By Thomas Lifson

You could not concoct a worse scenario for a pandemic catastrophe than what is unfolding Syria. Start with a regime that depends on troops sent from Iran, were satellites detect trenches being bulldozed for bodies felled by the plague of Covid-19. Add the bombing of hospitals by that same regime and secretiveness to the point of punishing doctors who speak out about coronavirus. Then consider millions of refugees living in close quarters in camps and others fleeing their chaotic and impoverished homeland into Turkey, whose leader wants to send them into Europe.

Joel Gehrke reports in The Examiner that MedGlobal founder Zaher Sahloul, whose organization provides aid to refugees, believes that at least 2,400 cases are being hidden by the regime, and:

“Their thinking within the regime is that, if they volunteer this information, then that puts them under more pressure from their supporters,” he said. “There is all this pattern in Syria of covering up these issues or delaying the information until it gets out of control.”

Assad’s regime maintains that the country has no coronavirus cases, but officials in Pakistan say that some of the confirmed cases in their country originated in Syria. Some analysts believe that Iranian forces have carried the virus to Syria, as Tehran is providing the regime with ground troops even as American officials believe that the Iranian military is hampered by one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the world. 

“Iran sits in the middle of the theater, so their ability to pass that infection to other states is very worrisome,” Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee this week. “I would say, it’s going to have some effect on the military instrument.” 

That military traffic is augmented by religious tourism, as Syria hosts holy sites in cities throughout regime-controlled territory. And the danger is exacerbated by Assad’s decision, with Russian military support, to attack hospitals in his campaign to regain control of the country.

The only positive factor is that the millions of refugees in camps in Idlib do not get many visitors from outside, so may not be exposed to the virus yet. But should it enter the camps, people living in densely packed conditions under material deprivation could fall to the virus in huge numbers and suffer high rates of mortality.

“Given the really horrible conditions, I think it would be a miracle if these displaced Syrians do not contract coronavirus,” Aykan Erdemir, a former Turkish parliamentarian and senior analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Washington Examiner. “All three — meaning the Syrian regime and Russian and Iranian forces — have proven their complete indifference to such humanitarian worries.”

americanthinker.com/blog

Five newly arrived asylum seekers have tested positive for Covid-19 upon arrival at the Heidelberg Centre for Asylum Seekers. This was announced by the Ministry of the Interior, Digitalisation and Migration of Baden-Württemberg. It is not known whether the Covid-19-infected persons were in contact with other residents of the Center for Asylum Seekers. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior Thomas Strobl wants to have all refugees arriving in Germany tested for the Covid-19 virus. Fortunately, this has already happened in the past few days: “We have a special housing and living arrangement at the Centre for Asylum Seekers. Therefore, it is important to do everything possible to identify and isolate Corona infections in asylum seekers’ shelters and to prevent any possible spread”, said Strobl.

politikstube.com/danke-merkel-fuenf-neu-angekommene-asylbewerber-mit-covid-19-diagnostiziert/

Which of the left-wing crybabies chanting “We have room” on demonstrations wants to accommodate this allegedly desperate refugee? Interesting also the “wolf salute” on the right side of the picture. These are Turkish right-wing extremist fighters for Islam. Even in the mainstream media one could read these days that the majority of the people at the border to Greece are not refugees from Syria.

politikstube.com/griechenland-verzweifelter-junger-mann-will-uns-tot-sehen/

by Giulio Meotti

Italy is suffocating.

We have exceeded 1000 deaths in just two and a half weeks of contagion, the Austrian border has been closed, there are strikes in factories because workers do not feel protected, the first Italian engineering company FCA shuttered four plants, the Civil Protection says that there is a shortage of blood and former PM Silvio Berlusconi has left Milan to recover in Nice. 

“Patients who cannot be treated are left to die.” Christian Salaroli, an anesthesiologist doctor of a hospital in Bergamo, said it: “It is decided by their age, and by the condition of their health. As in all situations of war.”
Tomorrow must be better.

What is happening in Bergamo, a city in north Italy, is frightening, . “The mortuary of the city cemetery is no longer sufficient: Before cremation of the bodies, the Temple of Ognissanti, the modern church of the cemetery, is occupied by an average of 40 coffins every day, and was opened to accommodate the coffins. And if on an ordinary Saturday in early March the number of deaths recorded in the city could have been between 4 and 5, now the average is terrifying..” 

