COVID VS Italy

Eleonora pertusio

We always think about our little garden, no one care about what is happening outside till the problem arrives in our little green space.

That’s what is happened with Coronavirus. This new strain of virus was discovered in 2019 and has not been previously identified in humans. But it was in China. China is so far from us. No one cared about it.

In February COVID19 had spread in north of Italy so fast as a fingers snap. Italian Government started to say to keep calm, that is was only something a little bit stronger than a common cold, that it was dangerous only for older people and people with pre-existing medical conditions. After one-week public school has been closed. All adults in all country went on with their routine activities: job, restaurants, bar, pub, discotheques, cinemas. The virus hit so much people that the authorities started to be worried. Not only the weak categories, everyone.

After that politicians started to split Italy in areas. Red zone: Milan area, where there was the massive quantity of infected; orange zone, adjacent to Lombardia and yellow zone, where there was less danger to be contaminated. They had asked to stay at home to avoid to spread more the virus. They established also that schools, museums, cinemas must be closed. Bar and restaurants had to work from 6 AM till 6 PM. This hasn’t been enough. This virus is so much contagious and dangerous, more than we expected.

New operation has been done, all Italy has been declared red zone, now we have strong restrictions: we can go out only for going to supermarket or pharmacy or at work. If police see you outside without a real motivation, you have to pay a penalty. Hospitals are overcrowded, doctors and nurses are overworked. Unfortunately, stay at home is the only way to avoid that the number of victims increase more and more.

The point is that for us stay far is really hard. We are warm, we love hugs, to share, to spend time together, to talk with a spritz in our hand and a friend sit in front of us, shake the hand when we meet someone, to enjoy pleasures of the life together. What we are trying to do is to stay far but closed: singing at the balcony, sharing memories of our life, doing virtual tour of our beautiful country, organizing digital party with app, videocall, stories on Instagram, flash mob, established days for celebrating Italian recipes (like pizza, tiramisù, ravioli…),  these are our ways to feel alive together, because alone we are going to die.

Now we are changing our attitude, our job has become smart working (at home), we are trying to change, because COVID had changed lives, from deep. No one knows when this situation is going to finish. We hope soon.

Maybe if from the beginning we took the same limitation as we have now lot of people wouldn’t be died. I see other countries thar are doing in the same way as we did at the beginning. That way I would like to say to everyone: stay safe, it’s not a joke, you risk to lose your life or all the beautiful things of the world. #stayathome