by Giulio Meotti

There was once an Italian boy, “raised in a highly esteemed family, where respect for values​​ prevailed, the way of life of the older generations. His life on a farm passed in the usual manner of all sharecroppers.” 

That boy arrived at military service and was sent to the Don, the terrible campaign against Russia. In Bolzano he made his last Italian meal: “Pasta, meat with potatoes, a loaf of bread and a glass of wine.” And then by train through Poland, Ukraine, 17 days and 17 nights to Russia.

“The absence of  family made itself felt even more. On seeing those cultivated fields, I thought of the small fields of my house. I thought of mine which would need my arms, my hands”.

The Russian cold decimated those hands, soon becoming “the swollen and purple hands.” The men protected themselves with boxes of ointment to spread in the evening and in the morning. “I prayed to God that he would give me the strength to resist.” He managed to resist with 22 other young men in a hole, with the Russian soldiers who had surrounded them outside.

“We don’t want to die in this rat hole, we want to go back to our homes and to our parents, we don’t want to die!” they said. They collected flyers thrown by Russian planes: “Italians! Return to your beautiful Italy, where you have the sun that warms you, return to your beautiful families, or you will die without even fighting.” 

Instead they stayed to fight. That boy earned the silver medal. They returned to Italy on foot, isba after isba (cottage by cottage, ed.) via Vienna. “One hundred days in a sea of ​​snow. I don’t know how many died, but they were an enormous number.” He almost lost a lung.

“I got married and had the joy of having children whom I love and loved more than my life.”

I was lucky enough to get to know and to frequent that so humble man, with uncertain writing, but with generosity and contagious values. The above was from his autobiography. He is the grandfather of my wife. I thought of him today, today when another 793 of our Italian elderly have lost their lives in the coronavirus pandemia.

The epidemic taking place in recent weeks in Italy (5.000 victims in three weeks) has highlighted the demographic decay of some nations of the world, including mine. The new coronavirus is hitting the foundations of our society, questions the sacredness of life, brings out the selfishness of those who think they are immune or belong to a low-risk population, but it can also finally give impetus to a renewed spirit of service and community, the rediscovery of solidarity in favor of the weakest, the beauty of an evening with loved ones, closeness to the children in the name of duties that ultimately prevail on human and family relationships.

Today a disease highlights, not only in Italy, the mistakes of those who believed that a lone man is an option in this world, that families are a relic of a past to forget and that children are a burden on the career and to a person’s happiness.

The health tsunami is related to the policies and decades of oblivion relating to our culture of life that has its roots in the Biblical tradition which, not surprisingly, has not found a place in the founding documents of our European Union. This epidemic awakens us from our collective sleep.

We must return to the values of that boy. Our founding fathers.  

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/25424

‘To fight the coronavirus, President Donald Trump is adopting the audacity of false hope,” an article from CNN declared on Friday, after Trump announced he’s pushed the FDA to fast-track the approval of the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine to treat patients with the coronavirus. Small studies have shown promising results so far, but more trials are needed.  Rather than acknowledge this promising development, CNN, and other media outlets rushed to attack Trump.

The president “peddles snake oil and false hope,” wrote the USA Today editorial board. “Trump was at the White House podium peddling a fake cure for a virus that could kill hundreds of thousands of Americans in a way that would have gotten him kicked off the Home Shopping Network and potentially invited federal prosecution for false claims and fraud,” claimed Salon.

But a Florida man who was diagnosed with the coronavirus says that the very drug Trump said showed promise in treating it saved him from certain death.

For five days after catching the disease, Rio Giardinieri, 52, experienced horrendous back pain, headaches, cough and fatigue. Once diagnosed with the coronavirus and pneumonia, he was put on oxygen in the ICU, but after more than a week, he was told by doctors there was nothing more they could do.  “I was at the point where I was barely able to speak and breathing was very challenging,” Giardinieri said. “I really thought my end was there.” Giardinieri even said goodbye to his wife and three children.

But, after receiving an article on hydroxychloroquine from a friend, he contacted an infectious disease doctor about it.

“He gave me all the reasons why I would probably not want to try it because there are no trials, there’s no testing, it was not something that was approved,” Giardinieri told Fox 11 in Los Angeles. “And I said, ‘Look, I don’t know if I’m going to make it until the morning,’ because at that point I really thought I was coming to the end because I couldn’t breathe anymore.”

“He agreed and authorized the use of it and 30 minutes later the nurse gave it to me,” Giardinieri continued.

He received an IV with the medicine, and despite some episodes he experienced during the treatment, by morning it was “like nothing ever happened.” He’s had no fever and has no trouble breathing anymore. He expects to be discharged from the hospital this week. “To me, there was no doubt in mind that I wouldn’t make it until morning,” said Giardinieri. “So to me, the drug saved my life.”

