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Italy and the virus
From Piedmont, NICK WRIGHT assesses the (almost) post-Covid-19 political situation in a nation that has dealt with the pandemic so much more efficiently than Britain and the US
One of the baskets with food and other goods hanging from balconies and left at disposition of people in need during the coronavirus emergency in Milan, April 2020

DONALD TRUMP’S mercifully short and atypical experience of Covid-19 does rather demonstrate that when you have access to the most expensive healthcare system in the world, top-class doctors, whatever drugs they prescribe and urgent need to contest an election, that the only thing to do is blow dry your hair, tuck in your tummy and put a smile on your face.

He was a bit unsteady, with a slight glaze on his scrubbed visage, but the Commander-In-Chief — the one who didn’t actually go to war — put on a brave face. Displaying symptoms suggestive of “steroid euphoria” he appeared ready for a fight. Steroids plus an outsize ego and we have a jet-powered POTUS. For a while, possibly.

The train crash that is the US response to the pandemic is a good demonstration of the role that ideology plays in public policy. A private-insurance-based health system that excludes millions of people from healthcare and puts expensive medical treatment beyond the incomes of millions more inevitably leaves a big space for infections like Covid-19 to spread.

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