Life in lockdown: Italy has changed utterly

It should be obvious by now how serious things are here with Covid-19. It should also be obvious that it is not an Italian problem. What we have is a truly dramatic situation,which the government is trying hard to manage and contain.

Things will get a lot worse before they get better. Hindsight will tell us the entire country should have been shut down sooner but that is of little help to Italy now though it should be of use to other countries that are a few weeks behind and that really must learn from the Italian example.

Like people in Ireland today, people in Italy yesterday dismissed or underestimated the threat and tried to proceed with business as usual. It is hard to understand the ferocity with which Coronavirus strikes until it strikes so countries not yet seriously affected must learn from those currently in the front line.

What Italy is dealing with is a health war with rapidly climbing numbers of people infected, many seriously, and a growing number of casualties. Perhaps to keep people calm, no details are provided about the dead, they are registered only as numbers but at the same time the numbers don’t lie. Yesterday there were 366 deaths, today the number is 463 and it is destined to rise significantly in the coming hours and days.

Kathy Sheridan: We are about to find out a lot about ourselves

---

Xi Jinping visits Wuhan as Chinese coronavirus cases plummet

---

Coronavirus: Focus on personal responsibility is foolhardy

---

Coronavirus Q&A: We are now in uncharted waters

---

All of Italy is now in quarantine and a strange quiet hangs over the empty city streets. Throughout the country huge numbers of people are working from home or trying to as they also have to juggle children home from school in small apartments. Universities and schools will stay closed until April. We are scrambling to offer on-line courses to disoriented students anxious to continue their studies.

Normal life is suspended, weddings and funerals banned. Shops close at 6 pm. and cinemas, gyms, theatres, museums are closed until further notice. Prisoners are rioting because all visits have been cancelled. The economy, not surprisingly, is in free fall. Yet people here are resilient and are staying calm, discovering local parks and amenities in the open air rather than jamming up shopping centres. The internet is slow but working, shops are, for the most part, reasonably well stocked and there is little evidence of panic buying.

Life has changed utterly in a week and even if things pick up in a couple of months, it is hard not to feel that this is the start of a much bigger change. But that is an argument for another day.

Looking out from Italy, the impression is that the penny still hasn’t really dropped about Coronavirus and that a lot of people still haven’t realised that Italy is simply a week or two ahead of the other countries, a test case (with a fair more resilient public health service than many other countries have - including Ireland).

It is dispiriting if not surprising to see Donald Trump off playing golf and belittling the crisis, Boris Johnson telling us nothing has changed that the British will take it on the chin and go to Cheltenham as though it were business as usual. It is worrying to see Leo Varadkar’s dithering over St Patrick’s Day parades and still planning to fly to Washington brandishing shamrock. Surely that can wait for another year.

Piecemeal solutions to Covid 19 have been shown to be inadequate. Ireland - under the current government or under a national emergency government with a stronger mandate and more authority - will have to introduce more draconian measures similar to those brought in by Italy and it should do so sooner rather than later, before it is too late.

Learn from Italy: early containment makes a big difference and gives healthcare systems a better chance of dealing with the outbreak. The quicker we can slow the spread, the lower the intensive care cases and mortality rate. There will never be enough respirators to go round.

Yes, we should all wash our hands but each and every one of us needs to be responsible: stay at home, avoid crowds, buy what is necessary rather than stockpile, talk on the phone not at the bar, limit the damage, slow down the spread of this virus which is so often as invisible as a phantom leading people to believe they are fine when they are not and when they are in fact infecting others without even knowing it.

John McCourt is Professor of English literature at Università di Macerata.