Italy v England. Why the different levels of sympathy?

[Whatsthis1515]

I am noticing that people feel sorry for Italy regarding their death toll but for the UK, people are scathing and pointing fingers. Why is this? I know Italy was supposed to be a lesson to us, but surely in that case, they didn't do the right thing either?

Interested to know what you all think.

Thanks

@BikeRunSki wave to your friends in Toronto. Say we love to be noticed.

I think ‘laughing’ at other countries death rates is appalling.

Now I don’t agree with the way this has been handled but nobody is laughing at Sweden are they?

Other countries managed to impose a two week isolation period? (With great success).

We asked people with symptoms to self isolate? Which is too late to be honest but people were doing it, even if they just had a sore throat or temperature.

What @DippyAvocado said needs reposting I feel.

This is almost the exact opposite of what has happened! Hospital admissions were triaged to such an extent by 111 and paramedics that you had to be virtually at death's door before you were treated. Who knows how many lives could have been saved by earlier oxygen treatment, as happens in Germany? Also the virtually criminal practice of discharging elderly patients from hospital into care homes without testing if they were Covid-positive, so as to free up beds

The government clearly didn't want the media to be full of pictures of patients lying on trolleys in the corridors, so they avoided that by just not letting people into hospital instead.

Also the U.K. telling everyone “If you think you’ve got COVID, you don’t need to tell us, 111 or your GP”. We were the only country telling people to stay at home and not have any kind of contact tracing.

Other countries take people in, We wait until they are at the stage of needing a ventilator to show how well the PR machine has worked with our empty hospitals. You know more police and ambulances are going to sudden deaths at home?

Other countries politicians look horrified and say its shit. Ours look like they are trying to win the next general election.

You also know that people only started ordering PPE in March? They should ave done this in February.

I think Keir Starmer has joined the thread

Which people started ordering ppe in March?

The healthcare system at the point of use is excellent, especially now as ironically a lot of the pressures such as A&E and non-urgent surgeries are much less.

The greatest injustice in this country is that a publicly, tax funded organisation such as the NHS has to be kept afloat by charitable donations. Captain Tom, while a hero in his own right, raising £30m for the NHS is celebrated as a success. However, this should be looked at as a failure of those in charge to deliver adequate care. Likewise, Hancock thanking national newspapers on twitter for supplying PPE. It's an embarrassment.

Does any other country in the world need as much charitable support for tax funded organisations?

I don’t think people are suggesting that, though. This isn’t a Labour/Conservative polarisation. It is that this particular government, the one in charge now, have been outstandingly rubbish. A Labour government, with whoever had been in charge, might have been rubbish too.

Lots of people are making our it woikd have been better under labour. Or blaming tory voters.

Glad people in Toronto are laughing. Because something does add up about their numbers. About 6 weeks ago woma was interviewed on BBC. Talking about the care homes in Canada. 600 of the homes had cases of covid.

But their death rate is so low. Do they actually admit who they including in their figures?

Again, looking at per capita is important and looking at how people are spread across a country. We were always going to one of the worst hit, because theres so many people in crowded cities.

But at least so dicks can laugh at people dying. Go them!

Saoirse7 in all fairness alot of the money for NHS charities goes to extras.

We, as the public, expect so much more of the NHS, than it was ever intended to give.

People are also at loss less forgiving when the doctors and nurses make mistakes or make a call that doesn't pan out. I am not talking about clear negligence.

Alot of the time, doctors don't have a clear path. There's many options, they have to choose one. Its judgment, alot of the time. But many people expect a doctor to make the right decision, even when their is nor right decision.

As the public we are quite unforgiving of the NHS. Before all the clapping etc.

@peggysgettingcrazy Which people started ordering ppe in March?

‘They’ of course

(Whoever ‘they’ are)

Meanwhile in Canada...
www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/world/canada/montreal-nursing-homes-coronavirus.html
The deaths in Canada were discovered late last week at Résidence Herron, a private home for seniors in Montreal, after the local health authority, alarmed by staff shortages and the spread of coronavirus at the home, took control of the residence.
They found dehydrated residents lying listless in bed, unfed for days, with excrement seeping out of their diapers.
“I’d never seen anything like it in my 32-year nursing career,” said Loredana Mule, a nurse on the team. “It was horrific — there wasn’t enough food to feed people, the stench could’ve killed a hors
After she left the home, she said, she collapsed in her car and wept.
A skeleton staff of two nurses had been left to care for a private residence with nearly 150 beds, she said. The remaining staff had fled amid the outbreak of the coronavirus, leaving patients, some paralyzed or with other chronic illnesses, to fend for themselves

@Saoirse7 Does any other country in the world need as much charitable support for tax funded organisations?

