Coronavirus thread

[Irons]

EU is dead. Covid-19 killed it.

That is what I think but didn't have the nerve to say it. 

[MusicTurner]

"EU finance ministers agree on €500 billion emergency fund"

https://www.euronews.com/2020/04/09/coronavirus-eurogroup-finance-ministers-agree-on-500-billion-emergency-fund

[ritter]

So it seems the EU is still in the ICU, then...

[Florestan]

So it seems the EU is still in the ICU, then...

Given its grave pre-existing conditions, I'm afraid that the ventilator came too late.

Seriously now, it's not just a problem of money and economy. This crisis has clearly shown that the "European solidarity" is a fiction, that there are no "common values". In the past two months we've seen Italy, Spain and France fighting a desperate fight --- alone and on their own. We've seen no EU at all. And when they pleaded for help, Germany, Austria, The Netherlands and Finland were reluctant, to put it mildly. The divide between North and South, between two completely different, if not utterly opposed, philosophies of life and ways of life has never been more sharp and clear.

EU is dead, even if its decaying corpse will still roam around for a while.

It pains me to say it but it's obvious.

[ritter]

It's a bit more complex than that, I'm afraid, Andrei. Can't talk about Italy, but here in Spain parts of the government (and you know who I mean) are using this horrible situation to promote an extreme social agenda which, in these circumstances, appears "just" and "humane", but will have nefarious consequences whatever down the road. For instance, the introduction of a "minimum living income". Some EU countries can rightfully claim that they will not finance or subsidise financial measures that they don't offer to their own population.

[Florestan]

It's a bit more complex than that, I'm afraid, Andrei. Can't talk about Italy, but here in Spain parts of the government (and you know who I mean) are using this horrible situation to promote an extreme social agenda which, in these circumstances, appears "just" and "humane", but will have nefarious consequences whatever down the road. For instance, the introduction of a "minimum living income". Some EU countries can rightfully claim that they will not finance or subsidise financial measures that they don't offer to their own population.

That's correct but it only proves my point. Behind the "solidarity" and "common values" verbiage lies the reality: some EU countries' policies are utterly incompatible with other EU countries' ones, and the differences are based not only on money and economics but on different conceptions of life and of society. Germany is certainly right in denying Pedro Iglesias (who I guess is the de facto leader of the Spanish government, Sanchez being just a good-looking, tenor-voiced, popularity-seeking puppet) his fantasies, but as long as the elections in Spain will favor the PSOE-Podemos-Catalan separatist coalition the tension and conflict will persist. In Italy, euroscepticism has been on the rise even before the Covid-19 crisis; one can safely predict it will continue to gain momentum, and who could condemn them when we see that EU has been conspicuously absent in helping Italy? Hungary and Poland are already seen (unjustly, if you ask me) as the betes noires of the EU. No, really, there are too many divides, tensions and differences which this crisis will only deepen --- and a house divided cannot stand.

I would very much like to be wrong but I'm afraid I am not.

[GioCar]

...In the past two months we've seen Italy, Spain and France fighting a desperate fight --- alone and on their own. We've seen no EU at all. And when they pleaded for help, Germany, Austria, The Netherlands and Finland were reluctant, to put it mildly....

This is not true, at least regarding the help Italy got from Germany. And the EU played an important role in it, particularly in the part regarding the masks and other medical equipments.
https://www.corriere.it/esteri/20_marzo_24/coronavirus-svolta-solidale-germania-8-malati-italiani-ricoverati-sassonia-7cd0a51a-6dbc-11ea-9b88-27b94f5268fe.shtml

EU is dead, even if its decaying corpse will still roam around for a while.

It pains me to say it but it's obvious.

Don't agree at all, and the € 1,000 billions (not 500 billion) agreement signed yesterday is the one of the main evidences of this.
Surely the EU is still far from being perfect, but is there. Or don't you remember how was Europe less than a century ago?
I'm worried by people like you or the other eurosceptics, they all have a very limited vision, in perspective.

[ritter]

Good to see the angle from Italy, Gio. Thanks! And it's reassuring to see this pro-EU stance (which I personally share).

Florestan does have a point regarding the diversity and contradictions within the EU, of course, and this is difficult to address. IMHO, what's going on in Hungary and Poland could even warrant the expulsion of those countries from the Union, but then again the EU cannot betray the citizens of those countries, and strip them of the benefits of membership, because of the authoritarian bias of their governments.

Coming back to Spain, I do not sense any rising EU sentiment in the population (well, of course these days there's not much chance to discuss these things at ease with colleagues or friends). What I do see is some politicians and journalists raising demands to the Union that they know cannot and will not be fulfilled, as if it's only the a South that is suffering, and not the whole block (or the world, for that matter).

[MusicTurner]

(...)


Don't agree at all, and the € 1,000 billions (not 500 billion) agreement signed yesterday is the one of the main evidences of this.
Surely the EU is still far from being perfect, but is there. Or don't you remember how was Europe less than a century ago?
I'm worried by people like you or the other eurosceptics, they all have a very limited vision, in perspective.

Do you have an updated source for the 1,000 billion Euros?

