Donald Trump, for example, has twice explained to the world that the threat of coronavirus will ‘go away’ in April with warmer weather. He’s said that life will return to normal after the spike and that the media have been exaggerating how dangerous the virus is.
And in their own way, the caretaker Irish government have been failing us. Their theme is ‘don’t panic’. Well, yes, panic wouldn’t help the situation. But is it panicking to want to know where the virus has been present and what measures are being taken to prevent it spreading? As the case of the student from Scoil Chaitríona shows, Fine Gael have a strategy of keeping detailed information out of the public domain as much as possible and assuring us that no special measures are needed.
This approach is creating panic rather than ending it. The less we know, the more we speculate and rumours (not without foundation in respect to the Mater hospital, but made up in other instances) of other possible cases fly around social media. Crucially, too, lives will be lost if the message goes out – as it did this morning on RTÉ’s panel discussion – that public concern about the coronavirus was massively exaggerated and we should carry on as normal. We shouldn’t even cancel travel plans to centres of infection like northern Italy.
— Read on independentleft.ie/coronavirus-in-ireland/
This is a very useful article.
See also :
https://tomasoflatharta.wordpress.com/2020/02/27/coronavirus-2019-ncov-or-covid-19-in-france-medical-information-thoughts-and-practical-advice-international-viewpoint-online-socialist-magazine/
In Italy, the Racist Far-Right is using the CoronaVirus Crisis :
David Broder, the European Editor of Jacobin and a historian of French and Italian Communism, Explains :
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Tomás Ó Flatharta 