The mayor, Giorgio Gori, came under fire for this statement: “Patients who cannot be treated are left to die.” Christian Salaroli, an anesthesiologist doctor of a hospital in Bergamo, said it: “It is decided by their age, and by the condition of their health. As in all situations of war.”

This is the escalation of the epidemic here.

February 18: 3 infected and 0 dead

February 27: 655 infected and 17 dead

March 1: 1.694 infected and 41 dead

March 4: 3.089 infected and 107 dead

March 7: 5.883 infected and 233 dead

March 8: 7.375 infected and 366 dead

March 9: 9.172 infected and 463 dead

March 10: 1.0149 infected and 631 dead

March 11: 12.462 infected and 827 dead

We are the new China.

I can tell you about my family to help you understand what is happening.

My parents never leave the house except for buying foods. I have two grandmothers who quarantined themselves, one is in a hospice, because coronavirus will kill them if they get infected. My mother in law just finished anti-cancer treatment and we isolated her, because the virus would also be fatal to her. My wife goes to work with a mask and alcohol.

And in the last two weeks I have been at home, taking care of my children, working and teaching them as well, because schools have been closed for a month. When I tale out the garbage, I wear gloves. When I go to the supermarket, gloves, mask and antibacterial gel. I shop for my mother in law and leave the food at the door, to not endanger her just in case I get infected.

If the epidemic does not slow down or stop very soon, we will face “the end” of my country as we know it

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/25373

Former Labour boss Gordon Brown allegedly let Muslim rape gangs roam free in Britain in an alleged deal with the Saudis, Politicalite can exclusively reveal.  

A City of London finance source exclusively claimed to Politicalite that during Gordon Brown’s short tenure as Prime Minister he borrowed money from the Saudi’s – but the deal had big strings attached. 

He urged the dollar-rich Gulf states to prop up ailing national economies through a massive injection of capital into the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and also asked for cash for Britain. In return, he allegedly had to let Muslims “do anything they like.” A source connected finance in The City told Politicalite that “In return for the money, the condition they insisted on, was that Muslims in Britain must be free to do anything they like.”

“In the light of his subsequent repression of reporting on rape gangs, this information might provide the explanation.” Politicalite reported in 2018 that ex-North West Chief prosecutor alleged that the Home Office ordered police to ignore grooming gang claims in 2008 – though Home Secretary Jacqui Smith had nothing to do with the order. Nazir Afzal who reversed a Crown Prosecution Service decision and successfully prosecuted the notorious Rochdale rape gang told the BBC in 2018 that in 2008 the Home Office sent a circular email to all police forces calling on them to not investigate the sexual exploitation of young girls in towns and cities across the UK.

He said: “You may not know this, but back in 2008 the Home office sent a circular to all police forces in the country saying ‘as far as these young girls who are being exploited in towns and cities, we believe they have made an informed choice about their sexual behaviour and therefore it is not for you police officers to get involved in.’”

“This brings a whole new dimension to the case – it was thought that both local police and local councils had failed their duty of care, but if true, Mr Afzal’s claims would show that instructions to the police to ignore the claims came from the very top, at the heart of government in Whitehall.”

Mr Afzal added in January 2020 that Jacqui Smith had nothing to do with the order and has apologised to her.

Read more (politicalite.com)…

Now we have yet another reason to resent the reusable bags moonbats try to force us to use by banning plastic bags and/or forcing us to pay for bags that have always been free. Among the diseases they can spread is coronavirus.

Via City Journal:

The COVID-19 virus is just one of many pathogens that shoppers can spread unless they wash the bags regularly, which few people bother to do. Viruses and bacteria can survive in the tote bags up to nine days, according to one study of coronaviruses.

Progressives often denounce their opponents for allegedly not believing in science. Let’s see if they like this science:

The risk of spreading viruses was clearly demonstrated in a 2018 study published in the Journal of Environmental Health. The researchers, led by Ryan Sinclair of the Loma Linda University School of Public Health, sent shoppers into three California grocery stores carrying polypropylene plastic tote bags that had been sprayed with a harmless surrogate of a virus.

The result: the tote bags spread the virus surrogate all over everything, so that anyone coming into the store might pick it up.

An earlier study of supermarkets in Arizona and California found large numbers of bacteria in almost all the reusable bags—and no contamination in any of the new single-use plastic bags.

But plastic bags are offensive to the climate or the sea turtles or whatever, so we have to spread disease to signal our obeisance to enviromoonbattery.