Giardinieri is not the only one who says the drug Trump said showed promise helped them.

Actor Daniel Dae Kim, 51, who was on the hit show Lost, also says the anti-malaria drug helped him after he was diagnosed with coronavirus. He took several drugs and treatments: the antiviral medicine Tamiflu, the antibiotic Azithromycin, and a Glycopyrrolate inhaler alongside hydroxychloroquine. He believes they all contributed to his recovery. “I won’t say this is a cure and I won’t say definitively that you should go out and use it, but what I will say is that I believe it was crucial to my recovery,” Kim said.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/false-hope-coronavirus-patient-in-florida-says-drug-touted-by-trump-saved-his-life/

The British government has ordered people to stay in their homes and only to leave in a very limited number of circumstances, as well as banning public gatherings of more than two people in an attempt to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Addressing the nation on Monday evening after a three-hour meeting of the government COBRA emergency planning group, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that measures announced so far — which included ordering pubs, bars, and restaurants to close and advising the public to stay at home — were no longer enough to prevent coronavirus spreading through the country too quickly.

Explaining that slowing the development of the virus was the government’s key priority, as preventing too many new cases emerging on any given day would prevent the national health infrastructure from being overwhelmed, the Prime Minister told the United Kingdom: “The time has now come for us all to do more. From this evening, I must give the British people a very simple instruction: you must stay at home.”

In a far-reaching lockdown that brings Britain in line with the harshest regimes imposed on European nations in the depth of the coronavirus, the Prime Minister announced a national emergency that was to last for at least three weeks. British residents won’t be allowed to leave their homes except in a very limited set of circumstances, and the right of assembly is being severely curtailed, with no more than two people who don’t live together being permitted to meet together in public.

The acceptable reasons to leave the home were to shop for food — and even then as infrequently as possible — to exercise once a day, to go to hospital, or to travel to and from essential work.

Underlining that these points were no longer suggestions, the Prime Minister told the nation: “If you don’t follow the rules, the police will have the powers to enforce them, including fines and dispersing gatherings.”

Making clear that members of the public should stop seeing their friends, the Prime Minister went on: “You should not be meeting friends. If your friends ask you to meet, you should say no. You should not be meeting family members who don’t live in your home.”

How the police are expected to know when members of the public are outside without a good reason is unclear, but in Italy and other countries residents have had to fill out government forms to get permission to leave their homes and those found without paperwork in public can face harsh punishments. In the United Kingdom, The Daily Telegraph, a pro-Conservative paper with links to the government reports the fines are likely to be of £30 for congregating in groups of more than two people.

In addition to the restrictions on individuals, the government was also closing all non-essential businesses, being most except food and medicine retailers, and for all religious services to be cancelled except funerals.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/03/23/uk-coronavirus-lockdown/

An Israeli doctor working in the northern Italian city of Parma, told Israeli TV that the number of patients is continuing to grow and that authorities are not allowing those over 60 who are ill access to respiratory machines.

Israeli doctor Gai Peleg told Channel 12 that families of the terminally ill are being allowed close contact with the infected loved one, breaking quarantine.

Jerusalem Post:

As his department receives  coronavirus patients who are terminally ill the focus is to allow patients to meet loved ones and communicate with them during their last moments despite the quarantine regulations. Other reports claim that, as the numbers of dead increases, some families find themselves unable to secure a proper burial for their loved ones.

Peleg said that, from what he sees and hears in the hospital, the instructions are not to offer access to artificial respiratory machines to patients over 60 as such machines are limited in number.

And it appears that the Italian government is still behind the curve when it comes to supplying doctors and hospitals with enough critical equipment.

Stressed out: Italian doctors and staff are saying how under-resourced and overstressed they are. “I would say that we are at the end of our strength,” Romano Paolucci, a doctor in Cremona, told Reuters this week.

“This is a small hospital and we are taking in a lot of people, I would say the capacity is finished.”

GoFundMe: Stefano Fagiuoli, a medical official in badly affected Bergamo, Lombardy, has posted a GoFundMe page that has so far raised over $1 million.

“We are in desperate need of both nurses and physicians, together with ventilators,” he tells ABC News.

Doctors from Russia, Israel, China, the U.S., and several other nations are traveling to northern Italy to help deal with the crush of critically ill patients. It’s a wonderful example of what can be done when people work together.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/israeli-doctor-in-italy-says-they-no-longer-allow-those-over-60-access-to-respiratory-machines/

Amine Harit of Bundesliga soccer club FC Schalke 04 visited a bar despite urgent calls to avoid contact.

“It’s true, Amine was there with a friend because he was bored at home. It was a mistake, and he has now realized it,” said Jochen Schneider, head of sports, to the BILD newspaper.

