5 ms·

Spanish soldiers find bodies in Madrid retirement homes

69 points by thdespou 7y ago

enriquto 7y ago
Spain is an inherently dysfunctional country. A ridiculous ghost of an old evil empire. Its territory must be split and given to neighboring countries and new countries that are created.
- PopeDotNinja 7y ago
  Maybe delete your comment? You aren't doing yourself any favors by saying that kind of stuff.
  - enriquto 7y ago
    I just shared my balanced opinion in a civilized way. I honestly think the dismantling of the country would be in the best interest of most of its inhabitants (except for a tiny minority who is directly benefited by the francoist clique).
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - ptato 7y ago
      Where are you from?
      - enriquto 7y ago
        > Where are you from? I was born in Barcelona and spent 30 years there. My opinions are probably wrong, but they are not entirely uninformed.
        ptato 7y ago
        They're not uninformed, but they're biased. I doubt you'll find people in Cáceres that share that opinion.
      - Oletros 7y ago
        Yes, your opinion is not only wrong, it is totally uninformed. Or worse, it totally uninforming
    - gambiting 7y ago
      >>Spain is an inherently dysfunctional country. That's not a balanced opinion. That's just throwing shit into the crowd to see a reaction. If you really believe the stuff that you said, then explain why you think it's disfunctional and then we can have a discussion about it - maybe we'll even agree on some points! But otherwise you're just noise at best and provocator at worst.
      - mnl 7y ago
        That was simply zero information about the nursing home situation in Spain and plain old (you should guess where it comes from) political internal ethno-supremacism. Meanwhile in the real world, for instance, I live next to a nursing home with 100 cases (6 deaths so far), 35 of them workers, that has been transformed into a state field hospital with support of all authorities and the military after the business asked for help. That's Santa Elena, Torrent. This illustrates why isolating old people at special facilities as some luminaries have been advising for is an absurd plan.
        gindely 7y ago
        Other people are saying that the reason there's more deaths in Italy than other countries is because in Italy, there's sharing living spaces by the elderly and the young. An old folks home (I suppose that's what is meant by "nursing home") is kinda the definition of segregating the elderly. Sounds like that doesn't help - because even segregated living environments have enough interliving. Old folk need to get food and medicine and it's not retired people in the shops.
        mnl 7y ago
        Yes, retirement home. The idea is problematic (wishful thinking actually) because you can't guarantee that people providing care there aren't infected. They might be asymptomatic or incubating. You can test them, but I don't think you can do that every day and then that such testing equals perfect filtering. Once it's inside isolation simply doesn't work.
  - mPReDiToR 7y ago
    Are we supposed to only say popular stuff? All ideas are worth discusding, even if only to explain why they are not going to be implemented.
    - lightlazer 7y ago
      No, we are supposed to contribute meaningful comments so that ideas can be exchanged in a civilized manner.
    - x__x 7y ago
      "Are we supposed to only say popular stuff?" I've noticed a lot of censorship on this site
      - ggm 7y ago
        The site owners stated the rules up front. Their site, their rules. Moderation is both welcome and necessary.
      - gindely 7y ago
        Governments censor. I really wish I could read the "flagged" posts sometimes but the rules are the rules.
        krapp 7y ago
        Everyone censors. A community is defined by a common set of values and cultural norms, which are a means of censoring those of outgroups in order to maintain a cohesive identity. People censor themselves constantly in order to stay within the boundaries of the law and the norms of public decency. An online community which has a specific purpose by definition censors content which falls outside that purpose. Hell, the fact that we can't post illegal content is, itself, a form of censorship. Not everything is, or should be, /b/. Although that site censors as well.
        gindely 7y ago
        choosing what not to say isn't censorship. Censorship is when the someone with power forces you to refrain from saying something - not just in a particular forum, but in any effective way. This place tells you "if you want to spread certain ideas on the internet from the comfort of your chair, consider twitter or wordpress". Censorship is when the government tells you "if you want to to spread certain ideas on the internet from the comfort of your chair, please consider the gulag or child porn charges". The difference is stark. Diluting words of meaning doesn't help maintain free speech. It helps destroy it. If we don't know what free speech is, we can't defend it. (The fact that you can't post illegal content is a form of censorship. But that's not hackernews censoring you, it's the government. The fact that some content is illegal is literally the definition of censorship.)
- dang 7y ago
