[D66] Italian army drafted to transport corpses

[Antid Oto]

wsws.org:

Italian army drafted to transport corpses as coronavirus deaths surge in 
Europe
By Alex Lantier
20 March 2020

As schools, universities and workplaces close across Europe, and Italy, 
France, and Spain impose confinement on their populations, Europe’s 
coronavirus death toll surged yesterday. With 244,799 coronavirus cases 
worldwide now, Europe is declaring 107,397 cases and 4,964 deaths and 
800 of the 1,010 people who died yesterday—including 16 in Germany, 44 
in Britain, 108 in France, 165 in Spain and 427 in Italy.

In the pandemic’s first epicenter, China, there have been 3,245 deaths 
and 80,928 cases, of which 70,420 have recovered, and the number of 
active cases continues to fall after drastic confinement measures and 
aggressive treatment largely halted the spread of the disease. But in 
Europe, the new epicenter, the disease is still spreading out of 
control, swamping growing numbers of hospital systems with patients 
suffocating of pneumonia due to the virus.

Italy has seen 41,035 cases and 3,405 coronavirus deaths—more deaths 
than in China, which has 23 times Italy’s population. Health systems in 
northern Italy, the European epicenter of the disease, are so 
overwhelmed that they cannot process the corpses of the dead, let alone 
tend to all the sick. The 427 deaths yesterday came after 475 people 
died Wednesday in Italy, the single highest death toll in any country 
throughout the pandemic.

A human tragedy of enormous dimensions is unfolding in Italy. In 
Bergamo, where the number of dead is rising faster than authorities and 
churches can bury or cremate them, the Italian government sent a convoy 
of fifteen army trucks to transport the corpses to other cities for 
disposal. Loaded with coffins, the trucks drove at night through the 
city’s deserted streets, filmed only by Bergamo residents confined in 
apartments overlooking their route.

Abandoned by the Italian government, doctors are taking to social media 
to issue desperate appeals for help. Dr Stefano Fagiuoli of Bergamo’s 
Papa Giovanni hospital posted a brief video in English, “I have two 
messages. The first one is for the general population: please stay at 
home. The second message is for whoever wants to help us. We are in 
desperate need of both nurses and physicians, together with ventilators 
and protective equipment.”

In Cremona, Dr Romano Paolucci said, “we are at the end of our strength. 
This is a small hospital and we are taking in a lot of people.” The 
number of critically pneumonic patients is far larger than the number of 
ventilators available to save them, forcing doctors to make the barbaric 
choice of whom they will try to save and whom they will condemn to death 
by denying them access to a ventilator. Staff are shattered, Paolucci 
added, watching patients “die alone, without a loved one at their side, 
often having to say their final farewell over a scratchy cell phone line.”

As the numbers of cases and deaths surge in Europe, moreover, such 
conditions are gradually emerging across the continent. Spain saw 2,626 
new cases and 165 deaths yesterday, and staff are reporting that 
hospitals in Madrid, one of the worst-hit areas, are on the verge of 
collapse. Multiple patients are crammed into single rooms, intensive 
care beds are installed in hallways, every available machine is used, 
and yet, as one doctor told El Diario, “We are in a terrible situation. 
In intensive care Wednesday we had 200 people we could not treat, people 
were crying.”

Similar conditions are expected in Paris. On Tuesday, as 
shelter-in-place confinement took effect across France, epidemiologists 
told the Paris Public Hospitals (AP-HP) management they would need not 
hundreds but 4,000 intensive care beds, to deal with a surge in cases 
expected to continue for weeks after confinement begins. After the 
“shock” this announcement produced, staff moved to convert all available 
space at Paris hospitals to coronavirus care. However, doctors still 
report critical shortages including of ventilator equipment and medical 
masks.

“We are all afraid of what is coming,” Dr Nicolas Van Grunderbeeck told 
Le Monde in Arras , while a Paris doctor denounced authorities’ failure 
to act more quickly: “The material is finally being provided, but it 
will probably not be enough. It is three weeks ago we should have 
started the quarantines, emptying the hospitals, training everyone to 
treat Covid-19. I am terrified that if there is not a real quarantine, 
strict shelter-at-home orders, then there will be even more deaths.”

These events underscore the criminal character of the policies pursued 
by European capitalism. European Union (EU) austerity pursued over 
decades, particularly since the 2008 Wall Street crash, looted critical 
health and social infrastructure and drastically increased social 
inequality. And as the number of cases began to explode in late 
February, EU governments opposed shelter-at-home confinement orders and 
tried to force workers to stay on the job—hoping to avoid shutting down 
factories and keep providing massive bailouts to prop up inflated stock 
markets.

With stunning indifference to human life, top EU officials demanded 
workers keep working and accept that tens or hundreds of millions across 
Europe would fall ill. Chancellor Angela Merkel said 60 to 70 percent of 
the German population (49 to 57 million people) would become sick. Chris 
Witty, a top UK medical officer, argued against efforts to halt the 
spread of coronavirus: “It’s not possible to stop everyone getting it 
and it’s also not desirable because you want some immunity in the 
population to protect ourselves in the future.” [emphasis added]

Though social distancing and confinement of large sections of the 
working population at home are necessary to halt the spread of such a 
contagious illness, many EU officials are maintaining this policy. On 
Wednesday evening, Merkel spoke again, ruling out a national confinement 
order and proposing no measures to train new personnel and build new 
medical equipment. On Monday, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte also 
dismissed shelter-in-place orders as impractical and insisted they would 
not be implemented, though 2,460 Dutch people now have the virus.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the losses of human life being 
prepared throughout the world may approach those of major armed conflicts.

At 107,397 cases in Europe, hospitals are already being swamped, 
critical patients are being denied life-saving care, and the pandemic is 
claiming many thousands of lives. Were 60 to 70 percent of the EU 
population (305-356 million people) to fall ill with coronavirus, the 
horrific scenes taking place in Milan or Madrid would be replicated a 
thousand-fold across Europe. Hospitals would be completely overwhelmed, 
tens of millions would be denied care, and many millions would die.

The independent political intervention of the working class in Europe 
and internationally against the reactionary policies of the financial 
aristocracy is now a matter of life and death. It was only the eruption 
of wildcat strikes in factories across Italy last week that compelled 
the Italian government to abandon its opposition to confinement orders—a 
policy subsequently adopted in France, and in Madrid and the Basque 
Country in Spain.

To fight the illness, however, power cannot be left in the hands of the 
ruling class. EU governments still refuse to organize mass testing of 
the population to identify those spreading the illness, to organize 
emergency production of key medical equipment to treat the sick, and to 
support workers in a period of quarantine and confinement. This 
undermines the long-term value of whatever quarantine policies have been 
adopted.

After the European Central Bank (ECB) agreed this week to give a 
750-billion-euro bailout to EU financial markets, claims that there are 
no resources for such policies are absurd. These resources exist, and no 
consideration of private wealth or profit can be allowed to interfere 
with the use of this wealth, produced by the working class, to save lives.

The upsurge of strikes across Italy and internationally points to the 
power of the working class, acting independently of state-controlled 
trade union bureaucracies, to take control of factories and impound the 
wealth of the financial aristocracy. Only such a struggle, based on a 
socialist perspective, can overcome toxic levels of social inequality 
and provide resources for a coordinated, international fight against the 
virus.