Hooray for corrupt governments!

https://apnews.com/article/seniors-europe-italy-coronavirus-pandemic-rome-a2f405d8dcc0a55bc5a4d2a6da67c251

Italy prioritizes vaccinating the young and politically connected against covid over those who are actually at risk. Government healthcare at its finest!

Italy's over.

Guys, I have a birthday coming up.

(That's the best sports car review written by a woman that I've ever read.)

(That's the only sports car review written by a woman that I've ever read.)

Italy prioritizes vaccinating the young and politically connected against covid over those who are actually at risk. Government healthcare at its finest! ~ Ben at April 14, 2021 5:29 AM

If it were a conscious design - i.e., to keep the productive elements of society healthy - it would probably cause less pushback. However, it seems this is mostly corruption, for which Italy is world famous.

==========

Guys, I have a birthday coming up. ~ Crid at April 14, 2021 5:53 AM

Happy Birthday.

That Corvette is very pretty. It might be the first Corvette since the C2 generation whose aesthetics don't actually turn me off to the car. Early C3 was nice but by the '80s, that design had been ruined. Well, that and encountering too many redneck 'vette enthusiasts.

Still, I'm not a fan of performance driving with automatic transmissions. Gimme a stick shift for leaning into curves. My current vehicle, a Jeep Wrangler, is an automatic and, while I appreciate that in heavy traffic, I sometimes regret accepting the immediately-available automatic instead of waiting for delivery of the back-ordered manual.

"If it were a conscious design - i.e., to keep the productive elements of society healthy - it would probably cause less pushback." ~Conan

I doubt that. Covid is largely no risk for working age people. Despite all the advertising otherwise the reality is covid is an old person's disease.

Wanted to buy a manual coupe last year; couldn't find a new one. Still sometimes stomp the left side floorboards and grab a the center console, uselessly.

Not really a birthday, I just want the car. A nephew recommends spending a couple grand to rent and insure one for a weekend to squelch the daydream.

Anyway other reviewers also agree the interior is a mess and their are too many gadgets, but it's a genuine supercar that a few people might actually be able to afford.

Still sometimes stomp the left side floorboards and grab a the center console, uselessly. ~ Crid at April 14, 2021 7:28 AM

Yep. Once you've burned that into muscle memory, it doesn't go away. Last car was a sports sedan with a stick and I find myself trying to clutch and shift at random times.

And those automated manual shifters that comes with most cars today are no substitute. Wait, is it in or out for downshifting?

I've had the Jeep for 5 years now and the automatic still feels a bit awkward. This the first non-manual car I've ever owned.

It's called "slips and capture and can explain a number of mistakes people make under stress.

It's the Golden Age for Vaccine humor.

I doubt that. Covid is largely no risk for working age people. Despite all the advertising otherwise the reality is covid is an old person's disease. ~ Ben at April 14, 2021 7:25 AM

It comes down to who has political power. Italy's federal government is relatively weak and local corruption often dictates the execution of policy. Strict adherence to national law is often a matter of local choice.

Italy was unified in 1861 and the head of state was a monarch until 1946, when the country became a republic and the head of state an elected official. In the 1946 referendum, northern Italy voted overwhelmingly for the republic and southern Italy for the monarchy. The two are still at odds today.

In the US, older people are politically active and form a powerful voting bloc that must be accommodated, much to the chagrin of younger political activists who have no patience for getting things done through the slow and often-tedious democratic processes and would rather throw grandma off the cliff than let her have any say in national policy.

> to the chagrin of younger
> political activists

…and other naive goofballs…

> who have no patience for getting
> things done through the slow and
> often-tedious democratic
> processes

You remember a lesser 90's film called Almost Famous? The rock group's insecure lead singer grows impatient the photogenic lead guitarist: "Your looks are *really* starting to be a problem!" That's the way wokies feel about your free expression of ideas.

From her first interviews, Paglia affirmed that Boomers had been coddled because the Greatest Generation had very good reasons, at least by simplistic emotional calculation, to want to shelter them from the horrors they'd seen. Boomers demanded freedom from some restraints and faked the rest (e.g. sexual licentiousness as liberation).

But in their own parenting, Boomers didn't want Caytlin and Conner to even know that the man in the van offering candy on their way home from school was a threat... They didn't want them learning how to defend themselves from uncomfortable social hazards through practical experience. Wouldn't wanna see their little Tyler wind up on a milk carton, right? So they drove them to school, and back and forth to their teenage parties, and to college and home from vacation, as if the kids were learning about the monsters in the human heart (including their own) through literature and history up in their rooms, with the doors closed.

Turns out, the wokies prefer to study the trite flattery of pandering media!

Words are violence because neither they, nor their parents, have ever been in a fistfight, let alone a shooting war. This isn't my insight… I liked Gregory Cochran's response to these tweets: "This should be easy to fix."

> Covid is largely no risk for
> working age people.

"largely"

> would rather throw grandma
> off the cliff

I think you misunderstood why I doubted you, Conan. At least your response wasn't related.

As there is no significant risk to working age people there is no moral argument for vaccinating them before you vaccinate the elderly who are at very real risk of death much less other issues. I'm not aware of a single nation that has intentionally chosen to vaccinate the young before they get to the elderly. That the US has an elderly voting block doesn't impact this.

As you say Italy is famously corrupt. They went with the 'vaccinate my friends and family first' plan. Not exactly a moral or even economic policy.

