The Daily Beast actually has a good news story on this link that is well worth reading, and it’s not behind their paywall. They focused on the alarming increase in Italy’s coronavirus cases but noted it is going on throughout Europe.
While some of it is because of their aggressive testing, it doesn’t account for all of the increase.
Pictures of COVID-only units, field hospitals being erected, exhausted medics, and coffins are again dominating headlines as Italy comes to grips with a deadly second wave of COVID-19. On Wednesday, the death toll topped 125 in a 24-hour period for the first time since May when this country was still under a draconian lockdown and seen as a harbinger of what was to come.
The story’s point is they did everything right and according to the science as dictated by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. As President Trump said, Fauci was wrong — often. That is what makes this so troubling. Many feel they went to full lockdowns, and they didn’t work.
While masks and social distancing might help, the lockdowns destroyed their economies. The Beast reports:
What’s particularly troubling about the return of COVID in Italy is that the country has done everything experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci have been advising. Face masks in public places have been compulsory for months, social distancing is strongly enforced, nightclubs have never reopened, and sporting arenas are at less than a third of capacity. Children who are back at school are regularly tested and strictly social-distanced, and yet, the second wave seems completely unstoppable. While ruling out another full lockdown, Italian health officials are instead urging people to limit their own movements, even as concern grows that by keeping them at their homes, they are inadvertently encouraging private parties where the spread seems to be the worst at the moment. Italy’s health ministry released data this week showing that 80.3 percent of the new infections “occur at home” while only 4.2 percent come from recreational activities and schools.
On Wednesday, Italy logged 15,199 new infections—nearly three times as many as the worst day of the pandemic last March and a per capita rate that would be the equivalent of 90,000 new cases in a single day in the U.S., a level that has not yet been reached.
And it is only getting worse.
The virus has not acted like viruses before it, and it’s not going away. We have turned a corner, as NPR has written, in that we know full lockdowns do not work. Do NOT destroy whole economies. The virus won’t be stopped, but people can take protections without locking everything down.
The Beast reported:
Italy is by no means alone in its battle against the European second wave of the pandemic. France, Spain, and the Czech Republic have all broken records in new cases and introduced measures to mitigate the spread. The United Kingdom also has record numbers of new infections in a single day, and Ireland has completely locked down.
Germany—which largely avoided major problems during the first European wave—has reported shocking numbers of new infections, which topped 10,000 in a single day Wednesday. Authorities there have also blamed young people going out or groups meeting privately for the spread. On Wednesday, a very concerned Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte addressed the Italian Senate, assuring them that there will not be a repeat of the full lockdown, which crippled the economy and all but destroyed the tourism sector.
When can we ask the question, was this virus created in a lab in China? Maybe it is a biological weapon. We are not allowed to ask, and China won’t say but come on, this is weird.
Eventually, everyone might get it, but there will be a vaccine soon that will help. We still have to live, and we need an economy. Remember who did this to us and lied about it — the Chinese Communist Party.
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