombardy region – Italy’s economic engine and the epicentre of the epidemic with 12,213 deceased – sentenced hundreds of elderly people hosted in nursing homes to death.
The regional resolution offering150 euros ($163) to nursing homes for accepting Covid-19 patients to ease the burden on hospitals, contributed to the uncontrolled spread of the virus among health workers and elderly guests, turning these institutions into virus hotbeds.
Hosting Covid-19 patients in nursing homes was like lighting a match in a haystack.
“We read it twice, we did not want to believe what we read,” says Luca Degani, president of UNEBA, the trade association that brings together about 400 rest homes in the region, “the virus affects everyone indistinctly, but its lethality and gravity take a very significant logarithmic curve if people are aged and suffer multiple pathologies.”
“The fact that in our facilities we had people at greatest risk was a fact that had to be considered,” Degani explains to TRT World, “These structures are made to let the elderly socialise and be provided with adequate care. They are not made to respond to an acute disease caused by a pandemic infection.”
At least 1,822 people died in nursing homes in Lombardy, yet it is unknown how many were killed by coronavirus as many were never swabbed.
Italian authorities have started investigations into nursing home deaths during the outbreak and police seized documents related to the Pio Albergo Trivulzio in Milan, a historic nursing home with over 1,000 elderly residents, and 13 other nursing homes in the region.
Coffins have been piling up inside the church at Trivulzio care home where 150 health workers, in a letter, accused the management of being aware of the dangers but not having reacted promptly.”
This article on a web site called trtworld.com, goes on to describe in gruesome detail how thousands of elderly Italians were sent to nursing homes and old-age homes that had no facilities whatsoever for caring for people with serious infections, and no staff with training in how to care for these patients. The staff not only had no training, but did not have surgical masks or or “PPE” (personal care equipment. The government lied and told the staff that the patients were not infected with coronavirus, although they knew they were. Senior Italian officials have describes what was done to the elderly COVID-19 patients as “murder.. Prosecutors have begun a criminal investigation.
The only countries who don’t have universal or free healthcare (according to the map) are the United States and several African countries (and a couple of smaller third world countries)!!!
The Israpundit ate my posting
@ Laura:
Hi, Laura
Actually, I’m as much against socialism as you are — especially of the Chinese Communist variety. We have plenty of evidence to convict them of a history of murderous, life-destroying misgovenment and corruption. At the same time, we need to be careful not to over-state our cause.
The countries President Trump and his team presented at the briefing, showing us comparing favorably to West European democracies like Italy and Spain, were hand-picked for audience consumption. The big picture shows a different picture — not one that damns free enterprise, but one that shows the virus doesn’t give a hoot about political idealogies. Here’s a more representative list (from my own figures, compiled yesterday from fast-moving lists):
San Marino (a socialist mini-country in Northern Italy): 1,149 deaths per million
The Diamond Princess (a very capitalist cruise ship, about the size of San Marino): 2,918 deaths per million
Western Democracies (socialist):
Belgium 490 deaths per million
Spain 437 deaths
Italy 384 deaths
France 296
UK 237
Netherlands 215
Quebec 81
Portugal 70
Denmark 61
Germany 54
Austria 49
other Canada 27
Romania 23
Hungary 20
Brazil 11
Greece 11
Poland 9
Mexico 5
South Korea 5
Australia 3
Ukraine 3
Singapore 2
South Africa 0.9
Western Democracies (capitalist):
USA 118 deaths per million
Blue states:
New York 909 per million
New Jersey 466
Connecticut 291
Michigan 230
Massachusetts 224
Illinois: Cook Co. 165
Maryland 79
Illinois: other 54
California: Los Angeles Co. 49
Nevada 49
Oregon 17
Minnesota 16
other California 16
Hawaii 6
Red States:
Indiana 77
Pennsylvania 65
Georgia 55
Ohio 38
Wisconsin 35
Florida 33
Oklahoma 31
Alabama 23
Iowa 23
Texas 15
North Dakota 12
Theocracies:
Iran (Muslim, socialized med) 61 deaths per million (if you believe their figures)
Turkey 22
Saudi Arabia (Muslim, non-socialized) 3 deaths
Egypt 2
Indonesia 2
Jordan (Muslim) 0.7 deaths
Bangladesh 0.6
Palestinian Authority 0.4
China (Xi-worship, communist) 78 per million in Hubei province, and 3 per million in the rest of the country
Cuba (Communist) 3 deaths
Miscellaneous:
Thailand 0.7
Guatemala 0.4
India 0.4
DR Congo (the land of AIDS and Ebola) 0.3
Zimbabwe (Mugabe dictatorship) 0.2
Nigeria 0.09
@ Laura:
Israel is a small country that has a version of One Payer Medicine. It is system is basically four HMOs that patients to sign up with them based on their plan offerings. The government then pays the HMO a set amount. The government has a “basket” of services and drugs it has the HMOs provided to the patients.
Everyone pays for this in their National Insurance taxes taken out of their paychecks. There IS NO FREE LUNCH!
There is also a small private network of healthcare exclusive of the government.
The government in their annual budgets provides money for additional hospitals or equipment.
The system works reasonably well. Better in the center of the country where most doctors prefer to live. They are now getting significant bonuses for working in the “periphery”.
Israelis would tweek the system but no-one would chuck it for a new system.
This is a system that might work in a particular state in the USA but to try and do National Healthcare in the USA is not workable it is way too big.
Promising everyone gets free healthcare as some Dems were is pure bullshit. No such thing.
@ Michael S:
But those who’ve been hit by coronavirus and have socialized medicine are doing worse in dealing with it. Italy, England etc. These countries have rationing during normal times. We are doing better than Europe. Germany is doing better than the rest of Europe because they have a more market oriented system.
@ Laura:
My comment got trashed.
@ Laura:
Laura, here is a map of which states have universal health care (socialized medicine):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_universal_health_care#/media/File:Universal_Healthcare_by_Country_20191229.svg
There’s no correlation between socialist medicine, and how badly the country got htt by the coronavirus.
An extremely well-researched and informative article. However, I think it is possible that many of the deaths in nursing homes have been b counted as coronavirus deaths, even when the victims are not tested to determine if this was the cause of death. At least, these people are being added to the COVID-19 “death toll” in the United States.. In addition, many of those who died in hospitals may die there not of coronavirus, but because of the antibiotic-resistant bacteria that are present in many European hospitals, and the widespread use of intubation on critically ill patients, which appears to result in an extremely high death rate among patients being treated for COVID-19. Thus those who are hospitalized may be almost as much at risk as those who are being left to die in nursing homes or their own homes.
This is socialized medicine at work. We need to fight tooth and nail to prevent it from being implemented in America. We do not have an honest media informing Americans of the true horrors of socialized medicine. All they hear is “free healthcare for all” from the hucksters. So it’s no surprise that the idea is increasingly becoming popular here sad to say. We need to get the truth out.