Well, it's only natural to die after being hit in the head with a metal pipe repeatedly.

https://twitter.com/ZekeJMiller/status/1382324353023549451

I'm not aware of a single nation that has intentionally chosen to vaccinate the young before they get to the elderly. ~ Ben at April 14, 2021 9:33 AM

Nor am I. However, if vaccinating the younger, productive members of society were to be made a policy, that would be different than corrupt bureaucrats letting family and friends cut in line in front of somebody else's grandma and grandpa and would likely have been sold to the public with some sort of rationale, thus reducing resistance.

That the US has an elderly voting block doesn't impact this. ~ Ben at April 14, 2021 9:33 AM

That the older voters in the US vote more regularly than younger voters means government policies that place the younger at a priority over the older carry political risks. Witness every attempt to "reform" social security that send panicked older voters rushing to the polls.

A US policy of prioritizing younger people over older would have to pass muster with the elected politicians who are largely over 70 themselves and who would face a hostile phalanx of over-50 voters demanding to know why they're being sacrificed.

That Italy's national politicians are answerable to local corruptocrats more than to any nation-wide voting bloc means that they are not responsive to older people complaining that younger people are cutting in line.

“One belt, One road”

China's version of "what's ours is ours, and what's your's is our's, too!"

Got the second Pfizer today. Still haven't dropped a third testicle. Bummer.

The problem still remains with your argument Conan. There is no valid policy to vaccinate the young over the elderly. You may as well say people wouldn't object to dumping clean drinking water into the ocean just because the politicians decided to do so. Vaccinating the young before the elderly is completely irrational and irresponsible. Any government who did so should be replaced due to incompetence.

There is a silver lining to all this.

Now Cuomo can claim that the shitty way he mismanaged everything is a cultural thing.

> Bummer.

Didja have big plans for it this weekend?

Something I noticed is that whatever crazy distopyan bs the Brits come up with, between six to one year later will be imported to the US.

https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1382206396444274691

The thing about con men is that if you aren't selfish and naive, they can't hurt you. And selfishness & naivete are things we can and should grow out of. Nonetheless…

The best line in this news item is the last four words.

Serious, Darth, speak up if you get side fx.

Also, this was a thing I didn't know:

A court-appointed trustee has recovered more than $13 billion of an estimated $17.5 billion that investors put into Madoff’s business.

There is no valid policy to vaccinate the young over the elderly. ~ Ben at April 14, 2021 11:22 AM

Ben, I never said there was. I simply said that if the Italian government had put in place such a rationale, that it might have forestalled the backlash created by the corrupt local bureaucrats letting friends and family openly cut in line. At least then, the bureaucrats would have had a government policy as a defense.

The existence, real or conjecture, of any "conscious design" was a minor part of the point I was making, that Italy allowing younger people to skip to the front of the line is symptomatic of the careless corruption at all levels of the Italian government; and how inept such corruption is, that it can't even come up with a decent cover for its own corruption.

I then went on to speculate that such a deliberate policy in the US would create a political backlash, pointing out that Italy's younger democratic traditions mean that its citizens are not yet as accustomed to holding their government accountable as US citizens are, nor are there specific voting blocs that fiercely protect certain interests, even across party lines - as there are in the US.

You're the one who implied it was a deliberate policy of the Italian government to let the younger citizens skip the line - "Italy prioritizes vaccinating the young and politically connected...." It's not a deliberate policy. Italy is not "prioritizing" anything of the sort. Its bureaucrats are selling vaccinations to the highest bidders.

Italy's constitution enshrines healthcare rights, so the government should be prioritizing the older citizens in this case, but the government, heavily influenced by lobbyists, has little regard for legal and constitutional niceties.

OT: That's something many Europeans don't get about the US, the reverence with which we regard our Constitution. Europeans have seen constitutions come and go, torn up by the latest regime in power or easily amended to empower and enrich the oligarchs. Americans, on the other hand, fiercely defend our Constitution. Even those in the US government happily shredding it for their own power grab have a public waving copies and demanding their compliance with it.

OT: We've been a democratic republic for over 230 years. Italy, Germany, and France for the space of only one lifetime, each of them having slid from democracy to autocracy at least once in the last 100 years - only half the time that the US has maintained a reasonably-democratic government. Russia's constitution is merely toilet paper for its oligarchs.

Speculation: Italy's vaccination mess may be partly due to outlook, as well as corruption. Europeans tend to believe the government needs to look out for the collective - Americans (and to some extent, the English) for the individual. To save the collective Italy, the government doesn't crack down on vaccine line skipping, preferring to get the vaccine into as many Italian arms as possible as quickly as possible.

> China's version

Belt-&-Road is the same technique by which Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone became one of the richest men in Britain.

With B&L, China has bought compelling if not decisive influence all over the planet (see "Italy's over," above) and it cost them much less than we've spent on the so-far-useless F-35.

"I simply said that if the Italian government had put in place such a rationale, that it might have forestalled the backlash created by the corrupt local bureaucrats letting friends and family openly cut in line." ~Conan

That is what I called doubtful. Instead of being corrupt they would be incompetent. Neither is a laudable thing. The corruption is at least traditional.

"It's not a deliberate policy. Italy is not "prioritizing" anything of the sort. Its bureaucrats are selling vaccinations to the highest bidders." ~Conan

Agreed. It is local corruption plain and simple.

"Italy's vaccination mess may be partly due to outlook, as well as corruption." ~Conan

I think corruption is a good enough explanation. Italy isn't really that organized or centralized. After so many generations of open corruption Italian politicians have a strong trend of 'every man for himself'. Every mayor is a Cuomo. The central government just doesn't have enough power to squash a million Cuomos running around.

This and an expired tag, which (twitter says) often happens with lapsed insurance.

I'm ready to be convinced otherwise in both respects. The cop should have known better.

"(That's the only sports car review written by a woman that I've ever read.)"

Suprised you don't know about Supercar Blondie!