  This is the sort of denunciatory rhetoric we don't allow on HN because it leads to flamewars, and of course because the vast majority of the time it's just cheap and ugly, with people attacking others for garden-variety reasons (fear, anger, projection), as humans do. However, comments where people are criticizing their own background (country, in this case) are more complex and are a special case. I wish I could dig up some of the moderation replies I've posted to commenters in this position over the years, but unfortunately my HN Search fu has failed to find any. (Edit: I did find a small one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15732812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15732812) They also have a particular taste. As soon as I read this, I could feel that you were probably writing from that perspective. Such comments have a bittersweet quality. Even though the rhetoric is harsh, one can sense that the speaker has 'paid' for it with lived experience. Of course, coming from a minority inside that country, it gets even more complex. But I bet that if someone were to come along and criticize Spain in an ugly and stupid way, you'd be the first to defend it—because you know it and because that would be the only noble thing to do. As John Lennon said to Rolling Stone: I can diss the Beatles, you don't get to diss the Beatles. However, all this subtlety is lost on the internet. Your comment isn't what it appears to be, but that doesn't matter, because people will react to it as if it is. If you post like this to HN, you will start a flamewar regardless of how much complexity is behind the message, and this will damage the container just the same as someone posting out of ignorance and prejudice. So we need you not to do it here, to protect the community. You're welcome to share your experience in other, more personal and substantive ways, if you choose. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html p.s. These are arcane details, but it's interesting to me that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22673470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22673470 picked up on the overtones in your comment. Family members (speaking metaphorically) can hear these things.
  - enriquto 7y ago
    Thanks. I was writing that as a passport-carrying citizen of Spain, who thinks the situation is hopeless and the state can simply not be reformed from inside. The negative reaction to my comment was a bit surprising, considering that citizens of the USA often make similar remarks about their own country, and that these remarks are seen in good light on HN. But it seems that there is a small team of Spanish nationalists around here that will not tolerate such deviations. I do not really care too much about them.
mrleiter 7y ago
That is just utterly sad and reprehensible. I cannot find better words. They are stuck in my throat.
- alfonsodev 7y ago
  This is how lack of planning and saturation looks like, workers in those houses might have been positive of SARS-CoV-2 and put in quarantine at their homes, in some places volunteers are helping to cover those positions, we don't have all the information of every house, it is a drama, I want to think and attribute it to incompetence rather than evil. Other countries should learn from this and don't let the system saturate, It is sad, and unthinkable in the 21st century, I think that's why most countries will be caught by surprise, they might think this won't happen to them.
  - mnl 7y ago
    They have to show up at work by law, but there are unscrupulous people making a lot of money with shady nursing homes that simply have shown their lack of any human decency with this. I'm pretty sure they'll get their due retribution, people are aghast at this criminal behaviour here.
genezeta 7y ago
Some additional details from other local sources. Details are scarce, so... sorry, but I think I can add a couple of things to the linked article. The UME (Military Emergency Unit) has been disinfecting retirement homes for some days now (about a week IIRC). Initially they were only allowed to do this, disinfestation, and it was the homes' responsibility to "ask for help" on anything else when needed, and some didn't. The news referred to in the article is that "at least 2" undeclared dead people have been found by the UME and also a number of cases of abandonment. Besides these "at least 2", there have been some other deaths but, generally, they have been declared. (What I know from friends: Most homes have secluded people in their rooms and many are understaffed to check on them frequently enough.) A related problem seems to be that funeral services are overwhelmed: they don't have enough space to store the bodies, and they do not have protective gear to deal with the bodies correctly (added note, see below comment). This has led to an announcement yesterday that a local ice-skating ring is being arranged to store those bodies temporarily while they wait to be disposed of.
- alfonsodev 7y ago
  Funeral services rejected to get bodies with covid-19 because the lack of materials to deal with it properly, and therefore it would be irresponsable. Not saying they might not be overwhelmed as well.
  - genezeta 7y ago
    Yes, you're right. I forgot that part. There's both things: They do not have enough space and they do not have protective gear to deal with the bodies correctly. I updated my comment. Thanks.
  - yomly 7y ago
    A friend working in the hospitals in Paris intimated that the morgues are full and portable freezers are now being used to store all the dead...
- curiousigor 7y ago
  Are the funeral services keeping the bodies on ice because they want them buried or because they're waiting for them to be cremated? In this situation, where bodies are piling up, I'd understand the latter, but not the first. Then again (pardon my ignorance), I'm not from Spain so no idea what what the cultural thing in regards to funerals there is...
oscarpaz 7y ago
This was terribly sad. Certainly it is an isolated case, but heartbreaking. Hope we all can learn few things from this whole situation, especially about how to respect and take care of our elders.

