It looks like I'll have a pretty boring month ahead, so I have quite a lot of time to rant about the situation in Italy.
Italy was one of the first countries to ban all flights to/from China. Too bad they did not think about indirect flights, so no quarantine was enforced for people arriving via intermediate stops.
The first cases were 2 Chinese tourists visiting Rome, who miraculously did not infect anybody else. They even recovered pretty well, despite their elderly age (~80 years old).
Then few weeks ago we had our first domestic cases, most probably triggered by an asymptomatic patient arrived from China via Munich.
At first it was decided to lock down the few towns where the first cases appeared, and outside this area it was asked to limit social activities (e.g. bars closing earlier) to prevent the spread of the virus.
People reacted in the most sensible way: either by going en masse to supermarkets to stock up food supplies, or by organizing group protests "You cannot limit our social activities!"
Then it was asked to avoid crowded places.
People reacted in the most sensible way: overcrowding ski resorts, with long queues for the ski lifts.
Then the government said "Since you are too stupid to follow rules, we have to lock down most of northern Italy [the most badly hit area. unfortunately I live in the second most hit province in the most hit region of Italy] to prevent further spread".
People reacted in the most sensible way: overcrowding trains departing towards southern Italy (also thanks to the government who announced the lock down BEFORE restricting travel).
Yesterday it was announced that, since the situation is out of control, the whole of Italy is in lock down until 3rd April.
People reacted in the most sensible way: by going en masse to supermarkets AGAIN to stock up food supplies.
The virus will not kill us. Our stupidity will.
Anyway, in my area the situation is pretty bad. Hospitals ran out of ICUs, so it was ordered to "prioritize patients with higher survival chances": let the elderly die, and try to save younger patients.
This is not a "slightly stronger flu". Our national healthcare system is collapsing. All non-COVID-19 issues are being postponed until the emergency is over (and optimistically a vaccine will not be available before mid-2021
).
Add to this that generally Italian bosses tend to think that smart working is for slackers and most are still forcing all employees to go to work (traveling is not restricted yet for "urgent health issues, urgent needs (e.g. buying food supplies) and urgent job-related reasons"). Me and my collegues had to argue to get assigned remote working.
