Ordinarily, having an aperitivo in Venice’s St Mark’s Square would cost a
small fortune. Not on 3 March, when bar owners offered a free drink for
each one purchased in an attempt to attract custom as the city emptied
out amid Italy’s developing coronavirus outbreak. The offer was intended
to last a month.To get more news about
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In Rome, restaurant touts jokingly invited people to try a
“carbonaravirus” as the tourists left in the capital went along with the
relaxed vibe, choosing to carry on with their holiday rather than go
home. That was during the first week of March. Business owners could
hardly be blamed for worrying about the impact of coronavirus on their
livelihoods, especially when leaders were giving confusing messages.
On 27 February, four days after 11 towns in the north were
quarantined and when 17 people had died of the virus and 650 were
infected, Nicola Zingaretti, the leader of the governing Democratic
party, travelled to Milan, whose wider Lombardy region is the centre of
the outbreak, for an aperitif with a group of students. “We must not
change our habits,” he wrote in a post on social media. “Our economy is
stronger than fear: let’s go out for an aperitivo, a coffee or to eat a
pizza.”
On the same day, Beppe Sala, the mayor of Milan, shared a video with
the slogan “Milan does not stop.” The clip contained images of people
hugging each other, eating in restaurants, walking in parks and waiting
at train stations. Nine days after his trip to the city, by which time
the death toll had risen to 233 and confirmed cases 5,883, Zingaretti
announced he was suffering from the virus.
As Boris Johnson gave his most explicit warning yet on Sunday that
the UK might face an Italian-style lockdown, Italy’s experience –
particularly the way people went about their business in the early days
of the crisis –could serve as a warning to other European countries that
appear to be following a similar infection trajectory.
Giuseppe Pantaleo, a social psychologist at Vita-Salute San Raffaele
University in Milan, said: “At the beginning people were not really
believing what was happening so politicians like Zingaretti and others
just wanted to reassure the population. He went to Milan to demonstrate
some forms of social behaviour were still safe and that the government
was working towards a solution and so on, but he of course
underestimated the risk.”
Medics also clashed, with some taking the virus seriously and others writing it off as only a bit more serious than flu.
As the virus spread, the public turned to humour, with memes and
videos shared across social media, including one of an Italian
grandmother giving advice about hand-washing. Another featured mobsters
hatching a plan to smuggle Amuchina, the Italian-made hand sanitiser
enjoying a boom in sales, instead of cocaine.
“Either within their social groups or on social media, people
reacted with jokes and irony,” said Pantaleo. “Laughing is a very common
reaction that people have when they’re confronted with the idea of
death. But of course, in those early days nobody saw it as a serious
possibility.”Kissing on the cheek and hugging were banned, and social
distancing advised. However, in another foreshadowing of the UK’s
situation, people were still out and about, frequenting bars,
restaurants, parks and beaches. With no school or university, teenagers
and students took the opportunity to socialise more with friends.
For the most part, life carried on as normal until an abrupt change
on 8 March, when deaths from Covid-19 leapt by more than 50%. The prime
minister, Giuseppe Conte, ordered the whole of Lombardy and 14 other
provinces across other badly affected northern regions to be
quarantined. The news of the quarantine was leaked to the Italian press a
few hours before an official announcement, provoking thousands of
people of southern origin to flee home from the north.
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