When it really happens: SHTF...

[Ovidio]

I was speculating a bit today.
There are “casualties” everywhere now. The numbers are soaring, so there are more and more panicked voices for a complete shutdown of the Country. But that would mean that people would panic immediately. Shortening the opening hours of shops would cause people to huddle up and raise the risk of infection.
All this without even considering the repercussions on the economy and so, on the life of millions of people.
The problem is that too many people talk. People who know things and people who don’t. And it is not always easy to discriminate the first from the latter ones.
One of the most important lessons I have learned during these last three weeks is that a country facing a disaster does not need total freedom of speech, absolute tolerance for every opinion. It needs a very tight management of the information, which should be in good, competent hands. But one line, one opinion, one decision maker. Armchair heroes and geniuses, politicians and other idiots must shut up and allow the ones with responsibility and competence to do their work. Which is to cross the river and bring everybody to safety.
If people keep hearing conflicting opinions, there will be confusion and uncertainty.
In times of crises, Rome had time-limited dictators. That may be a tad too much, but letting donkeys talk and create confusion on all media is certainly not democracy: it is foolish.
Another thing that I’m learning is how unsettling it is not to know, not even roughly, how long a situation like this will last. No-one seems to know.
Everybody is reacting to the crisis with harsher rules and calling for even stricter ones. I’m home with a wife and three kids. For me, the only tough aspect of this situation is that I can’t tell them anything. I talk about how we can spend time, what we will do after this, but I can’t answer their only real question.
How long can such a situation last? How long can an economy hold? How long can people last under house arrest?
I surprised myself thinking that maybe, within a week or two, once the situation gets untenable, someone could come up with a solution that may sound like this: protect, segregate as good as possible all the more fragile people, all elders, all weak and sick ones, and let all the others face the disease. The tragedy is the sheer amount of people in horrible conditions who overwhelm the hospitals, but if we can protect the more exposed categories, we might reduce pressure on the hospitals and allow for all the others to keep on living. Those with complications would be able to get treatment and the rest would just get that damned flu. In the meantime, someone would finally come up with a vaccine (and then I would really like to stand watch at the town hospital to see if a couple of local no-vax families show up).
I don’t know anything of viruses, biology etcetera, I’m just thinking freely and wildly. But I have the feeling I might not be that far off...

Last little thing.
Cleaning up home, i stumbled on a long forgotten document, the original registration of my Grandpa’s Carcano when, before the end of WWII, he moved to Sulmona, in central Italy. Dated March 9th, 1945.
Great to find it again!
Attachment 106312

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