(by John Blackeye) The dismayed face of the Governor of the Lombardy Region, Avv. Fontana speaks volumes about the situation of the epidemic in that part of Northern Italy.
The data they would have liked to read are other. A sign of a decline in the epidemic and deaths had bode well for the past two days. Someone had talked about the light at the end of the tunnel but it seems that that light went out suddenly today. Today's statistics, in fact, leave no way out and the leaders of the Lombardy Region, even today, have had to deal with an increase in infections and with the total number of deaths which on the national territory is the third in order of magnitude since the beginning of the emergency: 712 citizens taken away by the invisible enemy. Another 712 families cut down by the epidemic and left alone in their daily drama while mourning a wife, a husband, a son, leaving aside plans, expectations and dreams that will no longer come true. In fact, there is a lot of talk about economics but the cynical world of information is neglecting thousands of men and women who are not ghosts but are real victims of a catastrophic event that hit our Italy and that a few months ago was not even imaginable.
We were not prepared for war with this type of enemy, so much so that it took some time to understand that this pandemic would have paved Italy in a few months.
Suddenly an action strategy was decided, the most plausible, based also on the example of China and so Italy went into hibernation on March 10 and according to what they had told us, also because of the two weeks of incubation of the virus, it would have been enough fourteen or fifteen days to see the first inverted results in an ascending parabola that in these days seems never to stop.
However, we must consider that the average Italian takes state ordinances and laws into consideration as if they were addressed to others and not to himself. And for this reason, probably, the real general quarantine began at least a week later or maybe ten days later. That is, the time necessary to follow up on complaints and fines which is the only effective system to make the average Italian understand that those prohibitions imposed by law concerned him.
Once it is established that it was necessary to stay at home and once the mass of young people who believed they were immune to the disease were removed from the nightlife, given the hundreds of coffins taken away by military trucks every night from the affected cities, it can be said that Adequate compliance with the quarantine was achieved perhaps from 16 March onwards. So to see the turnaround of a parable of the contagion that is mocking the world population, at least in Italy, it will be necessary to wait for the beginning of April.
However, a reflection arises spontaneously. If instead the quarantine had been respected from the beginning, then why are the infections increasing?
The answer would be quite shocking in my opinion. In fact, if despite the quarantine, the infections continue to increase, it means that those who are now closed in the house had long since taken the disease and only now, with the onset of symptoms, are they going to the hospitals to be treated.
At this point the signal would be another. That is, if the Lombard population continues to churn out almost three thousand infected every day, it means that the complex of the sick throughout the Lombard territory is absolutely not under control, it is absolutely not what comes out of the statistical figures that refer to the use of the buffer but it suggests that the infections in Lombardy concern the vast majority of the population. That is, the contagion is so widespread that it is not enough to remove people from the street or from public transport to stop the infection.
The sick or asymptomatic carriers are evidently so many that even closed between the four walls of the house they cannot prevent the virus from stopping its race among the people or they cannot prevent the virus from manifesting among those who, in those four walls, the disease she took it with her.
In summary, the almost five thousand infected daily more than today could represent the tip of the iceberg, that is, they could hide an infected population in its entirety.
And here, unfortunately, history will draw up its verdict after years, but it is likely to think that everyone, really everyone, took the problem lightly starting from the Zingaretti that showed off security and serenity, who hurried to remind people that normal seasonal flu makes more victims of Coronavirus and that today, precisely because of that superficiality, is found in the list of the sick.
We hope instead that the cause of the numerous daily infections is really to be attributed to the negligence of the Italians in respecting the prohibitions imposed by the law. If this were the case, we should have seen downward results since the first days of April. But there are only five days left until early April. If the downward trend does not show up, it will really be necessary to raise your hands, perhaps to Heaven, to start doing what the world population no longer knows how to do: pray.