Last week‘s problems did not go away, but they were not resolved either. They stayed there, festering like infected wounds, and this casted a shade of immobility on the whole week, a week otherwise plagued by more troubles, more bad news and a general lack of improvement on all fronts.
Yesterday evening the football team was getting tested, as they do fortnightly, so I tagged along, because it’s pretty pointless for my significant otter to get tested alone: if I’ve got it, he’s carrying it around. Everyone’s negative.
This gave me a chance for a stroll around the park. Like a hour and a half of stroll. And how pathetic is that? I get a hour of fresh air every two weeks. I’m pretty sure I can cut a better deal if I kill someone. And at this rate it’s most likely to happen.
On Friday we get our weekly review on how numbers are doing, and we’re not doing good. If you remember we’re dividing the Country in zones, with no movement allowed between regions whatsoever, and last week we went from a mix of orange and yellow. We then turned red, and this week – as I was saying – there has been very little improvement about that.
This week.
Next week.
Things got worst for Sardinia, the poor fellas, and a small region south got slightly better but, as you can see, things are still pretty dire. And they don’t look like they will improve.
These are today’s numbers so far: half a million people are currently positive (over a total population of 60 million people). We have been 3.3 million cases so far, and more than a hundred thousand people have died. In my region alone, we have a little less than 800 people in intensive care unit, and we even have a tool that lets you check out in real-time how many beds are left. The first vertical red line is the point where we start to worry, the second vertical red line is where literally every bed is occupied and we have to start turning away people with Covid and not having a place to put people who need intensive care for any other reason.
This is significant, much more significant than absolute numbers in a way because it puts together how many people are sick and what is the healthcare capability of the region. As you can see, Lombardy is not leading: we’re trailing second behind Marche, a region in the east-center with 1,5 million people (we have a little over 10 million people). Many are arguing that it’s these kinds of numbers that should lead to decisions. In some way, they are.
Anyway, absolute numbers are not looking too good either: as you can see, we seem to be unable to get out of the same situation we had in January. Right now, my region is confirmed to be in lockdown till mid-April. Mid-fucking-April.
Meanwhile, we’ve had the AstraZeneca shitstorm, in which the vaccine has been halted due to potential side effects that have been later denied as being significant. Lots of women found themselves a little puzzled by comparing the documented side-effects of the birth control pill with the alleged ones of the vaccine and we all came to the same conclusion: if men were the ones to take those pills, we would have better pills with fewer side effects. But this is a conversation for a different time.
This was your weekly Covid update from quarantined Italy. Over and out.
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