#èORAdaria_2 (Rec Time_2) // Push the button

 

The Venetian blinds break down the light that filters through the window, separating it into thin and tidy gold foils.
The wall where my bed stands against is crossed from side to side by a fissure, opened years ago and relentless increased, like the desert. Maz is not in his bed. I don’t know whether he woke up early again or he passed all night in front of the computer. I woke up and joined him in the living room. He greets me without looking away from the screen.
«There is some coffe in the coffee maker»
I poured some into a tiny cup. He’s really good at making coffee.
«When all this mess will ends, I’ll take you to have coffee in a bar that I know, someone who used to be a thief managers it now. He makes the best coffee in town, I swear that sooner or later I’ll take you there»
I hear him smiling without turning around.
«Inshallah»
Maz comes from Morocco. His name is Mohammed Aziz, he was born in Marrakech but grew up here. He moved with his family when he was four. His father breaks his back in the logistics and he’s one of the most active in the Union. Since the Pandemic started he has been reported several times for roadblocks and strikes.
Maz doesn’t talk a lot. Least of all in Moroccan; the only word he repeats is «Inshallah». He says it when he wants something badly, when his hope materializes and turns three-dimensional, when his feelings fill the room in place of the words he’s unable of saying.
«What’s up?», I ask.
He moves the chair away from the desk, then stretches his arms and presses enter.
«Thousands more dead. Many doctors and nurses. The new Decree establishes the arrival of special forces. In addition, we all must download an App on our phones that informs the Government in real time of our movements. If your phone sticks to a cell far from your residence, a report will be sent»
«We’ll leave the phone at home – just to put it out there, to look optimistic – The others?»
«I think they are sleeping»
Daria comes at the door already wearing camouflage. She gets the mask from the sill and remains a moment staring at it.
«I need to go out»
«There are special forces around, and all the informers»
«I know, I heard of it. But I need to go and see Evelyn»
When Daria decides on anything it’s impossible to make her change her mind. We stayed there, staring without speaking, without finding the strength to stop her or saying bye.
«I’ll be back soon» she said.
«Inshallah» replied Aziz, continuing writing on the computer.

In Italy the sanitary crisis, determined by the coronavirus emergency, was highly conditioned by the situation of the SSN (Health National Service), caused by the political choices brought ahead for the last 20 years.
Two main problems emerged for the hospitals dealing with coronavirus are:
– hospitals overloaded for the lack of beds, mostly in intensive care unit;
– the failure to grant safety of health workers, who ended up infecting other patients and their families.
From the crisis of 2008 began a period of fiscal contraction that lead to the weakening of the SSN. Nevertheless It kept on working as long as the situation was in normality.

In front of the sanitary emergency, all the problems bound to the dismantling of the Italian health system, such as staff cuts, closure of departments, the inefficient technological innovation, tax evasion of hospital directors.
The so-called “Cura Italia” Decree has the arrogance to lie on this, by letting us believe that the engagement of 100 medical operators and a last-minute-loan (that cannot compare the amount expropriated in the last 10 years) could be enough to handle the pressure of these days.
WHO gave a model of the pandemic diffusion, informing various countries to permitt an organization of a management more conscious, immediate and preventive of the coronavirus emergency.

Italy has a political responsibility of ignoring the problem until the virus spread in a capillary manner in the north, right where paradozically, there are centers of excellence of national public healthy structures.

The governmet, aware of the healthcare deficiencies, did not consider protecting the lives of the people who moved across the country since the pandemic exploded. They also ignored the directives for the containment of the emergency coming from China. There, were to everyonefrom the start, this lead the first country affected by Coronavirus to reach practically 0 positive swabs per day.

A high percentage of deaths and positives per swab would indicate that the level of contagion is much bigger than what we know, but in this case, the absence of staff in laboratories and the bad management by the government, are playing a central role.

From one side, we hear the same politics which couldn’t manage Covid-19 spending a lot of words in of thanks the health professionals. It’s many years now the same were abandoned with few means available. It wasn’t him, Giancarlo Giorgetti, talking about the abolition of general practitioners, until last summer?

Here, in Campania, we are assisting at authoritarian deviations of “Sheriff” Vincenzo De Luca, whom, while demanding for “Flame Thrower Carabineers”, he’s ignoring that his Region is the last on the national territory in population/swabs relationship carried out. But actually it’s easier, evidently, let us believe that we are in war since the last ten years of cuts in the healthy system were reinvested in defense and weapons, and, that the problem must be managed as a social problem with repression, rather than reveal the real origin.

