There is rarely anything like the proselytising energy, no, fury of a new convert. There they were, arsonists all, taking their matches to the pyre of public spending, of vital services, of anything redolent of social solidarity. Now, phoenix-like, they spring from the ashes of our hard-won gains of yesteryear to pronounce themselves fire-fighters extraordinaire. Come, they chorus, the hour of need is upon us: volunteer, donate, assist, let the purses of the state be opened.
Yet how they squealed when we dared to criticise them before the virus began to do its sinister work, when the direct, deadly human consequences of their cynical surgery were already in plain sight.
One now mounted high on the barricade of this official rhetoric against SARS-Cov-2 is a certain Martin Hirsch, the Director of AP-HP the group of hospitals serving the Paris region. “My” hospitals (you can sense what kind of attitude such “leaders” have to society at large and to those who do the real work when they use that pronoun in these circumstances), “my resuscitation wards have more beds available than those taken up by Covid-19 patients”, he told us in mid-March.
