Report from a Corona virus highly affected area (Bergamo, Northern Italy)
By: Lory Lorenz
Tags: Coronavirus, Bergamo, Covid, Italy, Covid 19

Bergamo’s town center these days

Coronavirus — how we live in a highly affected area (Bergamo, Northern Italy)

It’s been days I wanted to start to write how’s life within one of the first and mostly affected/infected COVID-19 areas in Italy but as you may imagine things have been pretty hectic here since it all started about one month ago. I feel now the urgency to write as “citizen” as I am utterly worried by the feedback I’ve been getting from my worldwide friends and concerned about the way Europe and the rest of the world is highly underestimating the risks and danger of this deathly virus, hoping it may help you well before your government or politicians will take a decision. Plese forgive my grammar mistakes.

Let’s go straight to numbers before I start the whole story: in our medium-sized town of Bergamo (about 120k inhabitants) in the last 4 days we had the following number of deaths: 18–44–33–51 vs. an average daily rate in normal time of 5–7 deaths. These figures should be enough to warn everyone on how serious is the matter.

Middle February — when it all started

Virus news were already popular. But as you know, rumors around combined with fake news or just messages spread around whatsapp of “so called experts-doctors-nurses” were of any sort: most were saying it was just like a normal flu, hitting a good slice of population, killing the elderly already affected by previous illness, not touching kids and young people while other were already talking about the danger and the risk of a China alike pandemia. In general most people did not care too much as we have never been affected by any serious virus here, even Sars, avian or pig plague hit very mildly here causing no worries. To cut it short, we had been behaving like the rest of Europe and the world is currently behaving: business as usual, it won’t hit now and even if it does, it won’t be as strong as in China.

So, despite in our area all universities and school were closed, restrictions went on on bars, restaurants, football stadiums and other gathering places, most of us did not care very much about it at the beginning and found these restrictions to our freedom a bit “too much”….

A couple of areas south of Milan (lodigiano/Codogno’s area) were even locked down as red zones due to the high number of infections and people were forced to stay home, all businesse closed down, people could not move anymore in or out of that area.

After a week or so, it looked clear economy was going to be hit hard by all this restrictions and some politicians started to guess if it was wise to keep them on and even asked the government to remove all of them and invited people and tourist to re-start their normal “consumers’” life. At the same time unfortunately, infected people and deaths were constantly rising especially in the area I live in… clearing doubts almost to everyone that this time was something different. Messages from our hospitals were quite clear: we are close to the collapse, about 10% of the patients affected by COVID need intensive care and places are already full.. new patients will be given priority accordingly to age, health, previuos illness and so on… so at the beginning of March, just after two weeks of the first infections known, hospitals had to face the hard and terrible choice about who could survive and who couldn’t….

March up today

Closure of schools, sports etc. was extended in the whole region. Based on hospital and infection reports, seeing things were going to the worse day by day, on March 8th government “closed down” with new restrictions my whole region (Lombardia) as well as 14 other provinces mainly in northern Italy. This was the point where human idiocy and egoism shown up. Some rumours of this restrictions came up the evening before and thousands of peoples flooded train stations and used any other means to “escape” the new locked down areas mainly to reach parents and relatives in southern Italy and Islands. But they were not the only example. That very sunny week end, thousands of skiers packed any mountain slope in northern Italy to enjoy themselves regardless of all governments recommendations to stay home to prevent virus diffusion.

The logical consequences of the above stupid behaviours are easy to imagine… virus starting to spread also in other parts of the country as well as increase the speed of its diffusion in our region.

The Government, considering all the above, a couple of days after had to extend and re-inforce all the restrictions to the whole country.

How it is living here now? Well, almost everyone has been at at home for at least a week with our families. Few factories, all supermarkets and chemists and few other “basic need shops” open. Kids are getting some homework to do from their teachers online. Some schools have arranged online classes. To move around we must carry a “self-certification” stating why and where we are going otherwise we risk a high fine (over 200usd) and also to be taken to court. Town is deserted, our local airport Milan-Bergamo BGY, the third in Italy for traffic (12M passenger per year, average 30–35k daily) is almost empty, most flights got cancelled.

The main road close where I live usually packed with cars and trucks the whole day is now empty. The only noise one can here since days are ambulances… adding up anxiety, we count them… today are less then yesterday.. let’s hope it’s a first small sign numbers are slowind down. I’m living with two elderly people and choose to auto-isolating from the rest of the world since two weeks now. I am going once a week to the mall to shop food for all of us and do not allow anyone to visit us since then. Here and there we hear the sad news of some people we knew passed away suddenly or just after few days… to add sadness there are no funerals, no last farewell, most elderly people saw their sons/daughters and grandchildren before going to hospital and won’t see them anymore as nobody is allowed to visit COVID patients.

