Few days after begrudgingly admitting that the Lombardy disaster may have been caused by its own semi privatized healthcare, NYT makes a u-turn publishing this nonsense, where it's all WHO and Italy's bureaucracy's fault /1 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/29/world/europe/coronavirus-bergamo-italy.html

Despite bordering Bergamo to the east, and despite following the same protocols and having as much contact with China, Veneto had one-third (and possibly one-fourth) of the deaths per 100.000 people. /2 https://lab24.ilsole24ore.com/coronavirus/# 

The difference was that in Lombardy when people began to be unwell they raced to "healthcare centers" or hospitals because Lombardy had moved funds from (public) community healthcare to (private but publicly funded) clinics. That once the epidemic began were quickly overrun. /3

Veneto has his own "community" care based on an integrated network of family doctors + free home care service. Veneto has ten public analysis labs vs. only three in Lombardy. And Veneto had 1 health protection dept each 500K people, while the Lombardy rate was 1 every 1.2M /4

When the epidemics came to Veneto (at the same time it did in Lombardy) they mounted a flexible, in depth defence, avoiding Lombardy's hospital rush. People were treated where possible at home and non COVID patient were gradually but steadily moved to different structures /5

This was the result (in Italian but fairly self-explaining) - source /6 https://www.scienzainrete.it/articolo/lombardia-e-veneto-due-approcci-confronto/nancy-binkin-federica-michieletto-stefania

Summit in up from 2/20/2020 to 4/1 Lombardy had at least 7593 deaths vs 499 in Veneto, with a 445/100K inhabitants death rate in Lombardy vs 196/100K in Veneto. And Veneto had just a 4.4% rate of healthcare personnel infections vs 14.3% in Lombardy /7

Let's remind this again; protocols and overall rules in Veneto were the same as in Lombardy. As the same were in Piedmont, Emilia, Liguria, and the rest of Italy. But Lombardy did worse, despite having (nominally) the most modern healthcare structure of all Italian regions /end