Diary from the quarantine

By Daniele Lucchini

During the last week of February 2020, a COVID-19 focus was discovered in a few small municipalities in Northern Italy. After locking soon those villages, the night between 7 and 8 March 2020 the Italian government put in lock down the entire Lombardy, which is the region of Milan and the most populated of the country. One day later it was the turn of the whole nation.
Not only Lombardy is known for Milan; it is also the region of Mantua, a small town today which was one of the main centres of the Renaissance in the XV and XVI centuries. And the place where the author lives, and where he has been keeping a journal in real time since the beginning of the emergency.
“Well, because of the coronavirus, the night between 7 and 8 March 2020 we became a so called red zone, and we are going to be until April 3. During the next weeks, being forcedly unemployed as a tour guide (which is my only job now), I’m going to monitor the situation, keeping a sort of a diary, trying to avoid fake news and panic speech”, are the words opening the diary.
Mr. Lucchini is noting the daily live in quarantine: old and new routines, government instructions, emotions. Passing from reports to poetic annotations and to frank opinions with “no care for politically correct speech”, as he states in the foreword.
Of course, a text written on the spur of the moment, in real time, but always lucid and reliable. Still, a text posing interesting questions, if you want to get them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Finisterrae
• Release date: Apr 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9780244581572

Book preview

Daniele Lucchini

Diary from the quarantine

Colophon

Finisterrae 52

First time in Finisterrae: 2020

Cover: Bruno Beltrami

Incompatibilità 5, 1988 (detail)

© 2020 Daniele Lucchini, Mantua, Italy

www.librifinisterrae.com

All rights reserved

ISBN: 9780244581572

Epigraph

E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.

Dante Alighieri, Inferno XXXIV,139

Foreword

On 21 February 2020 a focus of new coronavirus infection is disclosed in a few villages of southern Lombardy. Two days later the Italian government seals the above villages, and two weeks later the entire region is locked.

"Well, because of the coronavirus, the night between 7 and 8 March 2020 we became a so called red zone, and we are going to be until April 3.

During the next weeks, being forcedly unemployed as a tour guide (which is my only job now), I’m going to monitor the situation, keeping a sort of a diary, trying to avoid fake news and panic speech".

These are the words I had used when Mantua, the town I live in, was declared a part of the red zone, to announce my intention to take note of how the life in lock down could be; the idea was to keep an eye on the official channels only, avoiding newspapers and mass media in general (which have an ordinary harmful propensity to emphasize), and to see how my daily routines could be affected.

Though the lock down has been prolonged, I have maintained the intention to keep the diary only till April 3.

Actually I didn’t want it to become the diary of my life, nor to be the report of the government bulletins. The first month has been enough to put in the light the main questions posed by the coronavirus emergency. I am settled for having registered them. I didn’t expect to be the one looking for answers.

Even because by now not only TV’s, but also cultural radio programs and papers are plenty of experts, prophets and various know-it-all writers explaining every social and philosophical implication of the virus for the years to come. There is absolutely no need of me analysing anything.

So, please be content with these notes taken, since the beginning, in real time from inside the first epidemic focus made public in Europe. And I prefer writing made public than developed, as a personal opinion. Other personal opinions I have expressed in real time, often on the spur of the moment, with no care for politically correct speech.

I am releasing this diary as it is, for the only reason that, doing like that, I can close it and work on something else, on something more congenial to me.

Feel free to ignore it, to read it or to throw it away after a couple of pages. But don’t come to me complaining for my opinions, as they are simply personal opinions.

The Author

April 2020

Diary from the quarantine

Sunday, 8 March 2020. Day 1

Morning (The decree)

Since today Mantua, as much as the entire Lombardy and other 14 provinces in Northern Italy, is being isolated because of the coronavirus epidemic.

The decision was some way feared since the last week of February, and was expected since yesterday in the evening, when the national media started to spread an unofficial decree draft. It is not clear at present how this draft has come out of the government palace, but it has.

The official decree was signed by the prime minister and by the minister of health late last night, and is going to be valid until April 3.¹

Apart from the strict quarantine instructions for people who have been infected and who may have infection symptoms, it is fixing a series of restrictions for us living in the red zone. Here are the main ones connected to our common daily life.

First. No one may enter or leave the area, unless they have a real urgent need (such as a job or health one). Still, the advice is to avoid moving also around the area itself. Remote work is encouraged. It is recommended to keep a one-metre safety distance from other people.

Second. Sport activities and events are suspended. Public sport places, such as gyms or swimming pools, are closed. Only professional and Olympic athletes may keep on practising, but absolutely with no spectators.

Third. Public events are suspended, while public places (such as discos, cinemas, theatres, pubs) are closed.

Forth. Schools, universities (apart from medical courses), libraries and museums are closed. Remote learning has to be activated.

Fifth. Religious ceremonies are suspended. Access to religious places is allowed only in case every person who enters can keep a one-metre safety distance from the other people inside.

Sixth. Bars and restaurants can open only from 6:00 to 18:00 and must guarantee a one-metre safety distance from customer to customer. Only the waiting service is allowed.

Seventh. Shops and supermarkets may open only in case every person who enters can keep a one-metre safety distance from the other people inside. Shopping malls and street markets are closed on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays.

Eighth. Ordinary leaves for doctors and medical staffs are suspended.

So, with reference to my job as a tour guide, it is confirmed: I am going to be unemployed at least till early April.

I will have more time to follow the events.

Afternoon (First reactions)

Not too much different from this morning. The decree has been published in the official national bulletin (the Gazzetta Ufficiale): possibly the measures it contains will begin to show their full impact tomorrow, Monday, when working time starts again.

At present I am just registering the first reactions. According to the main national papers, between yesterday late evening and today early morning some hundreds people crowded Milan railway and bus stations to escape the red zone before it was sealed: mainly residents hailing from other regions or countries, and some tourists. I understand the escaping tourists, who actually have no bases here, but the escaping residents are just irresponsible. Alright, technically they have fled before the decree had been officially published, but anyway…

I don’t have news of flees from here, and Mantua at the moment is pretty quiet. The streets around the monumental centre don’t look so different from an ordinary summer Sunday: few people around and even less cars rolling over the asphalt. This last aspect is not bad at all: finally I may enjoy promenading in the middle of the town alleys without risking to be run over. Also it is weird not to bump into elderly people in a city where a large part of the inhabitants are over 65: they