Italian Hospitals Overwhelmed

[Zhong Lu + 845]

https://triblive.com/news/world/not-a-wave-a-tsunami-italy-hospitals-at-coronavirus-limit/

The coronavirus outbreak tearing through Italy has turned a nation that usually donates medical expertise and equipment abroad into a country in need. Some hospitals in hard-hit Lombardy are at saturation point, unable to admit new patients. Every day is a scramble to find more intensive care beds than the critically ill who need them. There still aren’t enough protective masks to go around.

The doctors who tended to the first patients in the north are now sounding the alarm to colleagues in Italy and abroad, warning of what will come and urging them to prepare.

“It’s not a wave. It’s a tsunami,” said Dr. Roberto Rona, in charge of intensive care at the Monza hospital. “It’s something that makes you change completely how you run a hospital.”

Three weeks ago Friday, Italy’s health care emergency began in the small Lombard town of Codogno. It has since exploded into the biggest source of infections in what is now a worldwide pandemic.

Italy’s high death rate — currently over 7% and double the average globally — has been blamed on its unusually old population, which is second only to Japan’s. But about a third of the ICU patients in Lombardy are aged 50-64, meaning the virus isn’t just striking the very old, but also Italians still in their working prime.

[Daniel Ryslink + 19]

This is something Trump and Johnson supporters need to see, or better yet, experience firsthand. 

The opinion that "it's just a mild flu that kills only the fat, old and sick, bring it on!" is the most dangerous opinion these days. Compared to what's happening in Italy and Spain today, New York will be a veritable apocalypse. 

[Zhong Lu + 845]

Some of them have already changed their opinions, which is good.  I'm trying not to categorize people into large generalized groups.

Edited March 26, 2020 by Zhong Lu