by Guy Millière • March 18th
The Italian health system is in appallingly bad condition. There are not enough intensive care units and, as everywhere, the possibility of a major crisis simply was not anticipated. In Italy there are 2.62 acute-care hospital beds per 1,000 residents (by comparison, the number in Germany is 6.06 per 1,000 residents). The Italian health system is entirely governed by the government.... Public hospitals must manage shortages, and when an exceptional situation occurs, rationing care leads to horrific choices.
The Italian government was hoping for help from the European Union, but neither the other member states nor the European Union itself has given any at all.... The dismissive attitude of the EU and the other members states seems to have been dictated by the fear of sliding into a situation as calamitous as that of Italy.
No country in the European Union has taken a clear, hard look at the danger Europe is facing.
Italy's healthcare system is in a state of almost total collapse. As of today, 31,506 people in Italy have been infected with the coronavirus; of which 2,503 people have died. The numbers continue to grow. Hospitals are overwhelmed. Doctors have to choose which sick person to save and which sick person not to save. Pictured: Hospital employees tend to a patient at a temporary emergency structure set up outside Brescia Hospital, in Italy on March 13, 2020. (Photo by Miguel Medina/AFP via Getty Images)
Italy's healthcare system is in a state of almost total collapse. As of today, 31,506 people in Italy have been infected with the coronavirus; of which 2,503 people have died. The numbers continue to grow. Hospitals are overwhelmed. Doctors have to choose which sick person to save and which sick person not to save.
The country has almost completely shut down. Many businesses are running in slow motion or have stopped. Prisoners are staging uprisings. Millions of people have been ordered to stay home and are allowed out only briefly to buy food. Most shops are shut. All public gatherings are prohibited, even funerals. Big cities look like ghost towns.
No other Western country has been so severely affected by the pandemic as Italy. Why?
by Lawrence A. Franklin • March 18th
China's totalitarian system seems to perceive any movement that permits citizens to feel allegiance to any entity other than the state as a threat.
Communist cadres, evidently not content with coercing the external conformity and behavior of their citizens, appear to want to control their people's thoughts as well. Beijing is now re-writing Christian scripture and printing other tracts to render religious beliefs politically aligned with state policies.
The American Center for Law and Justice, chaired by the attorney Jay Sekulow, through its "Be Heard Project," urges all people concerned about freedom of conscience to sign petitions and otherwise pressure the Chinese government to release Pastor Cao, allowing him to return to his family in North Carolina. "China Aid" director Bob Fu, who monitors human rights violations in Communist China, calls upon citizens to write letters to Pastor Cao to keep his spirits up – address below. The sheer volume of mail would also let Beijing know that Cao's persecution remains a serious concern to the "Free World."
China's secret police, in an anti-Christian campaign, have been apprehending Christian preachers whom they apparently regard as effective, such as the Protestant Evangelical Pastor John Cao. A permanent resident of the U.S., Cao is being held in the regional jail in Kunming (pictured), the capital of Yunnan Province. (Image source: Babak Fakhamzadeh/ Flickr cc-by-nc 2.0)
In addition to trying to pin the blame for the coronavirus pandemic on the United States, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under Party Chairman Xi Jinping is executing an anti-Christian campaign, the intensity of which has not been seen since Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution in the mid-1960s.
Persecution against Christians was reignited in earnest after the 19th CCP Congress in 2017. The state's drive against Christian symbols, churches, and clerics seems to have become justified under the CCP's "Sinicization of China's Religions" initiative. The CCP appears determined to secularize religious thought, suborning it to serve state interests. Its anti-Christian project seems designed primarily to sever all international links that religious people have, whether those ties are Christian or Muslim.
by Alan M. Dershowitz • March 17th
In the event of an outbreak, guards and other staff are likely to refuse to come to work, thus raising the risk of violence among prisoners.
The time to act, in order to prevent these bad outcomes, is before there are outbreaks. A prison sentence, or the denial of bail, are not supposed to be sentences of death or disease. Steps should be taken now to reduce the risks not only to prisoners but to those who come in contact with them in prison or upon release.
Among these preventive steps should be the following: allowing elderly non-violent prisoners who are near the end of their sentences to be sent home; those who still have considerable time to serve should be temporarily furloughed to home confinement, subject to increased punishment if they violate the strict conditions of the furlough...
Once a coronavirus outbreak occurs in a prison, the options will be limited. It is unlikely that contagious inmates would be released; they would probably be quarantined in the prison, which may mean solitary confinement. Nor will there be sufficient medical staff and equipment to treat them. (Image source: iStock)
The US has more prisoners than any Western democracy. Because of our overly long sentences — even for non-violent first offenders — many are old and infirm. We also have many presumptively innocent defendants in jail awaiting trial, and many others awaiting appeal.
It is inevitable that there will be outbreaks of coronavirus in prisons and jails, as, in the past, there have been outbreaks of other contagious illnesses such as Legionnaires disease. Other institutions of confinement, such as nursing homes, have also experienced quickly spreading contagions.
Once an outbreak occurs, the options will be limited. It is unlikely that contagious inmates would be released; they would probably be quarantined in the prison, which may mean solitary confinement. Nor will there be sufficient medical staff and equipment to treat them.
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