Scenes from Italy

People can be tested in Italy. The virus has spread. The government has acted.

An American describes what he sees.

I read the news today, oh boy. It is coming fast:

Jeffrey Laurenti, an American in Rome

    *** In the USA sporting events and theaters are shutting down. No March Madness. No NBA. Baseball suspended.

   ***Schools are closing.

   ***Gatherings banned in state after state.

   ***The stock market crash. Bear market called.

     ***Trump is tweeting that the virus spread is all Obama's fault.

     ***Goldman Sachs says we are in a recession and we will realize it shortly, and it will get worse.

     ***Layoffs and disaster in the hospitality industry.

     ***Still almost no testing in the USA.

   ***Death counts.

Time out.

Italy is ahead of the virus curve. Rome may be a preview of American cities and travel.

There is literary precedent for a time out. Giovanni Boccaccio wrote The Decameron about 1350, following the plague of 1348. It is a group of 100 stories. He imagined them to have been told to one another by a group of seven women and three men who escaped the plague-ridden Florence (self-quarantined) to stay at a villa outside of town, where they amused themselves sharing stories of love and sex. 

It was early Renaissance escape fiction, the Netflix romantic comedy binge of the era. One can go away, but one does not really get away.

Flights cancelled

College classmate Jeffrey Laurenti is a foreign policy expert and diplomat, not a travel writer, but he found himself by accident in the epicenter of the pandemic in Europe, and he shared his observations. He traveled to Italy this week, planning on flying in and out of Rome to visit former colleagues in Europe and North Africa. Italy has the highest number of confirmed virus cases. Their medical system is overwhelmed. He encountered a mix of panic and frustration and simultaneous calm. 

The panic is at the transportation system, with flights cancelled, plans scrambled, people who were supposed to be elsewhere stuck and frustrated. But in Rome itself, it is eerily quiet. The report below is lightly edited from his letters about it.

Jeffrey Laurenti: Scenes from Italy:

"I arrived in Rome Tuesday morning to discover that the Italian government had suddenly applied to the entire country then draconian restrictions on public movement that just three days before had locked down Lombardy and the Veneto, the areas around Milan and Venice. 

The flight in was unusual. The carrier ws Alitalia, whose trans-Atlantic flight have always been characterized by a certain buzz among effervescent Italian travelers, punctuated by applause when the plane lands. The mood on this flight Monday night ws subdued, even somber. The silence when we landed was grim. Funereal. People knew.

Pantheon

At Rome's airport, crowds and taxi touts were nowhere to be seen. I checked the departure board. My planned transfer to Tunis was cancelled. I booked a substitute flight. It got cancelled. I went to the center of Rome, which I had been warned would be eerily empty.

The citizenry is barred from leaving home except to go to work, to buy food, and to go to a pharmacy. Restaurants and coffee shops ("bars") must close by 6:00 p.m. Dinner is served only in "la cumins della Mamma" i.e. Mom's kitchen. Patrons cannot take their espresso standing at the bar, but must sit at tables, at least two meters from the nearest other patron. No kissing on both cheeks, or even one cheek. No touching even, in this very tactile society.

St. Peter's Square

In the airport neighborhood of Fiumicino I saw several restaurants facing the town's canal and the only visible patrons were a stranded older America couple dining al fresco. The wait staff of other restaurants were waiting idly--on a splendid spring day--for guests who were not showing up.

I wash my hands a lot between efforts to figure out a way of getting out.  

On Wednesday more country banned flights to and from Italy. The Alitalia call center is totally overwhelmed. Half the flights on the board were cancelled. The wait time for a re-booking is nearly four hours. I am trying to get out via Germany, unless Germany, too, throws up a wall.

I made my way to the historic center of Rome. I touch nothing, nothing at all. I have never seen the city so beautiful and uncrowded, but also never so subdued, so depressed. Rome's famous sights were empty. St. Peter's Square was utterly empty. The Pantheon, the Piazza Navona, also empty.

Empty streets, empty restaurants.

The restaurants and coffee-bars, also empty and closing."