Beppe Severgnini writes:

For a society like Italy, keeping company with others is better than sedatives, and if you have to do without, you suffer withdrawal symptoms. So there may be furious fallout.

People have stopped shaking hands, let alone greeting each other with a kiss. If you sneeze or cough in public, people jerk away and show genuine alarm. Conversation is monopolized by coronavirus, and in the absence of clear rules, companies and organizations behave randomly. Why are people allowed to squeeze into a supermarket but are kept out of theaters? I am allowed to go to work at Corriere della Sera, in Milan’s central Via Solferino, but an invitation to a television program in the same city was canceled. You’re from Crema, I was told, and your hometown is a little too close to the lockdown areas. You may not be admitted into Rai television studios.

Mistakes were made, probably, in late January. Italy may have been ill advised to stop flights to and from China; those flights would have provided a clear indication of who was arriving from that country, making health checks easier. But in the last week, the government in Rome and the regional governments in Northern Italy took a firmer stand to slow down contamination, with the approval of the World Health Organization and the European Union. Apart from the limitations already mentioned, two weeks of voluntary self-quarantine has been requested from anyone who has had direct contact with people who tested positive for coronavirus.

But drastic measures without clear explanations have scared the nation. It would be wise to say, over and over, that it is crucial to limit the number of people who can pick up the virus from an infected person; and to do that, for a time, you will have to keep people apart. Moreover, the Italian health system has broadened its testing beyond only people with symptoms who have been in contact with infected coronavirus subjects. As of Sunday, Italy had tested about 20,000 people, many more than France or Germany. So it is hardly surprising that Italy is registering more positive cases.

Of course, confusion reigns when a new situation arises, but the last ten days have already transformed Italy into an intriguing political, commercial, social, and psychological laboratory. The first Western country to deal with coronavirus en masse has also spotlighted how sensitive democracies are, even in developed states: their inappropriate initial reaction toward China, a crucial trade partner; the failure to gauge the economic impact; the reluctance of many companies to adopt smart working practices; the lack of solidarity within national borders (on Thursday, the governor of Sicily declared “It would be better if tourists from the North stayed away”). Also, the sudden pressure on the national health service. And above all, the personal vulnerability shown by many. This is the first epidemic to land on social media, where people can warn, but also scare, one another. [Continue reading…]