The Daily Express reports (23/03/20) that doctors in Italy have been directed not to provide ventilation facilities to anyone over 60, thus probably condemning them to death, given respiration was needed.

Grumpy notes that this means that, should he contract coronavirus and require such treatment, the President, Sergio Mattarella (born 1941) would be left to expire, gasping for breath.

Similarly, the same fate would be visited upon Elisabetta Casellati (born 1946) and President of the Senate.

Really ? Even assuming that they were not (as would be expected ) to be treated in some elite private hospital, it’s hard to believe that the decimation of of the most senior politicians, judges, clerics, celebrities and business titans would be allowed, which would otherwise be the result of this edict.

Grumpy had a surge of indignation that such a coarse judgement involving life of death would be issued. Ther are probably many 60 year old who are far more healthy and likely to pull through than some drug or alcohol addled 20 year old. Their health professionals have almost certainly had to make life or death decisions based on the reality of resources, COVID or no. So has the NHS. It just happens that such judgements will be more likely as a result of the pandemic.

But a more underlying reason for Grumpy’s indignation wave is that they patently don’t mean it to be universal. The edict really means that it will be applied to the poor, the uneducated, the inarticulate, the unconnected and all those to whom society owes an equal duty. Grumpy is starting to feel empathy with the OpEd writers in The Guardian …