by Soeren Kern, GATESTONE INSTITUTE • April 11, 2020 at 5:00 am
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- In addition to the ethical questions raised by the rationing of healthcare according to age, the denial of medical attention to the elderly, many of whom have paid into the social welfare system all their lives, also casts a spotlight on the shortcomings of socialized medicine in Southern Europe, where austerity measures imposed by the European Central Bank have resulted in massive budget cuts for public healthcare.
- In documents leaked to several Spanish media, the Catalan Emergency Medical Service (Servicio de Emergencias Médicas) instructed doctors, nurses and ambulance personnel to inform the families of older patients suffering from coronavirus that “death at home is the best option.” … The protocol also advised medical personnel to avoid referring to the lack of hospital beds in Catalonia.
- “My father started working at the age of 14 until he was 65. He never asked for anything. On March 18, he needed a respirator to avoid dying and was denied…. This is the Spain we have. My father’s generation built this country, its reservoirs, roads, agriculture, working 14 hours a day, coming out of a postwar period. And they are being left to die.” — Óscar Haro, YouTube video, March 20, 2020.
- In November 2019, two months before the coronavirus first appeared in Spain, the Spanish government revealed that nearly 700,000 patients were on a waiting list for surgeries. Nationwide, patients had to wait on average 115 days to receive surgery; in Catalonia, patients had to wait nearly six months; in Madrid patients had to wait for six weeks.
- The severity of the coronavirus crisis in Italy and Spain, where elderly patients are being allowed to die for the benefit of the young, is due in large measure to the austerity measures associated with their membership in the eurozone. The large numbers of dead, especially among the elderly, appears to be the price that Italians and Spaniards are paying to be part of a monetary union which they never should have joined.
New protocols, being issued by medical authorities in European regions most affected by the coronavirus pandemic, instruct medical personnel effectively to abandon elderly patients to their fate. Pictured: A pre-triage medical tent is set up in front of Santa Maria Nuova Hospital in Florence, Italy on February 25, 2020. (Photo by Carlo Bressan/AFP via Getty Images)<
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With well over a half-million confirmed cases of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Europe, a growing number of regional medical authorities have begun issuing guidelines and protocols that call for hospitals to prioritize younger patients over those who are older.
In Italy and Spain, the two countries most affected by the coronavirus pandemic in Europe, doctors in overwhelmed intensive care units have for weeks been making life or death decisions about who receives emergency treatment. The new protocols, however, amount to government directives that instruct medical personnel effectively to abandon elderly patients to their fate.
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Infamous! Barbarous! Now we know why so many people died in Italy and Spain this flu season.The thousands and tens of thousands who have died in Italy and Spain did not die of “coronavirus.” They were murdered by their own governments and the government of Germany, which dominates the EU central bank.
The people who were denied treatment and left to die were precisely those who were most at risk of dying. The average age of those who died of “coronavirus” in Italy is 80. Now we know why.
As for the younger patients who were admitted to hospital, they didn’t have much of a chance, either. Several doctors have said that antibiotic resistant bacteria is very prevalent in Italian hospitals, including bacteria that cause extremely dangerous pneumococcal pneumonia. Some of the younger patents who were admitted to the hospital probably had viral influenza or viral pneumonia, both of which have a fairly low death rate in younger patients. But in the overcrowded wards, treated by doctors and nurses who in some instances did not even have gloves or surgical masks, they were infected with pneumoccous bacteria with their incredibly high death rate and
died.
Infamous!!! The bureaucrats and bankers who imposed “austerity measures” on the health care systems of much of Europe deserve the death penalty.