This is my 11 th day of living alone under lockdown in my apartment or condo in Bologna considering that the Italian federal government stated a general quarantine to counteract the perilously expanding COVID-19 pandemic. Inquiring about my well-being and sanity, my good friends and family in Canada have actually anxiously messaged me in current days. I appreciate their care and concern, I am not so preoccupied with my health or the circumstances in Italy, the native land of my grandparents and the country I now call house: I am worried about the rest of the world.
The situation in Italy is dramatic and prescient: 47,021 overall, significantly expanding favorable cases and 4,032 deaths to date; apocalyptic streets of strangely shuttered, once-lively cities; medical facilities overburdened with illness; and communities experiencing loss en mass. I can not be major enough: this is the future of your neighborhood if you do not act appropriately.
In Italy, we are painfully living out an alternate reality in which a vibrantly liberal state unexpectedly ended up being authoritarian overnight, prohibiting funeral services, wedding events, birthday celebrations and the complimentary movement of its citizens. I state painfully not only because of the gravity of the national situation, but also since we have actually experienced the world’s leaders fully acknowledge the danger the infection presents after afraid shying away from decisive, preemptive action and urgent interest residents.
Uniformity now needs maintaining a loving range.
The closure of international borders– recently enacted in Canada, the United States, Australia, much of Europe, South America, and the Middle East– is a futile political stunt once the virus insidiously flows within neighborhoods, as it has. Complicating the worldwide pandemic is the regrettable reality that governments alone can not suppress the contagion: the statement of a state of emergency is futile without full public involvement in social distancing.
Although unsettling and unfamiliar, social distancing need not be painful: it merely requires an extreme re-evaluation of our relationships to others.
I at first believed that living under lockdown would be emotionally disastrous– that I would be unable to handle the consequences of the government actually banning having a social life. I ex