69 points by thdespou 7y ago

Spain is an inherently dysfunctional country. A ridiculous ghost of an old evil empire. Its territory must be split and given to neighboring countries and new countries that are created.

PopeDotNinja 7y ago
Maybe delete your comment? You aren't doing yourself any favors by saying that kind of stuff.
- enriquto 7y ago
  I just shared my balanced opinion in a civilized way. I honestly think the dismantling of the country would be in the best interest of most of its inhabitants (except for a tiny minority who is directly benefited by the francoist clique).
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - ptato 7y ago
    Where are you from?
    - enriquto 7y ago
      > Where are you from? I was born in Barcelona and spent 30 years there. My opinions are probably wrong, but they are not entirely uninformed.
      - ptato 7y ago
        They're not uninformed, but they're biased. I doubt you'll find people in Cáceres that share that opinion.
    - Oletros 7y ago
      Yes, your opinion is not only wrong, it is totally uninformed. Or worse, it totally uninforming
  - gambiting 7y ago
    >>Spain is an inherently dysfunctional country. That's not a balanced opinion. That's just throwing shit into the crowd to see a reaction. If you really believe the stuff that you said, then explain why you think it's disfunctional and then we can have a discussion about it - maybe we'll even agree on some points! But otherwise you're just noise at best and provocator at worst.
    - mnl 7y ago
      That was simply zero information about the nursing home situation in Spain and plain old (you should guess where it comes from) political internal ethno-supremacism. Meanwhile in the real world, for instance, I live next to a nursing home with 100 cases (6 deaths so far), 35 of them workers, that has been transformed into a state field hospital with support of all authorities and the military after the business asked for help. That's Santa Elena, Torrent. This illustrates why isolating old people at special facilities as some luminaries have been advising for is an absurd plan.
      - gindely 7y ago
        Other people are saying that the reason there's more deaths in Italy than other countries is because in Italy, there's sharing living spaces by the elderly and the young. An old folks home (I suppose that's what is meant by "nursing home") is kinda the definition of segregating the elderly. Sounds like that doesn't help - because even segregated living environments have enough interliving. Old folk need to get food and medicine and it's not retired people in the shops.
        mnl 7y ago
        Yes, retirement home. The idea is problematic (wishful thinking actually) because you can't guarantee that people providing care there aren't infected. They might be asymptomatic or incubating. You can test them, but I don't think you can do that every day and then that such testing equals perfect filtering. Once it's inside isolation simply doesn't work.
- mPReDiToR 7y ago
  Are we supposed to only say popular stuff? All ideas are worth discusding, even if only to explain why they are not going to be implemented.
  - lightlazer 7y ago
    No, we are supposed to contribute meaningful comments so that ideas can be exchanged in a civilized manner.
  - x__x 7y ago
    "Are we supposed to only say popular stuff?" I've noticed a lot of censorship on this site
    - ggm 7y ago
      The site owners stated the rules up front. Their site, their rules. Moderation is both welcome and necessary.
    - gindely 7y ago
      Governments censor. I really wish I could read the "flagged" posts sometimes but the rules are the rules.
      - krapp 7y ago
        Everyone censors. A community is defined by a common set of values and cultural norms, which are a means of censoring those of outgroups in order to maintain a cohesive identity. People censor themselves constantly in order to stay within the boundaries of the law and the norms of public decency. An online community which has a specific purpose by definition censors content which falls outside that purpose. Hell, the fact that we can't post illegal content is, itself, a form of censorship. Not everything is, or should be, /b/. Although that site censors as well.
        gindely 7y ago
        choosing what not to say isn't censorship. Censorship is when the someone with power forces you to refrain from saying something - not just in a particular forum, but in any effective way. This place tells you "if you want to spread certain ideas on the internet from the comfort of your chair, consider twitter or wordpress". Censorship is when the government tells you "if you want to to spread certain ideas on the internet from the comfort of your chair, please consider the gulag or child porn charges". The difference is stark. Diluting words of meaning doesn't help maintain free speech. It helps destroy it. If we don't know what free speech is, we can't defend it. (The fact that you can't post illegal content is a form of censorship. But that's not hackernews censoring you, it's the government. The fact that some content is illegal is literally the definition of censorship.)
dang 7y ago
This is the sort of denunciatory rhetoric we don't allow on HN because it leads to flamewars, and of course because the vast majority of the time it's just cheap and ugly, with people attacking others for garden-variety reasons (fear, anger, projection), as humans do. However, comments where people are criticizing their own background (country, in this case) are more complex and are a special case. I wish I could dig up some of the moderation replies I've posted to commenters in this position over the years, but unfortunately my HN Search fu has failed to find any. (Edit: I did find a small one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15732812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15732812) They also have a particular taste. As soon as I read this, I could feel that you were probably writing from that perspective. Such comments have a bittersweet quality. Even though the rhetoric is harsh, one can sense that the speaker has 'paid' for it with lived experience. Of course, coming from a minority inside that country, it gets even more complex. But I bet that if someone were to come along and criticize Spain in an ugly and stupid way, you'd be the first to defend it—because you know it and because that would be the only noble thing to do. As John Lennon said to Rolling Stone: I can diss the Beatles, you don't get to diss the Beatles. However, all this subtlety is lost on the internet. Your comment isn't what it appears to be, but that doesn't matter, because people will react to it as if it is. If you post like this to HN, you will start a flamewar regardless of how much complexity is behind the message, and this will damage the container just the same as someone posting out of ignorance and prejudice. So we need you not to do it here, to protect the community. You're welcome to share your experience in other, more personal and substantive ways, if you choose. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html p.s. These are arcane details, but it's interesting to me that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22673470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22673470 picked up on the overtones in your comment. Family members (speaking metaphorically) can hear these things.
- enriquto 7y ago
  Thanks. I was writing that as a passport-carrying citizen of Spain, who thinks the situation is hopeless and the state can simply not be reformed from inside. The negative reaction to my comment was a bit surprising, considering that citizens of the USA often make similar remarks about their own country, and that these remarks are seen in good light on HN. But it seems that there is a small team of Spanish nationalists around here that will not tolerate such deviations. I do not really care too much about them.