Other liberal initiatives that help spread diseases like the Wuhan virus include open borders.

moonbattery.com/reusable-shopping-bags-can-spread-coronavirus/

Madrid is rapidly becoming Europe’s latest epicenter of the Coronavirus outbreak after 2 000 people in the Madrid region alone have tested positive for Covid-19 as of March 13, up from 1 388 as of March 12.

According to the Spanish-language daily El Mundo, citing figures from local health councilor Enrique Ruiz Escudero, the surge is “very worrying”.

Spain is witnessing Europe’s second-worst outbreak of Covid-19 with the second-highest number of total confirmed cases in Europe after Italy after the Women’s Day March.

On Thursday, the number of infected in Madrid was at 1 388 out of a total of 3004 in Spain as a whole.

The health councilor said he expected the infected cases to rise “very much” in the coming days, mostly due to the contagion spread at last weekend’s “International Women’s Day” March, where thousands of women simply ignored public health concerns, creating serious risk for vulnerable people in their communities.

Escudero and other top Madrid officials asked Spain’s central government for more supplies to help combat the virus as the “community spread” intensifies. He also called for restaurants and bars to close and demanded that people self-isolate to reduce the risk of infection.

Authorities said at least 120 000 people participated in Madrid’s march.

“This is the only thing that we know we can do to contain it,” Ruiz Escudero explained. Some 190 people infected with the virus are currently in intensive care in Madrid, while 40 people in and around the city have died.

On February 26, 2020, New York University professor and feminist Isabel Cadenas Cañón presented her lecture “Feminist Mobilizations in Contemporary Spain” at NYU’s campus in Madrid. She said Spain has recently established itself as the host of one of the most powerful feminist movements in the world, urging women to participate.

On March 7, a human chain of 8 000 women surrounded the center of Madrid “standing in solidarity of feminism”.

freewestmedia.com/2020/03/13/madrid-covid-19-infections-soar-after-womens-day-march/

By Monica Showalter

Italy’s in dire need of help.

Its health care system is collapsing. The coronavirus has put the whole country in quarantine. There are now 15,000 cases, along with 1,018 deaths, the last 24 hours bringing in 188 more. The casualty count is the highest outside China. And it’s spreading fast. Until a few days ago, the problem as concentrated in the north. Now, it has spread throughout the whole country.

Anyone with a heart can feel pity and an urge to help them. They need help, bad.

But don’t go asking the European Union.

Turns out the open-borders globalist set-up is stiffing the Italians in their hour of need:

First, the EU created the problem by failing to shut down their borders with China, enabling its spread into Italy in the first place. While President Trump was acting swiftly to protect America from the lethal virus, the European Union was saying there was no crisis and calling Trump a xenophobe.

Now, with Italy hit hard based on that hate-Trump ‘logic’, its medical system is overwhelmed. Its doctors and nurses are exhausted. There’s not enough equipment or supplies, and the patients keep coming. Health care is being doled out by triage, old people being told ‘no health care for you.’ The Italians are appealing for help with masks, surgical equipment, doctors, anything that will enable them to get through it and save human lives — and the EU is not giving it.

David Freddoso of the Washington Examiner has a must-read column on how the EU is leaving Italy to fend for itself in its hour of need.

Maurizio Massari, Italy’s permanent representative to the European Union, wrote an opinion piece for Politico Europe Tuesday evening publicly shaming fellow EU states for their failure to help, and once again asking them to come together. Instead, European countries are banning the exportation of face masks and other medical equipment needed to deal with the crisis. Germany’s health minister, quoted by Politico, argued that this was necessary: “The market is such at present that masks are not going where [they’re most] urgently needed, it’s where people pay most money for them.”This is absurd. First of all, if Germany’s government is really so worried about masks not getting where they’re needed (as opposed to covering its own backside), they can donate masks to the Italians, can’t they? This complaint about profiteering is really just cover for their own fearful selfishness. Maybe Germany is worried about becoming the next Italy, but that isn’t the excuse they’re giving. They’re hiding behind the immorality of profiteering as if that were the real motive.

Why is that a problem? Because the European Union is supposed to be all about lovey-doviness, nations giving of their surplus to help others in need in the name of the greater good. Helping the poor out, putting people first, so unlike that cowboy regime across the pond.

