Italy's coronavirus problem is bad because of leftists

There are many reasons that Italy is doing worse than other countries in combating the coronavirus:

• Italy's medical system is single payer and not very good
• Italy's population is older

But leftist fear of "racism" is also a big contributor.

It turns out that the mayor of Florence told Italians to "hug a Chinese" on Feb 1 long after the world knew of the danger.  Italy has a lot of Chinese nationals in residence because Italy has bought into the Chinese "One Belt, One Road" economic imperialism initiative.

The mayor of Florence, Italy, @DarioNardella initiated "hug a Chinese" on Twitter on Feb 1, opposing anger toward China amid the #nCoV2019 outbreak, and calling for "Unity in this common battle!" Many Italian netizens responded by posting photos of themselves with Chinese. pic.twitter.com/LutXfPyXc7

— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) February 4, 2020

Of course non-leftists realize that not hugging people who are more likely to have a dangerous infectious disease isn't racist; it's common sense.

At the same time those who didn't want to hug or be near people who could be carrying a very dangerous virus didn't hate the possible carriers.

If they did then all Americans who are practicing "social distancing" hate all other Americans.

Leftists put virtue signaling ahead of the health of Americans too. That's why the even "moderates" like Joe Biden called Trump's travel ban on China "xenophobic".  Similarly saying that calling a virus that originated in China and which spread due to the horrible actions of the totalitarian Chinese government the "Chinese Virus" is racist is absurd.

Just a week or so ago the New York Times tried to rename corona virus "Trump Virus" and the left didn't universal object to that.