What’s next, an alien invasion?

If I were an Alien overlord observing the Earth right now, I would think that this is a perfect time to invade Earth and enslave the human race. Humans are way too busy chaotically fending off Coronavirus to defend the planet. Clearly, I have too much time on my hands and too vivid of an imagination.

Like many of you, I have been lucky enough to have never lived through war, so this situation is completely unprecedented. Never ever has our personal freedom been so restricted. Don’t travel, don’t aggregate, don’t touch. Yesterday my local supermarket (Esselunga for the record, I know the Milanese will want this detail) was limiting access to a few people at a time and we had to queue keeping a 1-meter distance from each other. I did live through 9/11 in New York which was also a tense and scary time.  But life went back to normal within a week. This is different. Also, it’s not terrorism. Or is it? Oops, there goes my imagination again.

There have been a lot of questions about how the government will enforce the lock-down in Lombardia.  We are not in China after all with Mao style controls. It appears that if you want to move around, all you need is an Autocertificazione (a kind of waver), where you self-certify that you have a legitimate reason to travel. These reasons can include work, health, or simply a “necessary situation” (situazione di necessità). Check the form, sign it, put it in your pocket and off you go, spreading Coronavirus around the nation!  I am not pretending that I know anything about how to run a country in times like this, but self-certification strikes me as a little lame. I’ve always found autocertificazione somewhat baffling but now, in particular, I think we might leave this to the Swedes or the Dutch and look to the Chinese for some inspiration. They gave us the virus after all.