Coronavirus and Capitalism

We’ve reached another sad milestone. Italy’s death toll (at 4,032 as of this evening) has now exceeded that of China.  In the last 24 hours alone, 627 people have died.  This is a disturbing figure, given that to date we’ve had about half the amount of infections that they’ve had in China. The reasons for this number, we are told, are two: Firstly, Italy’s old population with preexisting medical conditions. In fact, there is some dispute as to whether some deaths should be blamed on Covid19 and not attributed to the underlying medical issue. Secondly, at this stage, the data of infected people is likely to be heavily skewed. Only those with serious symptoms are being tested, while many people with mild symptoms are simply being told to stay at home in self-isolation.  And then, there is the question about those with no/almost no symptoms. How big is that percentile? This is something the scientific community is still grappling with, but a recent article in Forbes states that a study conducted on the passengers aboard the ill-fated Diamond Princess cruise, found that 17,9% of the passengers who tested positive where asymptomatic. While this is a small study, the results do give some perspective on the scary numbers we are reading in the press, and in particular the disproportionate Italian mortality rate. It doesn’t however help alleviate the horror of the images from Bergamo, where yesterday military trucks had to arrive to help carry the dead to other places where they can be cremated as the mortuaries there can no longer handle the load.

 A curious piece of news is that an Italian company in Brescia (incidentally one of the regions most heavily hit by the virus) has sold 500,000 Covid19 test kits to the U.S. The company, called Copan Diagnostics is manufacturing test kits and selling them all over the world. (There is apparently no shortage of test-kits here in Italy, our problem is that there is no medical staff to administer it). The kits were flown to the U.S via military aircraft, but it appears were sold to a mixture of private and public entities. Last week it was reported that China was sending Italy test-kits. This week Italy is supplying the U.S test-kits. And meanwhile, U.S senators, including Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr (read more here) have been said to have offloaded millions of dollars’ worth of stocks in businesses that would have been hit hard by a pandemic. What do these stories all have in common: Money. Follow the money trail and new things always come to light.

 On an amusing note: Some signs appeared on the park benches in the small common ground outside my building. The signs read: “The users of these benches are invited to observe the rules set out by the government in relation to the Covid19 emergency that require that people leave their homes only for proven necessity.” I wonder why, instead of inviting people to observe the rules (that clearly imply that sitting on a park bench is not a necessity) they don’t just come out and state “DON’T SIT ON THIS BENCH”. A little clarity would go a long way.