Coup de bluff

The coronavirus is now spreading all around the world. Italia is the first European country to be hardly hitten. Direct news from my colleagues in north of Italia (Milano, Brescia, Trento) are very bad. Simply stated, people are dying (especially older ones), in part because the intensive care unit capabilities are overwhelmed by the number of patients with a respiratory failure.

These apocalyptic reports contrast with the dedramatizing atmosphere in France.

I am not an epidemiologist and I am not an expert of sanitary crisis. But I have the feeling that our government is currently betting high stakes despite a poor poker hand. In other words, a bluff plays.

High stakes : the mortality is much higher than a flu, and especially in older patients. If we fail to stop the virus propagation, there will be heavy losses. Not money losses. Human losses.

A poor poker hand : in normal circumstances, our public hospitals have almost reached a saturation point. Considering our infrastructures and human resources, there is no chance that we can cope with a massive inflow of covid patients. Even more critical, the chronic understaffing will become a huge problem if nurses and doctors are contaminated themselves and unable to work anymore.

There is some reserve in the private hospitals and it will be interesting to see what the private health structures will do. Are they ready to stop their standard activity and take care of covid patients ? Of any patients or only of patients able to pay ?

I understand the necessity to reinsure people, I understand the risks of an economic breakdown, I understand the idea of a graded reaction, with a daily on-line adaptation to the situation. But I do not understand why the “stay at home” recommandation (including closure of schools and universities) has not yet been ordered some days ago in France. This extreme solution was the only one that could have reduced the intensity of the peak, and spread it out over time, so that our health system would have been able to prepare to the shock and to cope with the crisis. Is there any reason why China and Italy would have taken this decision if there would have been another choice ? Unless we have decided to give up our elders ???

An Italian friend of mine told me “Please do not underestimate this stuff. Our governments did not and anyway it is hard to face it off.”

It seems that we are sitting quietly on the beach, looking at the coming tsunami.

I strongly hope to be wrong.

Et comme disait le grand proverbiste Viallatte « Et c’est ainsi qu’Allah est grand »