At the same time, Cuba is sending healthy helps in Venezuela and is preparing also to support Italy. This is happening because Cubans, more forward-looking than Italians since ever about the importance of a public and free health that works, are not buying patent for an hypothetical vaccine, condemning to death the rest of the world, as our U.S. friends are doing. The same Americans we are supplying of masks. Yes, just those masks that lack in our hospitals since the emergency has started. The same Americans who sanction Teheran, while is busy in facing the death of his brothers and sisters.

But let’s go back to Italy for a while and let’s compare some numbers emerged during the investigation on health system. At this time the preventive measures put in place, especially in the south of Italy, has a principal role in avoiding the complete collapse of the system. Considering that the most part of regions in the south are subjected to debt repayment plans.

In 2017, 42% of the total resources for the health have been spent in the north of Italy, 20% in the centre, 23% in the south and 15% in regions with special autonomy. To understand better this point we must take into consideration the national average data on beds available in public structures, which is 2,5 every 1.000 inhabitants, except for Friuli-Venezia-Giulia, where the bed are 5 every 1.000 inhabitants (this is the only region that respects the WHO regulations).

In South-Italy, more than 50% of families renounced in the last years to heal, due to long waiting times or to the cost for medical visits, in the North we talk about 21%, but this is not a data that hearten us. For all these reasons, in the last years, more and more families turned to private clinics to monitor their own health, although the cost is higher. This is happening mainly because of a long time of waiting but also because of the inefficiency and the extreme bureaucratization of the service, which makes difficult the accessibility. Another important element to underline is certainly that public and private more than having different times and organizations, they finance and regenerate themselves on different assumptions: while private clinics earn accreditations and subsidies from the number of performances and admissions, the public ones remain on a level of prevention. For that reason the number of units that close, especially in small centre, is very high.

At this time, on a population of 60 millions of inhabitants, there are 5090 beds in intensive care unit, so there are 84 beds for each million of inhabitants. A number which is absolutely insufficient and evidently unfit to handle an health emergency. Even more alarming if confronted to other countries (in Germany beds in intensive care unit are 28.000). In accordance with WHO, in Italy we passed from 922 beds in 1980 to 275 in 2017. We find the same not very reassuring numbers regarding operators in public structures. According with Censis data, from 2009 to 2017 the healthcare personnel has been halved of 46.000 units (8.000 doctors and 13.000 nurses).

Conforming to the national federation Order of Nursing Professions in 2023 we will have 58.000 fewer nurses. In 2028 about 71.000 fewer. In 2025 is expected a shortage of 16.500 doctors. But where did the investments of more than 37 billions of euro that disappeared from the expenses destinated for the health system? The 70% was invested in Defense: with 14 billions were purchased 90 F35 fighter-bombers (each costs 185 millions, that means 5.000 lung ventilation systems).

What we expect for sure, from now on, is that the scientific community put herself at the service of the public health care, so that searches can lead to an advancement of knowledge for the annihilation of the virus, that swabs were done to as many people as possible so that we can control and prevent the advancing of infections, that private hospitals can be available to everyone and that a lot of money would be invested in research and in the renovation of the medical facilities and machinery available.

#èORAdaria_0 (Rec Time)

The time of the decrees was undoubtedly the era of the hashtag priests and their followers.
It was the time when every collective reflection on what was happening was unpopular, opposed, banned. People prayed and prostrated themselves before a symbol, venerated as a totem: #
 
