Jason horowitz
11/04/2020 17:07
Clarín.com
The New York Times International Weekly
Updated 11/04/2020 17:07
ROME - When the coronavirus struck Italy for the first time, overwhelming the country's hospitals and causing the West's first lockdown,
Italians inspired the world with their civic responsibility,
staying home and singing on their balconies.
His reward for the months in quarantine was a flattened curve, a breath of normalcy and the satisfaction that the Allies pointed to Italy as a model.
Now, as a second wave of the virus engulfs Europe and causes new lockdowns,
Italy has become emblematic of the despair
, exhaustion and fear that are sweeping across the continent.
Milan, Italy's economic engine, is the new center of contagion.
Ride the tram.
Photo: Alessandro Grassani / The New York Times.
Britain and France have new national lockdowns and Ireland has banned visits to other people's homes.
And everywhere, if people are not sick with the virus, they are fed up with it.
In Italy, discontent is exploding.
The country that gave the Western world a preview of the
terrible human toll of COVID
- which demonstrated the need, and the success, of a national quarantine - now represents something darker.
Italy has become a symbol of Europe's wasted advantages and the impotence of half measures.
"
We have already reached our limit,
" said Emanuele Tudini, a bar owner whose wife applauded the doctors from her apartment window.
Italian hospitals, which offered a terrible glimpse of the horror to come, are again under pressure.
Milan, Italy's economic engine,
is the new capital of its contagion
and appears to be on the verge of quarantine.
The poorer and more vulnerable South is exposed, and the Neapolitans have mutinied against the early confinements imposed to prevent a massacre.
Preparing for a siege, Romans erratically oscillate between drinking like the world is ending and taking refuge during eerily silent nights.
Across the country, anxiety is turning into riots.
Large crowds in Trieste
chant that they just want to work
.
And protesters have taken to the streets in almost every major Italian city, from Palermo and Bologna to Verona.
Italians seem intolerant of a government issuing short-lived emergency decrees with the ease and frequency of a casino dealer.
In October, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who first assured the arrival of a vaccine for December and now promises a “serene” Christmas, said:
“I discard the confinements
”.
Near the end of the month, he declared that Italy had entered what he called “Scenario 3” and urged Italians to follow the new measures.
On October 31, the government prepared for “Scenario 4”, with quarantines in the most infected regions.
Also last month, Conte announced more aid packages worth about 5 billion euros for companies and
banned layoffs until March
.
Many workers say they have not received unemployment benefits since May.
Many believe that a return to a nationwide quarantine is
only a matter of time
.
© 2020 The New York Times
