Ch #2 - WE NEED TO SLOW DOWN THE CONTAMINATION

I believe there is a need to understand better what is going on, and I want to thank the people who showed their empathy and support after my first post. 

With these posts, I don’t want to sound alarming as I am not an expert on the subject. Still, I can share the information I gather thanks to my "privileged" position, which is being married to Francesca. I will try to be her voice’s amplifier.

It is the first time that I catch her being worried. I never detected such apprehension in her ten years of medical studies and specialist medical training. Nor did I in the ten years after, while she was working in anaesthesia, or while she got called for all types of emergencies on medical cars, from deadly accidents to emergency deliveries. Even since working in the intensive care unit at Brescia Hospital, has she shown signs of anxiety before. 

But now she says: "We need to slow down the contamination at least, otherwise, there will be more severely ill patients than we can handle! The system cannot handle that. We would de facto end up at the same level of a developing country".

The same situation is taking place in the other hospitals of the region: yesterday in Lodi, 51 new COVID-19 patients were admitted, of which 17 were severely ill and were immediately moved to intensive care. These numbers are entirely unsustainable. 

These are the official numbers in Lombardia region at the moment (source: regional press conference):

531 COVID-19 POSITIV, of which 85 admitted to intensive care.

For each infected patient, there are two, precisely 2,5, newly infected patients. So, it is necessary to contain the virus as much as possible, not to let the healthcare system crash.

I talk a lot with Francesca about the situation. She’s like a tiger mom, same looks and moves, ready to defend our cubs against any attack. And to protect our parents, as risks multiply with age. She’s there to protect all of you, too, all of us — just everyone. 

I share the daily press review with her, and she shares the daily medical report with me. 

It feels apocalyptic. 

We try to live peacefully with our girls, and the last thing we want to do, of course, is to scare them. Therefore, we had another "escapade", out in the sun this morning. The simple things of life, far away from the crowds, not sharing the air we breathed with anyone else. Yes to peacefulness, to a serene experience, but no need for the fairground atmosphere at the moment. 

On a side-note: During the walk, in a semi-deserted parc, we came across two ladies in their jogging outfits. They threw their iPhone at us and asked us to film them while they run and shout: "Brescia will never reeeeeeest!".