In Europe, according to our research and the most accredited studies1, between 45% and two thirds of the deaths attributed to COVID-19 occurred in hospices, rest homes and rehabilitation centers. Governments hold different attitudes: France is beginning to reveal the massacre in direct, distinguishing in statistics how many have died in hospitals and not, Italy is beginning to become aware but the size of the greatest extermination of human beings since the fall is silent of Nazism, Spain and the United Kingdom seem concerned that they will be silent even outside hospitals2, authorities and administrators in the United States are struggling to hide a tragedy3 which they will soon have to account for in the ruthless American courts, which will probably leave them in ruins and with terrible criminal convictions. But most of all making noise is the silence of the Chinese on the dead outside hospitals, especially in rest homes.
Beyond the official figures put online by Beijing, we are keen to dwell (or rather: to return, since we were among the first to talk about it on March 3) on the WHO-China joint report on coronavirus4, singular in declaring that "On 20 February 2020 the average age of the infected is 51 years ... with 77,8% of cases between 31 and 69 years" and that "The highest mortality (21,9%) is among patients over 80 years old". However, the report does not reveal an important fact: how many of the deceased were to be classified as elderly. Above all, nothing tells us about that part of the deaths that occurred outside the hospitals, which are not specifically traced.
Still, the province of Hubei has about six million people over the age of sixty5 and has at least 18,8 beds in hospices and nursing homes for every thousand seniors6. The figure is from 2012: probably, in 2019 it had increased to at least 25 beds. That is to say that out of six million people, at least 1,8% a year ago were residents of these institutions. Across China, in 2017 these guests were more than seven million: therefore, we can consider realistic the figure of 110.000 inhabitants of Hubei present in the hospices of the province at the beginning of the pandemic. Among other things, nursing homes, at least until 2019, were an excellent business in the rich province of Hubei: this is demonstrated by the investment of Green House for a three-bed facility in the city of Wuhan7. And that the hospices were dangerously present in the history of the coronavirus since its origins shows that one of these centers was a few meters away from the delicatessen market where the pandemic originated who knows how many months ago8.
Well, if the statistics of the deaths from COVID-19 Lombardy, New York, France and Madrid have a common red line this is represented by the number of deaths among the guests of the hospices, which on a territorial basis oscillates between 10 and 40%. To want to be conservative, therefore, we can estimate that at least 11.000 elderly people must have died in hospices in the province of Hubei alone. If only 0,5% of the guests died in those of the whole of China (therefore, twenty times less than in the hypothesis just described), we would be faced with the massacre of 35.000 old men. These do not appear in the official statistics.
To date, after a thousand corrections, China declares just over 4.600 deaths.
Therefore, either the Chinese rulers have implemented measures to secure the hospices that guilty both they and the WHO have kept silent to the world, leaving our grandparents to the incompetence of our local and national rulers or the Chinese rulers - with the silence of the WHO - they are silent about the true dimensions of the tragedy. In both cases, Beijing and WHO owe clarifications to those who have been prisoners in their homes for almost six weeks and especially those who have lost loved ones.
In short, we need China to give us explanations and millions of masks will not be enough to silence us. We do not need leaders who act as a second Chinese ambassador to Italy, to defend interests contrary to ours.
Minister Di Maio, President Conte, instead of thanking Beijing every two for three, follow the line of Paris and London according to which "things we do not know" have happened on the management of the coronavirus in China. China will have to answer some "difficult questions" as to why the pandemic started.
1 https://www.euronews.com/2020/04/17/coronavirus-care-homes-could-be-wher...
2 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/14/care-homes-coronavirus-why...
3 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/nyregion/coronavirus-nj-andover-nursi...
4 https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-china-joint-mis...
5 https://www.ceicdata.com/en/china/population-sample-survey-by-age-and-re...
6 https://www.slideshare.net/smithstreet/opportunities-in-chinas-elderly-c...
7https://books.google.it/books?id=teB8DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA175&lpg=PA175&dq=gree...
8 https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/cluster-of-deaths-found-at-w....
Photo: xinhua / web / chinanews
