Modena, Emilia-Romagna, Italy, May 4,2020
Outside in my street…

Modena, city centre
.. there is no one around, of course. A blistening sun is shining on the terrace from where I am writing the weather is very warm, inviting you for a stroll downtown or a walk in the parks already green. But, still, there is no one around.
So two months have gone by since my return home from the ‘chaplinesc’ weekend on the Dolomites that I describe in part 1. I began my lockdown in skiing clothes and now I am about to enter ‘phase2’, partial easing of the quarantine’s measures, in T-shirt and shorts. Ever since I have stayed home, like most of my fellow-countrymen and Europeans. To prove that Murphy’s law exists, the Easter week was sunny and warm like today, perfect for the beach, for suntanning, maybe for an early swim, or for cycling, walking, enjoying seafood outdoor – the traditional Easter break in Southern Europe, a period in which we can already ‘smell’ summer.
Surprisingly, I have not felt my quarantine as a prison, as a modern Reading Gaol where people are for punishment. What is happening is almost impossible to conceive, and I routinely wake up at night and wonder if this is just a dream. I thought this could happen only in Hollywood disaster movies or in the past ages. I reckoned the plague, Black Death, was now confined to history books or novels. In fact, I have taken the opportunity to read again parts of I Promessi Sposi by the romantic writer Alessandro Manzoni, our national literary hero, a historical novel set in an XVII century Milan exterminated by the peste, the plague, brought by the German army. Wait a minute: Milan living a tremendous deadly virus outbreak brought in by the Germans! Isn’t it like today? And in the 1600s, like today, ignorance, prejudices, errors and lobbies’ pressure enlarged the scale of the pandemic. Milan authorities, then and now, made a series of mistakes, involuntary and voluntary as well, that gave the city the sad record of death tolls.
Two opposite realities: left and right, in this fake post-ideological age, still count
Let alone the chronic cut to our welfare state, and to Public Health consequently, that the troika imposed us after the 2008 crisis in a surreptitious manner, it is well known that Northern Italy has one of the best health systems in Europe. But Milan and its region, Lombardia, have had the highest numbers of contagions and deaths in Italy and in Europe. Bad luck? Not only: some superinfected areas were not closed before the general lockdown because some national and multinational very important factories and companies did not want the shutdown and used all their political influence to avoid it in the name of ‘business first’, a local version of ‘America first’. As a consequence, thousands of people lost their lives in vain. Then, private retirement homes were infected because no protective apparatus was used until late March and old people simply died, and that was it, given out as normal casualties. Today some directors of these retirement homes are under investigation for negligent multiple homicides. Moreover, the regional board of public health made a series of amateurs’ mistakes like the no testing policy, the lack of protections for hospitals’ workers, the non-separation of hospitals’ areas, the lack of coordination, the neglecting of home cures and so on and so forth. A paradoxical example of the ridiculous slogan ‘The Italians first’. They spent a lot of their precious time in a sterile sickening political quarrel with the central government, and time, under these circumstances, was as precious as gold. No wonder: this area is a stronghold of Matteo Salvini’s Lega and the local government is strongly in the right-wing parties’ hands. The basic fact is that in Lombardia the right-wing local government has constantly favoured the development of the Private Health Service and the corruption it brought in a city nicknamed Tangentopoli (bribesville) since the Clean Hands investigation in the 90ies which led to the end of the ‘first republic’. Consequently the public sector, besides the constant cutting in public funding, has had to compete to get patients, as if they were customers, with the private sector, with all the ominous consequences we all know well. There are private hospitals and services of great quality, of course, if you can afford them, but there are also very bad ones, where now people simply die. Apart from letting old men die in retirement homes, what has the private health sector done for the pandemic? Where are they? We wonder with horror what would happen to the whole country if Salvini was PM and its gang of politicians ministers. God have mercy!
On the other hand, where I live, even if the contagion hit as hard as Lombardia, a neighbouring region, we have seen much better handling of the crisis and a much smaller number of deaths. Emilia-Romagna is a study case for historians: since the end of WWII, it has always been governed by left-wing coalitions becoming one of the richest, most advanced and efficient regions in Northern Italy and in Europe, not only because of its industrial production but also in welfare. Like Hannibal, the modern barbarians tried to invade Emilia-Romagna from the North in the recent regional elections but were stopped, giving an important contribution to halt the new March to Rome by the fascists of today. Left and right, in this fake post-ideological age, still count and make a difference. Diemmers helped elect Elly Schlein, candidate of Emilia Romagna Solidale, a young promising left politician, a new clean political face recently appointed vice president of the Reginal government.
Runnin’ on empty

Snowpiercer – the movie
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