Btw, Denmark sent ventilation machines, a field hospital and a 1 million Euro donation recently to Italy, one week after being asked officially.
The scale of this specific aid can obviously be debated, but there has been some aid, supplementing aid coming from many other countries (including Somalia ...), and while fighting the virus up here as well.

[Florestan]

This is not true, at least regarding the help Italy got from Germany. And the EU played an important role in it, particularly in the part regarding the masks and other medical equipments.
https://www.corriere.it/esteri/20_marzo_24/coronavirus-svolta-solidale-germania-8-malati-italiani-ricoverati-sassonia-7cd0a51a-6dbc-11ea-9b88-27b94f5268fe.shtml

8 (eight!) Italian patients treated in a German hospital. Eight! Some moving solidarity and great help, indeed! I wonder on what criteria they were selected.

Don't agree at all, and the € 1,000 billions (not 500 billion) agreement signed yesterday is the one of the main evidences of this.

Let's see how well it works eventually. Fingers crossed, honestly.

Surely the EU is still far from being perfect, but is there. Or don't you remember how was Europe less than a century ago?
I'm worried by people like you or the other eurosceptics, they all have a very limited vision, in perspective.

The historical perspective is right. The problem is with the future.

Look, I'm not eurosceptic at all. I would very much like the EU to perdure and run smoothly. It's just that I can't help noticing it doesn't; I can't help noticing deep divides and fracture lines which tend to deepen; and I can't help noticing that nothing lasts for ever.

If EU gets strengthened out of this crisis, so much the better, but I wouldn't bet on it.

[Florestan]

Good to see the angle from Italy, Gio. Thanks! And it's reassuring to see this pro-EU stance (which I personally share).

Rest assured that I am just as pro-EU as you are. I just can't share your optimism, that's all.

IMHO, what's going on in Hungary and Poland could even warrant the expulsion of those countries from the Union

I beg to differ but this is not the right place to discuss this issue.

What I do see is some politicians and journalists raising demands to the Union that they know cannot and will not be fulfilled, as if it's only the a South that is suffering, and not the whole Blick (or the world, for that matter).

That's true but those politicians and journalists would not do what they do if they knew there was no popular support at all for their ideas. That's my point: how many Spaniards see government and economy is at odds with how many Germans see them. It's not even Iglesias vs. Merkel: it's Spanish voters vs. German voters. The former gave the majority to the leftists, the latter gave it to the christian-democrats. Good luck with reconciling them in a "more perfect union". 

[MusicTurner]

8 (eight!) Italian patients treated in a German hospital. Eight! Some moving solidarity and great help, indeed! I wonder on what criteria they were selected.
...

I don't where you got that from, but on April 6th, it was at least 44

https://www.deutschland.de/en/news/coronavirus-in-germany-informations

("Germany has admitted 198 seriously ill patients from other EU countries for treatment since the outbreak of the corona pandemic. Currently there are still commitments for 58 treatment places that have not been taken up, a spokesperson for the Foreign Office said in Berlin on Monday. He said that 130 patients from France, 44 patients from Italy and 24 more from the Netherlands had been brought to Germany. ... From the Italian side, it is currently the case that a slight decrease in the number of corona intensive care patients can be observed. Therefore, no further transfer from Italy to Germany is planned for the time being," said the spokesperson. He added that the German states were prepared to provide further assistance")

[Florestan]

I don't where you got that from,

From the link that Gio provided above, a Corriere della Sera article.

but on April 6th, it was at least 44

https://www.deutschland.de/en/news/coronavirus-in-germany-informations

("Germany has admitted 198 seriously ill patients from other EU countries for treatment since the outbreak of the corona pandemic. Currently there are still commitments for 58 treatment places that have not been taken up, a spokesperson for the Foreign Office said in Berlin on Monday. He said that 130 patients from France, 44 patients from Italy and 24 more from the Netherlands had been brought to Germany. ... From the Italian side, it is currently the case that a slight decrease in the number of corona intensive care patients can be observed. Therefore, no further transfer from Italy to Germany is planned for the time being," said the spokesperson. He added that the German states were prepared to provide further assistance")

44 is still too little. For God's sake, the Italian healthcare system is on the brink of collapse and the Germans boast about receiving 44 patients? Come on!

[Florestan]

And it's not about Germany only. When it became obvious that Italy is facing a tragedy, offers should have immediately come from other EU countries with excellent healthcare systems to take in Italian patients: Denmark, Sweden, The Netherlands, Finland, Austria. That would have indeed been genuine solidarity. Has anybody seen it?

[Rinaldo]

And it's not about Germany only. When it became obvious that Italy is facing a tragedy, offers should have immediately come from other EU countries with excellent healthcare systems to take in Italian patients: Denmark, Sweden, The Netherlands, Finland, Austria. That would have indeed been genuine solidarity. Has anybody seen it?

You could argue they were bracing for the time coronavirus arrives at their borders, but I agree the EU should've acted together & more swiftly.

One can also argue this kind of stress test is unprecedented (although the warnings were there: Coronavirus is the greatest global science policy failure in a generation) and the EU has woken up from its slumber.

