It will be the desk analyzes, based on the figures, that will protect us from the virus, many say. But to date – based on the data published on April 12 – it can be said that Lombardy has lost all its battles, including the one against waste. Just two weeks to build one hospital at Portello, 206 beds, are worth a round of applause: it's a pity they have become usable just when the requests for intensive care are clearly decreasing, and a pity that they are able to receive no more than 3-5 patients, lacking doctors and above all technical nurses able to use assisted breathing machines. Not to mention the massacre of the Pio Albergo Trivulzio and the missing red areas of Alzano, Nembro, Bergamo and Brescia, where the rebound of responsibility between the Lombardy Region and the central government is disgusting to say the least.
But it is the statistics that sanction the sinking of Lombard healthcare: obviously not that of doctors and nurses, who are the first victims of the lack of adequate protection, but that of managers and politicians.
In Lombardy the infected are calculated in 57.592 people, among which are in 10.511 dead. The deaths represent 18,3% of the infected, nearly one in every 5 patients died.
The same comparison sees in Veneto the number of deceased equals 6% of the infected (about one death out of 16). In Lazio the calculation leads to 5,8%, one in 17 deceased. All over Italy – 19.468 dead out of 152.271 infected – the figure is 12,8%, about one dead every 8. But in theItaly excluding Lombardy, the figures become 9,5%, less than one dead for every ten infected.
No other comparisons. In Austria – 8,86 million inhabitants and 140 swabs performed – there were 337 deaths out of 13.776 positive swabs, 2,4%, one death every 42. In countries where there are few confirmed infections, treatment is evidently more timely: in Norway mortality was 1,8% of the infected, in Finland by 1,6%, in New Zealand 0,22%.
But the comparison between Lombardy and the rest of Italy is merciless and cannot be influenced by the greater or lesser number of swabs performed, nor by the greater or lesser spread of the infection (remember that a red zone was established in Veneto in the same hours in which in Lombardy the Codogno case). If the figures are processed in the same way in Italy - therefore without including those presumed to be from Covid19 among the dead and without excluding from the dead those affected by the virus but deceased from other pathologies - the data blame Lombardy. Its renowned health system has put itself out of action - the reasons are already widely debated - until it is no longer able to treat the sick. It doesn't even succeed now, with descending contagion curves: the sick stay at home and without a tampon until they are dying, the elderly in hospices remain without the possibility of treatment or compassionate visits. A bit like in New York, where, however, the mechanism is the one, which we rightly deprecate, which does not provide treatment for the poor and without insurance assistance.
The result is that millions of people remain confined, without following examples of quick efficiency (as in South Korea) nor lax examples (as in Sweden), however obtaining in exchange a very high mortality, which at this point, perhaps, depends little on the cloister. But a lot depends on disorganization and lack of timely protection of those at riskprimarily doctors and nurses.
The "confino" is not even the worst, among the worst results. Lombardy represents more than 10% of the Italian GDP and this will be reflected in the ability to produce, in exports, in unemployment.
Today we are still in an emergency, but then it will be necessary to point an accusing finger at the people entrusted with regional management and the management of individual hospitals and hospitalizations. It is not a political problem – Zaia and Fontana are both from the Northern League – but it is a problem of competence, operational skills, strategic vision. In Lombardy, evidently, they are lacking.
