Because the doctor Gerardo Torre di Pagani has become a symbol in the fight against Covid and because this symbol is defended above all by those who do not look favorably on the vaccine.
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Gerardo Torre, born in 1955, is a licensed doctor operating in Pagani, province of Salerno. Graduated in Medicine in Rome with qualification in Medicine and Surgery obtained at the “D’Annunzio” University of Chieti, Torre is currently under disciplinary procedure before the Order of Doctors of Salerno and has become a media case. Among other things, his professional order will have to verify whether or not the Campania professional has complied with the provisions of the national protocol regarding the treatment of Covid-19.
To take sides against this disciplinary procedure there is a large group of patients, real loyalists of Torre, starting with the mayor of his municipality, Pagani up to some personalities known for their positions of open challenge to vaccination policies or on the verge of denial.
The popularity of “Doctor Gerardo” is not the stuff of today. Yes, because the story of the “street doctor” was not born with the pandemic. From the nineties, with the Ami, the itinerant doctors association, Torre organized a “voluntary itinerant medical service”. In 2001 he was a member of parliament in the Senate Carmine Cozzolino to tell the story of Torre’s activity by proposing a law for the “Establishment of the itinerant medical assistance service”:
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This valiant professional, […] has organized a voluntary itinerant medicine service throughout the province of Salerno at its own expense and non-profit, adapting a modified caravan in place of first aid with which it takes to the market areas and equipped with all the technical equipment and pharmacological necessary, and assists, I stress free of charge, those who need a first medical-surgical intervention.
We all know that this first intervention is very often what prevents a simple illness from taking on the gravity of a tragedy.
The accusation against general practitioners and the Usca
Torre has never been kind to his colleagues general practitioners and the Usca, however, interpreting a widespread sentiment: often doctors assigned to families are nowhere to be found and it is difficult if not impossible to contact them by phone (many use Whatsapp). Not only that: very few now make the rounds of home medical visits.
It is also true that the primary care in the regions has been brought to its knees: often the professionals are all maximalists, that is, they have reached the maximum number of patients allowed and are unable to manage the incessant demands of an increasingly elderly and ailing population. With the pandemic, the bubo exploded: known and chronic problems only became more evident. And on this subject the pagan doctor has often put his finger in the sore:
Let’s go back to being doctors. If there had been more territorial medicine, this pandemic would have been experienced differently and instead it was thought that the solution was hospitals. During the last two years I have provided home care to about 3 thousand people left alone due to Covid.
The Covid protocol different from “watchful waiting”
With the advent of Covid-19, Torre made the so-called “qualitative leap”: the fame of the surgeon in the period of the waves of pre-vaccine infections oscillated between that of the luminary of science and the thaumaturge king. Reason? The application of a protocol other than the guidelines for home care for symptomatic Covid-19 patients established by the Italian Ministry of Health. Torre has never believed in the “watchful waiting” method (recently blatantly rejected by the TAR), arguing that it was necessary to intervene with drugs very early.
Lello De Prisco, mayor of Pagani, now openly siding with the accused doctor, tells his experience in this sense. Positive about the Covid swab, asymptomatic, he asks for help from Doctor Gerardo, his neighbor who treats him “With sixteen infusions”:
I was completely asymptomatic, I had not lost neither taste nor smell, there was the watchful waiting and the tachipirina. I took advantage of the friendship of my neighbor, doctor Gerardo Torre, who examined my back and diagnosed me with pneumonia which I treated with 16 infusions, the saturation had started to drop in a worrying way.
After I healed, the classic lung scars were found. I add that there have been hundreds of requests from our fellow citizens for home help, so I often took advantage of his friendship to help them. If I can write today, I owe it to him too. Thanks to all the doctors who provide home care.
The positions against the vaccination criteria
Scrolling through the many video interventions of Torre published on social networks it is also clear that the professional is not only “allergic” to compliance with the protocols but openly opposed to the vaccination methods established by Italy and not only by Italy: pregnant women should not be vaccinated, children from 0 to 12 years should not be vaccinated nor, according to him, those who have already had Covid should be vaccinated.
Although today the Order of Doctors of the province of Salerno led by Giovanni D’Angelo does not comment the position of Dr. Torre “out of respect for the procedures in place” it is clear that this is the “accusation”. After all, it is the pagan doctor himself who explains the reasons behind the disciplinary procedure (which is not a sentence, of course):
It is said that I have not followed the therapeutic protocols, that I would not have respected the provisions of the National Protocol on the treatment of the Covid-19 pathology, that I have spoken out against the category, asserting that general practitioners are not doctors, and that I am against the vaccine, which is also not true as I simply argue that only those who really need it should be vaccinated against Covid and not those who, for example, are cured and immediately have high antibodies. I have only followed my conscience as a doctor and as a man.
Who defends Torre: “Like San Giuseppe Moscati”
Now, however, the question is on an inclined plane and has slipped from a medical-scientific affair to a political one in which even those who have extremist positions and wink at the no-vax protests wallow. At the end of the month, when Gerardo Torre will be heard by the Disciplinary Council of the Order, the The tribe (union of health workers, the same as in the no greenpass parades) andassociation Free choice Campania they will be in the square for a demonstration in support of him. The parliamentarian and journalist also announced a speech to Pagani Gianluigi Paragone, former director of Padania, elected with the Five Star Movement then left the grillino group.
A large part of Pagani is openly siding in favor of “his” doctor who would have “treated three thousand people” with Covid. The populous center of the Salerno countryside is full of posters asking citizens to demonstrate in support of him on January 28th. Torre is compared to a saint: «He is like San Giuseppe Moscati – it is written in the notices to citizens – he saved human lives and kept faith with the Hippocratic oath. He is an example for all the doctors in our area ».