To quote another Guardian piece:

Europe has moved on from an initial me-first response, where some countries imposed export bans on vital medical kit, or put up border controls that left other European citizens stranded. Germany, Austria and Luxembourg have opened their hospitals to treat patients from the hardest-hit countries. France and Germany have donated more masks to Italy than China, according to the EU executive, which trumpeted the statistics on social media amid alarm it was losing the "the global battle of narratives" over "the politics of generosity". In the early phase of the crisis, Russia and China sent medical supplies to Italy, while its nearest neighbours failed to immediately respond to Rome's calls for help.

[steve ridgway]

For those of you who have noticed my whining, I finished my relocation.

To recap, I accepted a new job two months ago, sold the house, planned my move, then the pandemic hit. By some miracle, the house closing went through, the movers came on April 3rd, and we left that evening to drive from Central Coast California to the Houston Texas area. We stopped the first night in Pasadena, lunched the next morning in Palm Springs, CA, slept the next night in Phoenix AZ. The next day we lunched in Tucson AZ, had diner in Les Cruces NM, and slept in El Paso Texas. Got up, had lunch in Van Horn Texas, lunch in Odessa Texas and slept in Abilene Texas. The last day we lunched in Dallas Texas and arrived in Spring Texas.

Things were surprisingly normal, with a few odd touches. We had to talk to hotel clerks through the night check-in window, or from behind a plexiglass barrier. But everything was functioning more or less normally. Probably there was less traffic in the metropolitan areas we passed. We did check into all of those motels, and probably that is the biggest risk of exposure we have faced. We stopped in a Whole Foods Market in each major city we passed to get lunch and/or supplies for subsequent dinner, which we prepared in our hotel room with a hot plate and toaster oven we brought with us in the car. Some nights we stopped in two hotels, one to prepare our dinner and another to actually sleep. It added up to about 1,700 miles, 3,000 kilometers, and about 28 hours of actual driving.

Anyway, we survived, we are here. Now we wait and see if we got the virus...

That was a seriously long drive, I'm glad to hear you made it. I was thinking you'd be sleeping in the vehicle too, unless you took a tent.

[MusicTurner]

And it's not about Germany only. When it became obvious that Italy is facing a tragedy, offers should have immediately come from other EU countries with excellent healthcare systems to take in Italian patients: Denmark, Sweden, The Netherlands, Finland, Austria. That would have indeed been genuine solidarity. Has anybody seen it?

Sweden is running their controversial 'herd policy', and combined with the only few, official lock-down initiatives, the result has been a much, much higher death rate, compared to its neighbouring countries.

It's been predicted that they will run short of ICUs soon, but this has yet to be seen in reality.

Regulatives have also turned up in the Swedish press, that people older than 80 years, or very ill above 60 years of age (these age estimates being biological, rather than calendary) should be refused access to the limited number of available ICUs, in case the pressure should become too hard to handle.

Overall however, the Swedish press' modest level of criticism of the herd policy and its effects has been disappointing, IMO.

[GioCar]

Do you have an updated source for the 1,000 billion Euros?

I have an offline source which is the paper I usually read at home (https://www.repubblica.it) , but I could not find that article online.
Something similar is here:
https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2020/04/09/eurogruppo-trovato-accordo-sulle-conclusioni-da-presentare-ai-leader-gualtieri-messi-sul-tavolo-i-bond-europei-tolte-dal-tavolo-le-condizionalita-del-mes-gentiloni-misure-senza-precedenti/5765528/
To be short, to the initial € 500 billions from the ESM it should be added € 500 billions from the Recovery Fund proposed by France, and accepted (in principle) by everybody. So actually the latter hasn't been signed yet (sorry for being inaccurate) but it surely is another step forward.

Btw, Denmark sent ventilation machines, a field hospital and a 1 million Euro donation recently to Italy, one week after being asked officially.

I didn't know that. Thanks a lot in the name of my country. Another good example of solidarity between European countries, far less advertized than those by China or Russia...(wonder why?  )

[Iota]

Wishing you well, in Texas.

+1 That sounds like quite an odyssey!

[MusicTurner]

I have an offline source which is the paper I usually read at home (https://www.repubblica.it) , but I could not find that article online.
Something similar is here:
https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2020/04/09/eurogruppo-trovato-accordo-sulle-conclusioni-da-presentare-ai-leader-gualtieri-messi-sul-tavolo-i-bond-europei-tolte-dal-tavolo-le-condizionalita-del-mes-gentiloni-misure-senza-precedenti/5765528/
To be short, to the initial € 500 billions from the ESM it should be added € 500 billions from the Recovery Fund proposed by France, and accepted (in principle) by everybody. So actually the latter hasn't been signed yet (sorry for being inaccurate) but it surely is another step forward.

I didn't know that. Thanks a lot in the name of my country. Another good example of solidarity between European countries, far less advertized than those by China or Russia...(wonder why?  )

Thanks, I know 'La Repubblica', when once working in a tourist/newspaper kiosk in downtown Copenhagen, I'd try browsing it regularly, together with 'Corriere ...', it's a serious newspaper (btw, we also had '24 Ore ..." and "Gazetta dello Sport").