The social networks profiles were turned into social butcheries and people were pleased to be able to contribute to the hunt for the scapegoat; they were really eager to burn the witches at the stake and take back all those little pleasures of public executions, in which only a joke from the civil registry had prevented them from taking part. They were thirsty for culprits and pushed to join the virtual ranks of the Royal Army of Decrees. They raced to be more royal than the King. A constant recruitment of battalions of persuaders and spies.
The armored vehicles of the Empire beat the streets spreading the word of the Decree. The Ministry of Propaganda of the Empire wondered how to propose the new enemy. It wasn’t easy; this time the enemy was invisible and evanescent, he could not be slammed on TV or on the web. However, it was necessary to find a solution and do it quickly because there was a serious risk that someone could held up as next enemy the Empire itself. Until that momen the enemy to stand against was made of flesh, bones, blood but with the ID from another side of the world.
At that point the idea came automaically: your new enemy will be yourself! The social crowd cheered enthusiastically. One but one, the public enemies were identified, summarily tried, finally executed and thrown into the common graves. this was the fate of those who had not yet understood that the way of looking at the world had changed with the Decrees and the grammar had changed with it too. It was no longer legit to conjugate verbs in six peonouns; it was an obsolete and irresponsible use of the social evolution of the language. Only two people were still in place: the first and the last. Me and them.
They take the train back home.
I stay home and swear at them.
They go out.
I record them with my smartphone.
They spread the disease by breathing my own air.
I call the police.
They work in barns.
I buy on Amazon.
They die in prison.
I say they deserve it.
They bring the goods home to help me pass the time.
I open the door but they have to stay away from me, because they are all crowded together in the warehouses.
They work fourteen hours in hospitals.
I cheer from the balconies.
They die.
Not me.
I die.
Because of them.
Thanks to the diligent attendance at those virtual gatherings, the Empire of the Decree did not consider it necessary to take further measures. The system would hold. There was no reason to put public health before individual safety. Small voices in the distance encouraged the spread of discontent about the conditions of public structures; they wondered why collective treatments and a prevention plans had not been put in place; the need for truth about the origin of the epidemic was meandering; they wondered how twelve people could live in one room. All those voices crawled underground. The earth was slightly vibrating, like subway trains running under checkpoints.
Still, the fury did not change: “the ones who leave home are to blame“, encouraged television.
Although the Empire of the Decree had had entire months to prevent the catastrophe, it deliberately choose to keep the population unprepared. The weak ones fell like flies. The fault was entirely of those who did not stay at home. I have to save myself, I have to save my family and it doesn’t matter if others have to keep on working, are in jail or alone and there’s no one to help them.
Resources were lacking. Masks were nowhere to be found.
A few organisms, modified by acid rain and climate change, brushed up some old gas masks from a cellar. They were dusty, but still working. They took turns to escape social dictatorship, hashtag priests and the singular first-person. They took turns to wear them, one hour a day, to breathe again.
To Conspire means to Breathe. Together.

