Virus
Covid-19 is putting collective and individual resistance to the test. Someone compared this pandemic to a war, an analogy that I don’t entirely agree with, even if it gives a good idea of its complex gravity. We have been confronted with something invisible, powerful and dangerous that we do not know. It appeared in an unpredictable way, as it acts in an unpredictable way, finding the scientific community unprepared. Not only is it insidious, but it is also particularly virulent, hence the enormous difficulties in trying to counteract and contain it. It has claimed many victims demonstrating its devastating effects.
We are in a unique and particularly painful moment of our history. We have all been isolated in our homes and the first strict measures have touched us all very closely and indiscriminately, in aspects that we have always considered essential to our lives. The situation has and still is severely limiting the freedom of each individual, changing our lifestyle, making us waver and forcing us to suddenly remodel our “Comfort Zone”. The enormous technological evolution and the need to always be efficient and productive are leading us to no longer be masters of our time: speed has now become a surplus and whoever slows down is seen as an obstacle. The Virus has isolated us from everything and everyone, which is a strange condition for us people of the twenty-first century. Being deprived of our freedom to do what we are used to, to move, to relate, to meet and being instead forced to constantly remind ourselves why all of this is happening, feeds our fears and makes us aware that life, our most precious asset, is exposed to risk.
Our country has been isolated, sick people have been isolated, health workers have operated and still operate in isolation, facing in turn extreme physical and psychological exhaustion.
Going through this time and trying to understand from the inside of hospitals what the Virus is and what its effects are, was like living in two worlds, the “inside” one and the outside one of pseudo normality.
