The article seems to be describing exactly the way the UK is trying to handle it
There was an interesting article in the Sunday Times yesterday of an expat's experience in Rome as things escalated
See below
Looks like we are following the same path
Coronavirus in Italy: for once, peace reigns in anarchic Rome. We’ve learnt to love the lockdown
It was hard weaning people off their sociability, but Romans have responded to the new reality, writes the novelist Matthew Kneale
The Pantheon has few visitors
Matthew Kneale
Sunday March 22 2020, 12.01am, The Sunday Times
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Tuesday, March 10
I have a sensitivity, even slight paranoia, concerning plagues. Perhaps it’s because I owe my existence to one. In 1918, my grandfather, who was a theatre and opera critic in Berlin, married for the first time. He was 51 and his bride was 19 (I make no comment). Within months she was pregnant and a few months later she was dead. The Spanish flu, in mirror image to Covid-19, spared the old and was most dangerous for those in young adulthood, and especially to pregnant women. Two years later, my grandfather married again, to one of the bridesmaids of his first wedding, also 19 (again I make no comment) — my grandmother.
Any news of alarming new diseases catches my sense of danger. Many of our friends found it very amusing when, during the 2003 Sars epidemic, they saw my stock of pasta, cheese and long-life milk. They were right — Italy had only four Sars cases and no deaths. We never did drink the long-life milk.
This time, the government was absolutely right to bring in a lockdown. Something is being done, and there’s a palpable sense of relief that we know where we are. The Romans, who I’ve always viewed as being amiably anarchic, seem to be getting quite into it all, rather to my surprise.
As my son, Alexander, needed to get out of the house, we went to a bakery and cafe. It was very quiet and the cash girl had put flower pots in front of the till desk so you couldn’t stand near her when you paid, with black tape on the floor to make it even clearer. Empty cups were collected by a man wearing rubber gloves. They had an air of busy correctness, a pride, too, for doing their part against the virus.
When Alexander and I got back from our coffees, Cinzia, our
portiere, gave me the latest news. She’s a very Roman presence in all the best ways: warm, extremely loud and possessed of a strong and tough sense of humour. She told me — shouting through the glass of her cubicle — that there was insanity at all the supermarkets: huge queues and people being let in two at a time. They’ll all have given each other the virus in the crowds. I’ll shop in a day or two when they’ll be quiet again.
Alexander and Tatiana, my daughter, are in pretty good spirits. Their school’s online lessons are coming together, and they can enjoy seeing their teachers look foolish as they try to cope with the tech.
Wednesday, March 11
Alexander and I took a stroll round the boundaries of our new, more limited world. Except for work, we have to stay in our postal code area, 00153 Roma. It includes Trastevere, where we live, the Aventino area and Testaccio, which has the best food market in Rome. This was very quiet today but still functioning — with new arrangements. When I started to pick some oranges, the stallholder told me, in a friendly enough way, that these could only be touched with gloves. As I had none, she chose them for me.
We can still walk up the Gianicolo hill to Villa Sciarra park and the huge fountain, where the Acqua Paola aqueduct arrives in the city, and to Porta Settimiana in the old city wall. But no further. Our Rome has shrunk. The Pantheon, Piazza Navona and the Campo de’ Fiori, which I used to stroll through almost daily, are now off limits.
Very quiet but functioning: Testaccio has the city’s best food market
MATTHEW KNEALE
Even within our postal code area, going out is discouraged. I heard tonight that the police arrested 161 people today for not having a good reason to be where they were. In the past couple of days, however, our main concern has not been how to escape this narrowing world but rather how to get into it. Last Friday, when all seemed so different, my wife, Shannon, flew to Canada to visit her parents — a trip arranged months ago. Yesterday evening she rang, very upset, as she’d just heard that her flight back, booked for next Sunday, had been cancelled. Ryanair, easyJet and BA had ended all their flights to Italy and she wondered if she’d ever be able to get home. After some fretting, she bought a ticket via Frankfurt. Even then the airline staff couldn’t guarantee that the Frankfurt-Rome flight would fly. After a stressful wait in the airport, watching flight after flight cancelled, she got home early this evening.
Concerned that I should have a good meal ready for her, I went out shopping. There’s nothing like a dose of plague to change one’s sense of space. As I walked along the pavements, I found myself stepping away from people coming towards me, and they did the same. This new virus dance is more awkward in supermarkets where every inch of space is filled. In a smallish grocery shop we often go to, I found myself awkwardly stepping by someone as we were edged close together by a huge bank of Easter eggs. The queue, which is normally a tightly packed scrum, had a strangely spread-out look. Pieces of tape had been laid out on the ground marked “1 metre” to separate the queuers from one another. Staff at the tills were guarded from customers’ breath by Perspex shields.
I also visited our delicatessen, a local legend run by Roberto and his wife, Anna. They told me that, regretfully, they were going to close for at least a couple of weeks. Operating in the virus lockdown was too hard. I suspect it will be a lot longer than two weeks. What’s striking about this crisis is the speed with which things change. A week ago we were reeling from the news that our children’s school had closed. Under the latest decree, all shops must shut apart from pharmacies and supermarkets. I should have got more of Roberto’s pecorino cheese — the best in Rome — while I still had the chance.
In some way it’s all beginning to feel a little Mussolini-like. A ban on all gatherings, including dinner parties. Police checking everyone who’s outside. Arrests for those who don’t have a good reason to be where they are and don’t have the right piece of paper. I’m struck by how easily people have adapted. It’s almost as if some part of them has been ready. Of course the authorities are right to do all of this. They have little choice. Last night the numbers of new cases seemed to be slowing a little, but tonight they leapt up again by 2,000 people to more than 12,000.
Part two to follow