First-hand experience in Italy of the Corona Virus.
With permission to repost from a friend in Asti, Italy –
Hi Gina, I am very sorry that this damned virus has also come to you in America. I can describe to you what happened here in Italy: at the beginning, it was underestimated, because the first to die were all very old (all over 75) and with other diseases that had weakened them. This made us think that all the younger and healthier people were not at risk.
The problem is that we were only at the beginning: you can be positive for the virus without showing symptoms at the beginning of the disease or mistake it for “normal” flu, but after a few days the virus attacks the lungs and, in severe cases, it gives respiratory failure and at the hospital, you are forced to be attached to the respirator.
The first to need hospital resuscitation were obviously the elderly, but today there are fifty, forty and thirty-year-olds in resuscitation. Fortunately, it seems that children have such immune defenses, especially those vaccinated for other diseases, that if they take the disease they do it asymptomatically.
This can be very comforting on the one hand, but it is very dangerous on the other because children who look healthy and are well attack the virus to their parents, grandparents, and friends. The problem is that there are fears of reaching a point of collapse in the hospital reanimations so that we cannot cure everyone and we choose who to save based on age and the possibility of surviving.
They choose who has the best chance of making it. And this is chilling. For now, in Italy, we have not yet reached this point, but every day we have an average of 1000 positive cases, and there are fears of getting there in the coming weeks. In addition, this disease does not heal quickly, some patients must remain intubated even for 21 days before they can resume breathing autonomously, therefore the replacement of hospital beds is very slow.
We immediately closed the schools, and I think it was very fair, so I hope that tomorrow they will close them as you wrote to me. Otherwise, I advise you not to send your children to school. Italy is all red zone, this cannot be moved freely, but only for health, work and shopping reasons in the supermarket closest to home: but the advice is to stay at home! To protect my parents, I stopped visiting them in person, and I also banned my grandchildren.
They are at risk of life if they get sick, we must protect them. I go shopping and bring them what they need, and I don’t go into the house but I keep at least a meter and a half away when I give them things. The virus resists alive on objects for several hours (it is not known exactly how much) then disinfect with alcohol-based products several times during the day.
He also lives in clothes, so you should change often and wash everything. But the main thing is social isolation: I don’t leave the house. Just for shopping. In supermarkets, I am at least a meter away but the entrances are limited if in America there are still surgical masks bought, I use gloves and when I go out I disinfect my hands. Really the only way to avoid disease is to stay home! Ah, only one person does the shopping, possibly always the same: it is useless to risk two or more.
Even in the home, wash your hands often and air the rooms where you stay every couple of hours. Here, this is what they tell us to do here in Italy and that I do daily. I hope you continue to be well. Let’s keep up to date. I hope I’ve been useful.
See you soon take care xoxo Clara
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