MILAN — The governor of the Lombardy region, the epicenter of Italy’s coronavirus epidemic, has been placed under police protection after receiving threats related to the health emergency.
Gov. Attilio Fontana confirmed in a Facebook post that authorities assigned him the protection, and not at his request. Officials cited a “climate” around the governor that has become “incandescent,’’ including graffiti labeling him a killer and internet threats regarding the region’s handling of the epidemic.
Fontana has been called for questioning as part of an investigation into his failure to create a red zone around two small cities next to Bergamo after the first case was identified in a hospital Feb. 23 — two days after 11 towns in Lombardy and Veneto were declared hot spots.
Other Italian officials dealing with the virus also have been placed under police escort because of threats.
Well this is not surprising.
If misery loves company, there’s something perversely comforting about this. So Italy proves, at least, that the US is NOT the only developed country overrun by homicidal idiots who think it’s their religious or constitutional right to breathe plague on you.
Cold comfort, I know, when we watch the telescreen air shots of the imbeciles at Lake of the Ozarks, the Alabama Shore, and other venues in the trackless wastes of the Republic of Redneckistan.
I came here to express the same sentiment as @lastroth, this is not surprising at all.
I make no judgment at all about his performance under the circumstances - but no matter how glorious the result is so calamitous that this is the inevitable consequence.
It is like they fought a war there, and lost. About 0.5% of the population dead in only 4 weeks (the U.S. lost 0.2% of its population in combat deaths in WWII, and that over 3.5 years). At the peaks thousands of dead bodies spread across towns and the countryside, too many to collect, shades of the Black Death. And an extended extreme lockdown to boot even to hold it at that level.
There wouldn’t be enough spray paint or bodies to guard our “leaders” should Americans follow the same route. Thank FSM the only idiots dumb enough to make those threats would allow those “leaders” to walk on their backs before they’d consider making such violent protestations.
The way I read the threats in Italy, we maintain our spot as the only country that believes getting the plague is a birthright. In Italy, they’re going after Fontana for not protecting them and initiating quarantines. that’s quite a difference and, @ignoreland points out, we have so many “leaders” who failed to protect their people here it would be impossible to provide protection for them all.