Nope. Because they don’t have them in the first place.

It just us flogging ourselves. We have always been critical of ourselves as a nation. Take note how Sweden has somehow got off lightly and even been held up as a good example by WHO.

@BikeRunSki @B1rdbra1n

Wow B1. That is horrendous. And a good thing we don’t think it good to ‘laugh back’ at the Canadians. I hope they feel ashamed at both laughing at other countries and what is going on in their own.

@olivehater reports from Sweden are that they are close to achieving herd immunity. I don’t know if that is true or not but if true then at a population level they have played a blinder. Because they won’t get a second wave or a third or a fourth. And they have kept their economy ticking over so fewer people will die of poverty too.

Sweden is saying they have herd immunity yet the world health organisation is saying it's too early to know if immunity is possible
These two things don't seem to line up!

@B1rdbra1n that’s only because the WHO don’t have the definitive evidence for that. But I am willing to take a bet that if you have caught it an create antibodies you will be immune. That is the science a vaccine is built on so I bloody hope so. If we don’t build any immunity to this virus then a vaccine won’t be possible.

Italian carehome deaths up to the middle of April are included in the statistics and account for 6773 deaths. (I haven't checked if others have yet been added, it was a few days ago I found that information)
Italy absolutely didn't get it right at first. It was a perfect storm:
Everyone thought China was a long way away
Everyone thought Covid would be like bird flu and swine flu and burn itself out quickly
The first two patients in Italy were Chinese tourists, so again, yes, the "othering", won't happen to us, they brought it with them, we cured them mentality.
Patient zero from the second and unrelated, outbreak to the Chinese tourists was German, so early connections regarding the who, how, and where, weren't made until much later
Patient 1 was a young and healthy superspreader.
It was ski season, so the regions where cases were erupting were reluctant to act (Lombardia's governor now says he was begging the govt in Rome to do something for weeks)

But...

My friend visited the south of Italy on the 14th February, leaving on the 18th. Temperature checks by then were commonplace in airports.

When the lockdown came, it was rigid, and has stayed rigid. It's now been relaxed, as of last Monday, and yes, people are being twats, to the point the authorities in some towns are saying they might reinstate restrictions, especially for teenagers who, having been inside for 8 weeks solid, are the main culprits.

Italy triaged who got a ventilator. The UK has triaged who got a place in ICU. A relative of mine has died of Covid and was not given ICU care because of her age.

There is a criminal investigation going on into carehome deaths in Italy. There may well be a public enquiry about the same in the UK.

Whichever side of the political divide you stand, very few countries are going to come out of this looking good.

Italians generally support the EU though there is always the "we pay more into it" trope going round that gets said by all euro sceptics whatever their nationality. They certainly feel that the UK's decision to leave was foolish and will never happen in Italy. Yes, young people are enamoured of UK culture. T'was ever thus. The two things aren't mutually exclusive.

Italians admire British "civility" and organisation, politeness and kindness to strangers. Italians in the UK are definitely treated better than foreigners in Italy are treated. Boris Johnson is a laughing stock, yes. He was a long time before Covid.

PeggysGettinCrazy

I think this whole scenario has brought to lights methods that obviously should have been brought to light before. Simple things such as a telephone GP, not everyone needs to ser a GP. People with recurrent illness such as tonsillitis or kidney infections know what is wrong with that and can almost detail the prescription they need. Why can't swathes of people who don't need to see the GP f2f be seen this way? If that isn't deemed good enough, why can't Pharmacists be given greater powers of diagnosis and dispensing for minor illnesses. They already diagnose and advise treatment for otc medicines.

@B1rdbra1n oh and I take what the WHO say with a bit of a pinch of salt given that they said that there was no evidence for human to human transmission as late as the 23 Jan 2020. They like to hedge their bets

Bool, what you say makes sense, even so in order to make the herd immunity claim would Sweden not need to show that they have tested for and found antibodies in a large section of the population?

sweden is doing social distancing quite well, which seems to be working.
plus apart from stockholm and malmö sweden is not very densely populated at all.

Simarly to the Italy/UK debate I am actually a lot more shocked by the story about the Canadian care home posted above than I am about similar stories I have read about numerous Spanish care homes. Obviously I hold the Canadians to a higher standard than the Spanish, but why?