It reminds me of some apocalyptic movies like “The Day After” or similar… we are here living day by day, hoping this invisible enemy won’t catch us and that it will pass soon. We are discovering a way of life we never experienced before, taking the best of it and try not to think what is going to happen tomorrow or the next month…. when this will be over we will found ourselves like after WWII, with an economy to be rebuilt from scratches… we don’t think about how many of us will lose their jobs, how many will suffer depression and other mental illnesses involved by what we have been going through.. now first thought is to survive this plague.

So, for God’s sake, if you care for yourself, for your parents, for your family, don’t wait for those above us to decide what to do and when to do, start NOW to change your life habits as much as you can following the guidelines vs. virus already available anywhere on the web. If you have any doubt on how much politicians value our lives just read what some of them said in recent days about it (Boris Johnson for instance)… as most of deaths are now from elderly people they may be even happy to save money on pensions and helthcare-assistance….

I’ll keep updating this post hopefully on daily basis hoping it will help you to “decide” for yourself without any delay. Feel free to ask anything, I’ll do my best to reply to everyone.

Take care, stay safe and #molamia (don’t give up in my dialect)

15th March

Official datas do not seem to slow down in our region. Up to last night we had about 12.3k positive (increasing of abut 1.8k in one day!), 5k people hospitalized (+400), about 800 under ICU (+85) with the number of deaths reaching 1,000 people in the sole Lombardia (+76). Doctors said after the first waves or elderly people now the most affected are the range between 30–60. Most of them when they get symptoms like high fever are recommeded to aislate at home taking paracetamol and to call emergency only in case of breathing problems. Currently have two friends around 50yrs old in this condition and hopefully they’ll get through without need to be hospitalized. Community was shocked by the death of 47yrs old guy working at emergency call centre in our main hospital who was home with high fever since 3–4 days. He had a sudden breathing crisis who killed him almost instantly… so sad!!

Today I went early in the morning to the supermarket to shop for food for our 3 families. Roads were empty.. even the motorway Milan-Venice, 8 lanes always crowded was empty.. it was like a punch in the stomach to see it… Supermarket let people enter just 4–5 per time. I was among the first ones as it opened. They just run out of some fruits and fresh food, probably due to the lack of supply or reduced transport service. The rest was there so for one week we will be ok.

My 82 yrs old mum has been having a cold in the last days… I’m a bit worried and keep checking on her temperature to see if she gets any fever. Sunday’s routine, usually church in the morning, lunch and football the rest of the day is over. It will be like any of the other past days. More and more worried as we do not see yet the end of this tunnel….

16th March

Official datas do not seem to slow down in our region. Up to last night we had about 13.5k positive (increasing of 1.3k in one day, about 500 less than previous day), 5.6k people hospitalized (+600 (200 more than the day before), about 825 under ICU (+25, sixty less than previous day) with the number of deaths reaching 1,250 people in the sole Lombardia (+252 in one day, about 180 more than the day before). This last number is impressive, but datas about posivite and people under ICU are going down a bit and this I hope is a good sign the virus is slowing down.

Sunday has passed like any other day. The terrible things of living aislated is that every day is always the same that you forget which day of the week it is. The high rise in the number of deaths in the past days has touched more or less everyone… we all have a family friend or a relative who passed away for the COVID 19 now… and this is killing our moods a lot. We live in full uncertainity, we read of people in full health and shape in their 40s or 50s taken away suddenly after few days of fever and symptoms. We are deadly scared to be the next one.. and thinking about the consequences this would cause to our families drives us crazy….

Fortunately we have a sunny day this monday, it looks like one of the beautiful “full spring” days where joy just come up spontaneusly at the look of flowers, green fields and mountains topped with the last white snow…. but it’s just a short moment till the next ambulance sirens takes our minds back to reality…. we will recover soon, we will go back to normality soon, we will restart soon to see our friends and enjoy those gatherings we are missing so much…. #molamia

17th March

statistics are not as good as I hoped with yesterday slowdown.. total positive cased in Lombardia raised to 16.2k quite a jump from yesterday of more than 10%, deaths reached 1.6k (about 300 more) and patients under ICU treatment raised to 880 (about 60 more after the slowdown from yesterday). Another bad news it that our main hospital, Giovanni XXIII, has filled up all the ICU bedplaces (about 80) so that they can’t assist more patients in need of this and have to be placed in other hospitals outside our province where they still have places.

I’ve been in contact with some old friends and hearing their stories it’s heartbreaking. One of them, living about 40 miles from me had his 61 yrs old neighbour passed away after one week in hospital.. the son of this man (34yrs old) is also in hospital in serious condition and at home in quarantine there are his pregnant wife and one small daughter…. and my friend has been living their tragedy day by day, hour by hour since the beginning…. he was devastated just to think about his neighbour friends….

I keep checking fever to my mum every few hours and so far so good, she still has this cold which does not pass but no fever thanks God.