Fredosso continues:

And it may be perfectly understandable for Germany to want to protect its own national interest in a time of crisis, but it runs counter to the entire concept of the EU that we’ve been hearing so much about during the debate over Brexit. Member states are supposed to benefit by putting aside their own selfish needs. French President Emmanuel Macron has cayled for an even more united post-Brexit EU. What happened to that? Right now, his government is seizing control of masks throughout France. I haven’t seen anything about them ending up in Italy.

And as Freddoso notes, all they are getiting is empty EU words, nothing more. So much for all that ‘sharing.’

The hard reality here is that nations act in their own self-interest whether they say so or not. That so much propaganda to the contrary has been mouthed by the European Union in the name of preserving its stateless unaccountable bureaucracy, and is often believed by local citizens, is a sad story. Up until now, the Italians had to have been confident their association with the EU would help them. Turns out that is a load of hooey, and reason enough to leave the EU as if the restive nation didn’t already have enough of them Open borders for disease, closed borders for help with disease, what a bargain. One hopes the Italians will get wise to this and finally pull the plug.

That’s not the only thing that’s being discredited, though.

Globalism, as it turns out, seems absolutely lethal when combined with socialism.

Italy has socialized medicine, the kind Bernie Sanders seeks to push on America, leaving the country way less prepared to handle the pandemic than countries with free market health care systems.

The central planners don’t have enough beds. There’s not enough staff. There’s no free market to step in and pick up the slack, it’s not allowed. According to this disturbing piece in the Wall Street Journal, there are signs of a medical system failure, the same kind of thing that in past socialist hellhole regimes, has triggered man-caused famines. Now it’s a health-care famine for Italy, because, like Venezuela’s oilfields, the cash was spent on today-needs and political crowd pleasers such as “free” stuff, instead of invested in to increase “production” (read: profitability). The net result is the same as it is in Venezuela and all socialist hellholes: underinvestment, leading to shambling, subpar, shortage-brimming results. Ain’t party-elites making all the decisions grand? According to the Journal:

Italy lags other large European countries in provision of acute-care hospital beds, furnishing 2.62 of them per 1,000 residents as of 2016, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In Germany it’s 6.06 and in France and the Netherlands it’s 3.15 and 3 respectively. That year, Italy devoted around $913 per capita to inpatient acute and rehabilitative care, compared with $1,338 in France, $1,506 in Germany, and $1,732 in the U.S.

 The writer, Joseph Sternberg, notes this:

What accounts for these divergences in health-care resources requires more study than a single newspaper column can provide, but a few early hints emerge. One is the observation that the U.K. and Italy are significantly more dependent on direct government financing of health-care than is France or Germany.

Government accounted for 79% of total health-care spending in the U.K. in 2017, according to Eurostat, and 74% in Italy. Germany and France both rely on compulsory insurance schemes with varying degrees of subsidy and government meddling, but outright government expenditure amounts to only 6% of total health spending in Germany and 5% in France. Covid-19 in this sense is a test of how much one trusts central health planners to make wise long-term decisions that boost resilience in the face of unusual dangers.

And with government making all the decisions about ‘universal’ health care, what happens now is inhuman. According to Paula Bolyard at PJMedia:

Health officials in Italy have issued guidelines for rationing care as hospitals there struggle to keep up with the surge of patients infected with the coronavirus. Doctors are being told that they’ll likely need to deny care to senior citizens and those with other health conditions as the virus explodes across the nation.

Italy has been rocked by the still not-well-understood COVID-29, with more than 1,200 confirmed cases and 827 deaths—second only to China—and 16 million residents currently under quarantine.An article published by the Italian College of Anesthesia, Analgesia, Resuscitation and Intensive Care (translated here by Yascha Mounk) warns that “It may be necessary to establish criteria of access to intensive care not just on the basis of clinical appropriateness but inspired by the most consensual criteria regarding distributive justice and the appropriate allocation of limited health resources.” The report goes on to recommend rationing care to certain populations. Imagine paying for high taxes for socialist health care all your life only to be told in your hour of need ‘too bad, you’re too old, no health care for you’? It’s enough to make one hope that Italy snaps to attention on what multilateral globalism combined with socialized medicine, have done for it. If it can’t do that, it remains a lesson for the rest of us, as Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other socialist siren-songers promise the world from all their socialization schemes, always done with the best of intentions, and always collapsing into rubble right when it counts. Socialism fails every time it’s tried. Wrap it in the European Union and it fails spectacularly.

americanthinker.com/blog/