That hug will cost you €400

In Pavia, a medium sized town in south western Lombardy, a man who hugged his friend outside a café was fined €400. Approximately 10 similar fines were doled out in the course of an hour.  All over Italy city mayors have been outraged about people engaging in too much movida, a Spanish term Italians use for nightlife. People are buying drinks to-go and congregating in the streets drinking and not abiding by physical distancing rules. And since they are drinking and eating, they are not wearing masks, or at least not over their mouth and nose. Our dear Beppe Sala, the mayor of Milan has now put the kibosh on bars and kiosks selling takeaway drinks after 7pm, so that people won’t be crowding the streets drinking into the late hours of the night.  I’ve noticed, by the way, that the youth have already found a way to wear their masks on their chin with a certain swagger. How is it that some people can pull off looking cool even with what looks like a chin diaper?

 To help keep Italy stay on the straight and narrow, the government declared it was recruiting 60,000 volunteers, whose job it would be to remind people to keep their distance and wear their masks. The initiative was announced by the Prime Minister’s office without involving other ministries, so political infighting immediately derailed the project. The politician Giorgia Meloni of Fratelli D’Italia (a right-leaning conservative party) accused the government of trying to organize a militia.  Frankly, if the state is collecting €400 a hug, I don’t see why they can’t pay appropriately qualified people to help enforce these rules, if it is indeed necessary. It seems more urgent to recruit contact tracers, an initiative I’ve heard very little about. Without contact tracing, it’s unclear what data they will be inputting into the much discussed Immuni app that is allegedly ready and will be launched in about 15 days.

 I’ve gone back to keeping a close eye on the evening bulletin, just as I did at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis. I remain skeptical about the numbers but I also don’t want to be a pessimist. Maybe things are going well? Today we only had 397 new cases, and some regions have had no new cases at all.  One of these is the island of Sardinia, which has had no new cases in 5 days! We are still on pins and needles awaiting the decision about interregional travel as of June 3rd. It remains quite likely that the residents of Lombardy, Piedmont and possibly Emilia-Romagna will have to wait a further two weeks until they can leave their state. The governors of the southern states are fighting hard to keep us nasty northerners out of their regions for a while longer.  The verdict falls this Friday. At the same time, Italy’s foreign minister Di Maio is using all his diplomatic prowess to establish an agreement with other EU states for the reopening of all borders after June 15th. Germany has already announced it will allow its citizens to travel throughout the European Union. This sets a rally great precedent.