Inspired by the last video of Mario Giordano published on these pageswhich basically denounces the pilates inaction in de facto decreeing the end of all health restrictions, I would like to tell an unpleasant story of ordinary viral madness that occurred to me a few days ago at the entrance to a public hospital in my region, the governed Umbria by the Northern League Tesei. A grotesque local story that speaks volumes about what is still happening in the real country, which in terms of health seems to be following thefoolish Chinese strategy of zero risk for a clinically almost disappeared disease.
Covid madness
Accompanying a person for a specialist visit to the Pantalla hospital, a hamlet in the municipality of Todi, in the province of Perugia, I found myself faced with an Area 51-style situation. The main entrance was barred and access, subject to identification of people, was allowed only to those few users who could still take advantage of specialist visits.
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Outside the same access hole there was a folder, aimed at users and operators, which contained the following text: “Given the current epidemiological situation and having taken note of the indications regarding the adoption of the protective devices referred to in regional ordinance of 22 December 2021….. It has been arranged that tAll persons authorized to enter the hospital must be equipped with Ffp2 masks. Furthermore, it is clearly specified that “access to the hospital Cups is prohibited for users who only have to book specialist services; please use the Cup points – from other health centers – and authorized pharmacies”.
At this point, while I was taking some pictures of the unlikely folder, a control officer comes out and he asks me if I was allowed to photograph the entrance of the hospital, specifying that otherwise I would have to ask permission from a local manager. To my remonstrances, with which I wanted to clarify that there is no such ban and which I considered all of this very depressing after three years of pandemic madness, the lady took her leave with a chilling sentence: “Perhaps you are not informed, but there are these security measures because ours is a Covid hospital.”
So even little Umbria, which has never suffered any health emergency in these long years of pandemic delirium, still today allows itself the luxury of having some hospitals almost exclusively dedicated to the treatment of an endemic and clinically rapidly disappearing virus. By carrying out a summary research, it emerged that the mayors and administrators of the vast area that uses the Pantalla hospital are on a war footing since this summerwhen the Regional Health decided to reactivate the numerous Covid beds, previously abandoned due to patients to be hospitalized.
“Feature recovery”
In this sense, the neighboring Municipality of Marsciano wrote a harsh letter last July, apparently without any result to the regional authorities, asking “a total recovery of functionality” of the aforementioned hospital and denouncing the following critical issues which, like many other places of care in this unfortunate country, are far from being overcome:
a) the zeroing of the surgical interventions scheduled in the structure with the Pantalla team, which far exceed the 200 booked;
b) the reduction to almost zero of the fundamental diagnostic imaging activities;
c) the daytime presence of anesthesiologists only, with obvious repercussions on the full functioning of many other connected services, and the relocation of some of them to the Città di Castello hospital.
So, once again we are faced with the Chinese rubber wall which, in a senseless attempt to block the circulation of an endemic and less and less aggressive virusit maintains a half-service health service which even before Covid was characterized, for many serious and very serious diseases, by very long and sometimes biblical waiting lists.
The question is: do we want to continue along the pilates line that has rightly accused Giordano, or do we try to take on the responsibility, which others have already taken for a long time, of classifying Covid-19 as a flu-like illness, returning to full normality? To Schillaci and experts from the Ministry of Health the arduous sentence.
Claudio Romiti, 27 November 2022