#èORAdaria_1 (rec time) // Insert Coin 

Daria put the mask on the window sill, tied up her purple hair and closed the window.
Suddenly Rudy crossed the door: he was out of breath, more than usual, after climbing all the stairs.
He had walked down to the Sri Lankan grocery right beyond the square to grab a few things and, on the way, he had taken a chance to observe the roofs all around. He had been thinking about ​​placing an aerial to set up a radio there, but then an imperial army patrol started chasing him. He sought shelter in a doorway for more than an hour, fearing some resident-spy would report or film him with a smartphone.
«Fuck it, this feels like a video game», I think to myself.
«We were worried about you, Rudy» says Maz, scratching his scaly arm with his fingernails. For the first time today he takes his eyes off the screen.
Let’s agree we are a gang, but everyone is free to do whatever they want. He cares about this aerial, I support him. We have collected some stuff but we aren’t sure enough about the best way to send it around. He’s just trying to get us out of this situation.
Daria reads what I wrote this morning, but she doesn’t seem convinced; she stands up without a word, takes the mask and goes to the window sill to look outside. Maybe she sees things we can’t see, or she’s just anxious about Rudy not coming back.
The silence in the room only is broken by the irregular breath of Rudy, who’s trying to recover and by Maz, tapping on his keyboard.
«Read me what you wrote» – he says, standing up from the desk and wearing the mask – «but read slowly or I can’t make it out what you say»
I show him my middle finger and light a cigarette.
Back in the days, to describe an event over which we had no control or responsibility, we would have used the concept of “atmospheric phenomenon”. The acceleration of climate change in the last few years and all the consequences related to human action require us to rethink this expression.
In the same way, we believe it is very difficult to lay the blame for the propagation of the CoVID-19 epidemy on strictly “natural” elements.
In light of what we currently know, this human self-absolution is completely inappropriate, since the pandemic is the result of the aforementioned exploitation of the planet.
Collective considerations on what gravitates around us have not been easy. Our gang had to wear masks and wander among conspiracies about the birth and spread of the virus (of which, by the way, we could have reported a hilarious anthology, if there weren’t thousands of deaths involved), confusing news spread collective paranoia and the only consolation was their digital nature, which, at least, avoids further, unnecessary waste of paper and ink.
While WHO identified the new disease as CoVID-19, the International Commission for Virus Taxonomy named the virus SARS-CoV-2. The virus is in fact very similar to SARS, but two characteristics: it is more contagious and has luckily, a lower mortality rate. This distinction is required as the disease is often mentioned and confused with the virus. This premise also explains why we are now part of the debate on SARS-CoV-2 from which we had kept away. The debate about this virus-disease seems to make  impossible to reason about everything sorrounding the epidemic, such as prison riots or wildcat strikes in factories and warehouses: the watchwords remain “Stay at home”.
CoVID-19 came to humans through animals, like many other diseases of the last decades: they are therefore called zoonoses. Viruses can survive inside animals for decades without causing their death. The history of zoonosis begins when the virus seizes the opportunity to infect a new species: this event is called “spillover”.
Rabies, leptospirosis, anthrax, SARS, MERS, yellow fever, dengue, HIV, Ebola, Chikungunya, Coronaviruses and the most common flu, just to name a few. By simply reading the above examlples we realize they all are familiar. The reason is simple: they all are zoonosis. More than 70% of those diseases who have been affecting humanity in the last 30 years came actually from animals and it is expected to get worse. In 2018 WHO gave warning about a probable zoonotic pandemic. Neverthenless, Italian governments (and all Parties) kept on dismantling our public health-care system instead of strengthening it to face a new upcoming emergency.
But that being said, then we could ask: if all these desease come from animals, what kind of responsibility does the human being have? To reply, we need a clarification. We can’t give the whole responsibility to human beings: we need to talk about the production system, which helps developing the conditions to let virus spread from a species to another.
Here the conditions.
The main reason of the progressive spread of zoonotic disease is, in fact, the destruction of the planet.
Deforestation and urbanisation are reducing the habitat of animal species which are virus carriers and oblige them to have contacts with people. In the same way the ecosystem perturbation, which allows the disappearance of entire species, “forces” the virus to find a new body to live in, and humanity, with his 7,7 billion of  on the planet, is for sure an easy target.
Changes in the soil and destruction of natural environment are held responsible, at least, of half the emerging zoonoses.
The uncontrolled urbanization of forested areas has been associated to virus transmitted by mosquitoes, but not only. It is believed that millions of species, unknown to science, are living in tropical forests. Between these millions of unknown species there are viruses, bacteria, fungus and many others organisms, many of which are parasites. Ebola, Marburg, Lassa, Monkeypox and the forerunner of HIV are a tiny sample of the myriad of viruses which are not discovered yet. Also melting glaciers will bring back old bacteria and viruses we are not vaccinated against. 
The latest analysis show that virus SARS-CoV-2 has mutated into two strains, dubbed ‘L’ and ‘S’ types. We don’t know where the origin of the older ‘S-type’ lays, while the latter‘L-type’ , spread in the sadly famous animal market in Wuhan. Markets are becoming the main places where the spread of infections and spillover start, and mostly those markets where exotic animal meat is sold, considered as luxury good and symbol of social status. Although this is absolutely true, let’s not forget that some disease, which infected men in the recent past, such as Swine Flu and Avian Flu, started from intensive breeding. In the same way, the massive use of drugs in intensive breeding of livestock brought to salmonella’s strains. In general, intensive zootechnical practices can facilitate pathogen to “spill–over“, leading to new and dangerous zoonoses, like SARS and new strains of flu.
Therefore, when the emergency will be resized and the grip on peddlers and markets will be loosened, by placing side by side “social decorum” and “health”, by using them in a threatening way, please remember that the most of the meat we eat comes directly from those intensive breeding systems.
In summary: deforestation, global warming, extinction of tens of thousands species, melting glaciers, ocean pollution, intensive exploitation of animals and soil are all causes of the spread of viruses from animals to men. These short and simple examples show the clear urgency of a route change to avoid what scientists called “Big One“: an epidemic of unimaginable proportions, only comparable to the Black Death, that during the Middle Ages, reduced European population by one third.
The urgency of this route change is even more obvious if we consider what IPBES (Intergovernamental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services of ONU) says. IPBES report uses the word “unprecedent” to explain the destructive action of human being on the nature. According to the report, the 75% of the soil and the 66% of the marine environment have been modified in a severe way and, as never before in the history of humanity, about one million of animal and plant species are at risk of extinction.
As we said in the premises – Maz suggested me to add this part – everything is happening because of someone who is the brutally  exploiting the planet and all his inhabitants. It is quite evident, in fact, that the production system we live in, takes possession of human beings and earth, with the same brutal arbitrariness, without worrying about the survival of either of them.
We need to stop thinking that the catastrophe, the destruction of the planet, will suddenly happen on a fateful day X. The catastrophe is already before our eyes. Climate changes, extinctions and pandemics represent our reality. The catastrophe is in progress.
Now we have no other choice: to put an end to capitalism or put an end to humanity.
Everyone remains silent, no comment. Daria seems absorbed in other thoughts.
«So?» I ask after a while.
Rudy answers first:
«It’s ok for me. Maybe too long for a radio program». His scaly arm reflects the iridescent shades of the sunset infiltrating through the window.
«But who said we have to read it on the radio? I mean, when was it decided?»
«Forget it. We’ll think about it tomorrow. It takes a little longer for the Game Over».
He drops onto the couch, takes the remote control and turns on the TV. The same program, on all channels.