There's more but I won't flood you. The point I'm trying to make is that things _so far_ are okay, but will get increasingly dicey if people don't have access to food and the necessities for living.
The Italian government is allegedly markedly left, and locked a lot of people in their homes with two administrative acts (no action from the Parliament for many weeks), has made a government commission against fake news on the epidemic (with outside journalists, but it still smells like a Ministry of Truth), and is using quite a bit of pressure to keep people in their homes (nothing violent, but a presence and controls by the police far higher than normal). Regional governments of any sides are following up in the same manner up to threatening arrest if you are walking out if you don't have a documented reason.
Oh, and the Parliament is essentially shut down, and so the judicial system for the most part: everyone is too afraid of death.
Also the way they address Italians, like parents scolding children, is unbearable. The population is made up of citizens, not loyal subjects.
Simply put, as far as I can see the current pandemic has brought out the worst authoritarianism from all political sides.
> But did so much earlier in the curve than Italy.
Things could have been better for Italy if they had imposed a total lockdown a little earlier for the Bergamo industrial region. The fact is that the industrialists in that area were against it and nothing happened, apart from the whole region of Lombardy being put in a looser lockdown a few days after things had started going bad in the Bergamo region. That "helped" the virus spread around Bergamo and in the whole province of Lombardy, so that Bergamo together with neighbouring Brescia were the most heavily hit regions both in number of cases and deaths.
Denmark had it "easier", so to speak, because if you lockdown Copenhagen I guess you've already lockdown-ed half of the country already.
This is an article in Italian [1] about what went wrong in the Bergamo industrial region.
My intent was not to create a false narrative. I can only refer to what I read and hear. There have been several stories of Italians not heeding the Governments orders and hence the Army and basically martial law in some parts of the country.
From Italy, don't trust the Italian media, they are the first that are making so much fuss and wrecking chaos, and especially making quite some money because as an industry it was starving for some time.
Statics say clearly what strategy could have been followed to take care of coronavirus without much disruption of the working force.
And the people at the government are mostly old farts, which says quite a lot why they panic.
Don't have the exact link right now but I remember reading an Italian newspaper article a few days ago saying that Italian agriculture is going to be massively impacted by the fact that approximately 300,000 East-European workers had returned to their countries because of the virus.
I actually found something similar, it's this article [1] (in Italian) which is in fact an interview with an Italian agricultural "imprenditore", where he says that there usually are 370,000 seasonal foreign workers working in Italian agriculture, that's 27%. One can imagine that many of them have by now returned to their countries of origin with no possibility of easy return.
> I can definitely tell you that up to around a week ago, there was a certain anarchy
As one of the locked up people in Italy, I don't think it is completely true. The media did quite a nice job at cherry picking the bad apples. But if we go by the number of fines levied for breaking the rules, it's around 45K (figure taken from a day). A drop in the bucket compared to the population that's staying at home.
And it's still not clear why the people were fined: were they breaking intentionally the rules, or were they not in possession of the required documents? (You have to go around with a piece of paper stating wh you're out of your house, and if not found truthful you risk a fine and an arrest).
"«We have very few free places in intensive care, now we are in the order of 15 or 20 available. Every day we get someone new, tomorrow 3 more arrive and San Raffaele is creating an area with 14 seats which will be ready, however, in a week. Today we recover them by closing the operating rooms, where there are respirators that can also be used to support the breath »."
> they were right in denouncing racism against Chinese people living in Italy.
In my opinion there was no actual racism, just common sense measures. That work against any strain.
> I am not sure how you can say the government's response is worse than other countries
I am thinking of our prime minister, for instance. Two weeks ago he was on TV 16 times in a single day, to denounce the emergency. Then we went into the 'business as usual' phase, and the situation slipped out of hand. Today he was quoting Churchill, and I had the impression that it was more to inflate his ego, rather than to do something useful for the country.
All in all I see a very amateurish management of the crisis.
> furioterzapi
That's a debated point, on live versions of the song you can clearly hear "Fulvio". On the booklet they write "Furio".
That article is five days old. Find something from today suggesting the same. And make it relevant to the entire world. Italy is not a model for how this is going down in other countries. Every region is different (and more important has different data collection methods, making it hard to compare two areas)
Again, nobody knows what the fuck is going on. Chill out, stop spreading panic and think critically about things. It’s okay to question stuff.
> I think I'd prefer the way of acting of the Italian government who at least seem to be trying to do things.
I understand that Singapore is a very small country and ran way differently than my own, but please look up what the PM there said when he addressed the country on COVID-19 matters and compare it (if you can find a subtitled version) with what our "Giuseppi" said. A world of difference.
Of course now they must do something. But way before the outbreak, local administrations of the now-locked regions who asked for quarantine controls from people from Wuhan and China in general were called "Sinophobes" and the government was far more eager to lock down direct flights from China (useless if you go via hub) as opposed to quarantining or at least tracing those people, and of course to show all support for Chinese people. (Note that I do not condone Sinophobia at all: but a matter of public health policy - like everything, improvable - was just framed as racism).
Ok, this might have not helped at all given that the current theory is that SARS-CoV-2 came to Italy from Germany. But the government was too eager to return to the "important affairs" (meaning, discussing whether a member of the coalition would leave the majority or not). Then when the first cases arrived, there was a total "tug of war" with the legislation ("close down", "ok, maybe not", "maybe yes", "SHUT DOWN EVERYTHING").
So nothing Singapore or South Korea-like. COVID-19 worries me, but I'm far, far more worried about this government.
> just before the shutdown of the north, a lot of people fled the north
Part of the North had already been in shutdown for a week or so. Unfortunately, a plan to greatly expand the quarantined zone was leaked to the press by a shady journalist-spy-henchman. This resulted in thousands of Milanese rushing to "escape" before the plan had officially been announced. At that point, instead of going ahead with that plan, the government shut down the whole country and instructed local authorities in the South to control and monitor the stream of "escapees".
> less willing to socially isolate their elderly
I think that's a bit of a stereotype - in reality there are plenty of socially-isolated elderly in any major Italian city. It's just that the average age is so high over there, "the elderly" as a category includes __a lot__ of people, very often still working in their 60s or 70s in key roles (or nominally retired but, say, running amateur football clubs or volunteering in other third-sector activities that end up being essential to local life). Socially isolating all of them is simply unfeasible - you'd end up paralizing most regional assemblies and even the national Parliament, for example.
I think the article already addresses that. It stresses that "Italy’s economic illness is not the acute sort, but a chronic disease that slowly gnaws away at vitality". Spain, Ireland and Portugal might be in worse shape but they might be coming to understand that they need a tough treatment; Italy doesn't. The PIGS are at shock; Italy is just dazed at stupor.
Keyword being "so far". In Italy, where people have been out of work for months, things are starting to get dicey. Here are some links:
- [Sky News: Coronavirus: Italy becoming impatient with lockdown - and social unrest is brewing](https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-italy-becoming-impati...) - [The Guardian: Singing stops in Italy as fear and social unrest mount ](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/01/singing-stops-...)
There's more but I won't flood you. The point I'm trying to make is that things _so far_ are okay, but will get increasingly dicey if people don't have access to food and the necessities for living.
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