It was again a lovely sunny day so i took advantage of it to do some gardening and spring cleaning around the house which helped not to think too much about this mess. Few ambulances today, much less than previous days.. I don’t take it as a good sign but at least it relieved a bit the burden we were forced to think about when they were passing every half an hour.

take good care of yourself, stay home, avoid crowded places and follow any precautions they say to avoid COVID spreading around #molamia

18th March

Numbers: total tested positive in Lombardy 17.7k (+1.5k from yesterday), hospitalized 7.3k (+400), ICU 924 (+45) deaths 2k (+300). Some datas shows a slight slowdown (positive and ICU) while hospitalized and deaths are still at a staggering stage unfortunately.

When it rains, it poors… they were ready to mount a new camp hospital just outside town when reality of shortage of hospital personell cause to stop it. It could have handled few hundred post treatment patients… but without anyone who could run it it would have been useless.

Hospital people, doctor and nurses, our current heroes, are unfortunately the one paying the highest toll to the virus: many hundreds got infected (90 just in one of the medium sized clinics we have in town), some already died and variuos are under ICU treatments in life risking conditions. God pray for them, they have been saving lifes and it’s an utterly injustice they have to pay for that…. they are calling back to help any retired doctor and nurse, they hired freshly graduated people in the sector….

Back to light matters to avoid further depressing thoughts… today it was again a beautiful spring day with temperature reaching 20C. It would be a perfect day to take families for a walk around parks or a short trip to nearby lakes or mountains….

Tried to kill boredom with some gardening and major cleaning operation outside the house. It helped not to think too much and got some tan for free;) Ambulances are not passing by as often as in the past days.. I don’t know if it is because there are less people with breathe crisis or just because hospitals are full and can’t assist any more patients… let’s hope is the first reason.

We are coping with the new life well, mum still with cold but not fever. Old uncle fine… he has parkinson since few years… I now realize how luck he was to be hospitalized in january for a kidney problem which was solved in few day… I can’t imagine if he would have had this problem now… probably they would have never taken him to hospital and let him to his destiny because of the situation….

I am glad to see now all over the world they are taking this COVID matter more seriously.. I hope they will act soon and in a strong way to limit losses and damages.. I don’t want to see our area situation anywhere else.

#molamia #nevergiveup #bergamomolamia

19th-20th March

I didn’t feel in the mood to write anything yesterday… while numbers are not showing any significant slowdown… in the meantime Italy has overcome China in number of deaths already. On top of the uncertainity, from the first time since he explosion of this virus in my area I started to be scared, really scared. News of people younger than my age, in full health and shape who did not make through ICU or just passed away suddenly while at home with symptoms have really scaled my thought to a new and higher level of fear.

If before my biggest concern was to preserve my two elderly relatives, now the matter regards myself and my whole family… they say it is not good to let oneself down as it lowers immunity level but it’s very difficult not to thing what would happen if any of us would get infected…. and especially if I would since so far I’m more or less taking care of everyone in the house.

I try to keep at least my body in shape, eating healthy food, doing some excercise and have good sleep. They say it helps mood and body and I must say I feel much better whenever I can sleep well.

I was at the supermarket yesterday. They let only 5–6 people per time so had to queue for about half an hour. I must say everything had masks and gloves and were disciplined. Let’s hope finally everyone understands how important it is to slow down virus diffusion. Unfortunately, not all factories have closed down, and I am talking about the ones who are not in che food or health chain and this is a big mistake in my opinion. We should take China lock-down way as a reference if we want to overcome this crisis asap.

I read news of the virus spreading all over Europe and the world…. I feel really angry that many countries underestimate this danger despite our “costly” experience in front of their eyes… this is really unforgivable for any governments and minister in charge of public health…. it isn’t any more a matter of economy and money.. it’s a matter of saving human being from death!

21–22–23rd March

Datas of last two days are showing a slowdown in the number of infections but still here people is dying at high pace everyday. So there is little to celebrate yet :(

Days are passing by almost all the same with just one difference: less ambulances around and more news from friends passed away or lost their parents.. all in the same way… after few days in ICU or just at home because they could not be assisted.. too sad!

Even weather wasn’t nice these last days, cloudy and very cold bringing us back almost in winter time, which didn’t help much the mood. I read they are running out of coffins in our province, military trucks are moving coffins to be cremated far away as no more capacity in our area… now even if still half shocked some questions are arising inside our people: who is to blame for this tragedy? Who made mistakes? How many people would e saved if our NHS wasn’t cut and demolished by greedy bastards politicians ?!? I’m pretty sure sooner or later people’s rage will come out after our pain will be over… and hope someone will be given what they deserved for having indirectly killed so many people.

Mum is slightly better, and also my 85’s year old uncle it’s fine. So far all the means we adopted to keep them safe seem have been working fine. I hear all over Italy they are chanting on their terraces and window but nobody is doing it here in Bergamo.. we have no mood for any joy as you may understand… silence is the best way to remember our losses.