Thursday, November 12, 2020

Hunger in Italy? It is Coming Faster than Expected

 

 A malnourished Dutch girl during the "hongerwinter" of 1945. It was the last famine recorded in Western Europe -- but for how long?

Olga Milanese, Italian lawyer living in Salerno, not far from Naples, wrote the post below as a comment in a Facebook group. I thought it was interesting enough to be reproduced here, and I do that with her kind permission. It seems that things are really collapsing in Italy. In a certain way, it was unavoidable, but it is amazing that it is happening so fast. The Covid crisis never was impossible to manage with a reasonable effort, but the Italian government bungled almost every aspect of the crisis, overreacting to it, using it as an excuse to terrorize people, while being totally ineffective at upgrading the health care system in such a way to handle the situation. In the process, the government managed to destroy the sources of income of the poor and of the most vulnerable sections of the Italian society -- and with that wrecking the whole economic system. Now, things are getting worse every day. Eventually it will end, I figure, but not before we reach the bottom, and it may be a hard landing.

 

By Olga Milanese

Can I say something a little strong? Then I'll really shut up, disappear and no longer speak, because I consider it useless by now. I understand all positions, really. Already in June I felt that the situation had not changed, that, at least in my opinion, the same mistakes continued to be made in the sanitary districts. (having visited some of them several times), that the health care units were absolutely unprepared, as were the general practitioners. 

Nothing, absolutely nothing has been done, not even by those same doctors who, first and foremost, should have denounced openly and without hesitation the disgusting inactivity of the government already  before the summer not in the autumn crisis, those same doctors who today invoke the lockdown!!!

I invite them to come to suburban homes, to popular buildings, for God's sake, to the lower reaches of the city to see with their own eyes the misery that exists there!!! From the group that deals with helping the families who lost their jobs in my city, yesterday I had a young mother, whose husband, a pizza chef, was left without work, with two small children, a 3-year-old male and a 6-year-old girl, two gaunt creatures, like their mother, fragile, almost invisible, who lacked EVERYTHING, everything !!! From food, to soap for washing, to detergent for clothes. They are not the first and they will not be the last. 

I'm a drop in an advancing ocean. I really invite these doctors and all those who invoke general closures or even just the stop of work to come to these places and look them in the eyes of these children, these parents deprived of dignity, smile, desire to live, without feeling shame and disgust for that. that we are becoming. Sorry for the outburst, but these situations exist, they are one step away from the doors of our house. Is there a valid reason to ignore them without falling into inhumanity ??? 

Do you choose to do something for them too or do they have to die forgotten by God, in the name of medicine and science? For me only the first way makes sense. In my view, there are no alternatives to humanity! And there is no fear of openly denouncing those measures that have reduced those children to hunger! This kind of appeals above, as I see it, must be condemned straight away, no hesitations!

 

Olga Milanese is a civil lawyer. She mainly deals with aspects related to the protection of rights in business, family, and in relation to medical and professional responsibility, as well as the issue of the protection of human rights

 

 

 

 

Original in Italian

Posso dire una cosa un po' forte? Poi veramente mi taccio, sparisco e non parlo più, perché lo ritengo ultroneo ormai. Io comprendo tutte le posizioni, veramente. Da giugno avvertivo che la situazione non era cambiata, che, almeno dalle mie parti, si continuavano a fare gli stessi errori nei P.S.(essendoci andata più volte), che le Asl erano assolutamente impreparate, così come i medici di base. Nulla, assolutamente nulla è stato fatto, neanche da quegli stessi medici che, in primis, avrebbero dovuto denunciare apertamente e senza remore il disgustoso inattivismo del governo da prima dell'estate non nella crisi autunnale, quegli stessi medici che oggi invocano il lockdown!!! Io li invito a venire nelle case di periferie, nei palazzi popolari, santo Dio, nei bassi della città a vedere con i propri occhi la miseria che c'è!!! Tramite il gruppo che si occupa di aiutare tutte le famiglie che hanno perso il lavoro nella mia città, ieri a me è toccata una giovane madre, il cui marito, pizzaiolo, è rimasto senza lavoro, con due bambini piccoli, un maschio di 3 anni e una bambina di 6 anni, due creature smunte, come la madre, fragili, quasi invisibili, a cui mancava TUTTO, tutto!!! Dal cibo, al sapone per lavarsi, al detersivo per i panni. Non sono i primi e non saranno gli ultimi. Sono una goccia in un oceano che avanza. Io veramente invito questi medici e chiunque invochi chiusure generalizzate o anche solo lo stop del lavoro a venire in questi posti e guardarli negli occhi questi bambini, questi genitori privati della dignità, del sorriso, della voglia di vivere, senza provare vergogna e ribrezzo per quello che stiamo diventando. Scusate lo sfogo, ma queste situazioni esostono, sono ad un passo dalle porte di casa nostra. Esiste un motivo valido per ignorarli senza scadere nella disumanità??? Si sceglie di far qualcosa anche per loro o devono morire dimenticati da Dio, in nome della medicina e della scienza? Per me ha senso solo la prima strada. Non esistono, nella mia visione, alternative all'umanità! E non esiste la paura di denunciare apertamente quelle misure che hanno ridotto quei bambini alla fame! Questo genere di appelli qui sopra, per come la vedo io, vanno condannati in tronco, senza se e senza ma!

Who

Ugo Bardi is a member of the Club of Rome, faculty member of the University of Florence, and the author of "Extracted" (Chelsea Green 2014), "The Seneca Effect" (Springer 2017), and Before the Collapse (Springer 2019)