mrleiter 7y ago

That is just utterly sad and reprehensible. I cannot find better words. They are stuck in my throat.

alfonsodev 7y ago
This is how lack of planning and saturation looks like, workers in those houses might have been positive of SARS-CoV-2 and put in quarantine at their homes, in some places volunteers are helping to cover those positions, we don't have all the information of every house, it is a drama, I want to think and attribute it to incompetence rather than evil. Other countries should learn from this and don't let the system saturate, It is sad, and unthinkable in the 21st century, I think that's why most countries will be caught by surprise, they might think this won't happen to them.
- mnl 7y ago
  They have to show up at work by law, but there are unscrupulous people making a lot of money with shady nursing homes that simply have shown their lack of any human decency with this. I'm pretty sure they'll get their due retribution, people are aghast at this criminal behaviour here.

genezeta 7y ago

Some additional details from other local sources. Details are scarce, so... sorry, but I think I can add a couple of things to the linked article. The UME (Military Emergency Unit) has been disinfecting retirement homes for some days now (about a week IIRC). Initially they were only allowed to do this, disinfestation, and it was the homes' responsibility to "ask for help" on anything else when needed, and some didn't. The news referred to in the article is that "at least 2" undeclared dead people have been found by the UME and also a number of cases of abandonment. Besides these "at least 2", there have been some other deaths but, generally, they have been declared. (What I know from friends: Most homes have secluded people in their rooms and many are understaffed to check on them frequently enough.) A related problem seems to be that funeral services are overwhelmed: they don't have enough space to store the bodies, and they do not have protective gear to deal with the bodies correctly (added note, see below comment). This has led to an announcement yesterday that a local ice-skating ring is being arranged to store those bodies temporarily while they wait to be disposed of.

alfonsodev 7y ago
Funeral services rejected to get bodies with covid-19 because the lack of materials to deal with it properly, and therefore it would be irresponsable. Not saying they might not be overwhelmed as well.
- genezeta 7y ago
  Yes, you're right. I forgot that part. There's both things: They do not have enough space and they do not have protective gear to deal with the bodies correctly. I updated my comment. Thanks.
- yomly 7y ago
  A friend working in the hospitals in Paris intimated that the morgues are full and portable freezers are now being used to store all the dead...
curiousigor 7y ago
Are the funeral services keeping the bodies on ice because they want them buried or because they're waiting for them to be cremated? In this situation, where bodies are piling up, I'd understand the latter, but not the first. Then again (pardon my ignorance), I'm not from Spain so no idea what what the cultural thing in regards to funerals there is...

oscarpaz 7y ago

This was terribly sad. Certainly it is an isolated case, but heartbreaking. Hope we all can learn few things from this whole situation, especially about how to respect and take care of our elders.