According to the report, the Moroccan Harit is said to have visited a shisha bar in Essen. Therefore, local residents had called the police, because the bar was still open during the night. The guests of the bar were warned.

welt.de/sport/fussball/bundesliga/fc-schalke-04/article206698785/Schalke-Profi-Armine-Harit-trotz-Corona-Krise-nachts-in-Shisha-Bar.html

The Corona crisis is an opportunity for model “integrated” Islamists in the midst of Germany to live out their usual resentments and prejudices against non-believers, “kuffar”, without restraint. The fact that non-Muslim Germans now regularly wash their hands or “cover themselves” in order to protect themselves from infection provokes them to ridicule.

Islamist Internet portals made fun of the Corona prevention measures of the natives – as if these were new findings that the Koran had been providing for 1400 years. That the commandment to wash one’s hands is no more a ritual cleansing than the wearing of mouthguards is a form of veiling – but rather hygiene measures that are not even remotely realized in the vast majority of the Islamic hemisphere.

Of course, the hate preachers of Islamization don’t care. Their collective inferiority complex, which suggests a feeling of superiority to their own followers, overlooks the fact that the hated “infidels” are light years ahead of the Muslim stage of development in scientific and medical terms. Certainly, natural history, ancient knowledge of salvation and oriental medicine in Maghreb and Mashreq are fascinating and time-honoured, but what Salafists and Wahabbites suggest to their followers as superiority are crude half-truths and fairy tales for a pre-medieval world view. For these fanatics, bare hands for anal cleansing are always more important than toilet paper.

journalistenwatch.com/2020/03/23/corona-vorsichtsmassnahmen-islamisten/

In the period from March 21, 2020, 7:00 pm, to March 22, 2020, 4:58 pm, a fire broke out in the Catholic Church of St. Anna in Blieskastel-Biesingen (photo). During visiting hours, a previously unknown perpetrator entered the interior of the Catholic Church of St. Anna and set fire to the upholstery of a wooden prayer bench in a currently unknown manner. Only the upholstery was affected by the heat.

Witnesses who can provide relevant information are asked to contact the police in Homburg by calling 06841-1060.

presseportal.de/blaulicht/pm/138521/4554073

A customer of an Aldi supermarket branch in the Hohenlimburg district of Hagen ( North Rhine-Westphalia ) has recorded a very special kind of shopping experience and posted it on the Internet. A black African, shouting angrily, threatening cashiers and customers and also demolishing a cash register on his way out. What the African was upset about is not conclusively clarified. Maybe he couldn’t get any more toilet paper? Or was he bothered by the minimum distance that has to be maintained due to the corona virus? There are special markings on the floor with adhesive tape.

politikstube.com/hagen-afrikaner-dreht-in-aldi-filiale-durch/

A majority of people want their country’s borders closed in response to coronavirus, according to a new Ipsos Reuters poll.

Reuters surveyed 12,000 people across 12 of the world’s major nations between March 12 and March 15, with the poll showing that citizens are dropping open borders in favor of security. Most say their country’s borders should be closed until the coronavirus is contained.

In Italy, more than three-fourths of people support their country closings its border, with 76 percent of Italians in agreement with the measure.

Reuters found that countries in the Asia-Pacific region, such as India (79 percent) and Vietnam (78 percent), were the most supportive of closing borders.

The fourth, fifth and sixth most supportive countries were China, with 73 percent saying the supported the measure, Russia with 70 percent supporting the measure, and Australia with 69 percent supporting the measure.

Majorities also exist in the United States for closing the border (62 percent), Germany (57 percent), France (54 percent), and Canada (59 percent).

The Reuters poll also showed a rise in people who fear coronavirus could cost them their job. In Italy, 63 percent of people fear losing their job, a rise of 36 points since the last time Italians were polled two weeks before. In France, 44 percent feared losing their job while in the UK, 33 percent feared losing their job.

Politicians across Europe were initially against closing borders and even major medical organizations, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), said closing borders “won’t work”.

“The World Health Organization has warned that trying to restrict border security probably won’t work — and might even hinder the global fight against the virus and the COVID-19 disease it causes.” reportedNBC News.

In fact, the chief of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, urged nations not even to close their borders to foreigners from China, saying such “extreme measures” were not necessary.

“There is no reason for measures that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade. We call on all countries to implement decisions that are evidence-based and consistent. WHO stands ready to provide advice to any country that is considering which measures to take,” Tedros said.

The WHO has since backtracked, saying that even more restrictive quarantine measures should have been put in place, however the organization’s initial advice not to close borders may have cost the international community vital time to stem the outbreak.

Europe, the United States, nations across Asia, and many other countries, have now raced to close their borders and place ever-more restrictive measures on their citizens in a desperate attempt to keep coronavirus from spreading.

There are now 328,000 recorded coronavirus infections worldwide and nearly 14,400 deaths.

rmx.news/article/article/global-majority-supports-closing-borders-over-coronavirus-poll