FROM OUR SENT
VO ’EUGANEO (PADUA) It looks like the first day of school, but it’s not a party. Moms holding children by the hand begin to show signs of impatience. In short, when are you going to let us in? Men snort, complain. “I should go to work,” says one. “Don’t be smart, stay here and at least rest,” replies the wife.
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Being there, there are almost all, the 3,305 Vadens, except the few who took advantage of the last night to flee their home. They showed up on time at 8.30 in the morning at the first and second grade Guido Negri school complex, to find out immediately that the others, the men in charge of swabbing the entire population, instead are late. And that the mapping of the entire country by Coronavirus, an absolute first time, will certainly not be a formality. Ready, go, go, and there are no swabs. The first two hundred numbered heels to reserve the call, they disappear even if we were in the queue Posed on the 27th of the month. The surveyor and the civil protection officer stand on the threshold and call them one at a time.
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But the mechanism jams immediately. The operations are slow, and there is no waiting room, the crowds are all outside, where each cough resonates like a snap and attracts frightened looks. “Are we on Seriously?” asks controversy Kathy Scarpariol, owner of the Ttb, the only supermarket in the country, the only shop authorized to remain open “for public utility”, therefore also the owner of a justified haste to return to the checkout.
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The bad news is entrusted to the volunteers, who prowl the gates to disperse their fellow villagers by inviting them to return home immediately to try again today.
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Vo ‘Euganeo is certainly not Wuhan, in any possible and desirable sense. The first day of total quarantine of the entire population, impossible to enter or exit the ten gates monitored by the police, with an attached buffer to detect any contagion, reveals a very Italian affair, despite the inevitable Chinese suggestions. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how one looks at it. Inside of there is a lot of silence in the red zone and as much confusion generated by the lack of certainties. Citizens in front of the school ask how and when they will be able to return to undergo an exam that few consider really necessary. Volunteers open their arms because they don’t know.
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«Go back, alternative way». At gate 1 the marshal of the carabinieri repeats the same phrase to all cars. His patrol comes from Mestre, so he is not skilled on the detours and the turns on the hills necessary to get around Vo ‘, but on both sides there is good will and mutual understanding. With the light of day, few people try to go out. Someone does it by walking through the fields, but they are always boys, more than an escape it is a bravado to tell at the village bar, when it will reopen. Checkpoints become meeting places. Federico Cappellato gets out of the van with a cardboard in his hand. “Urgent delivery”. The carabinieri made him place the parcel containing eggplant and tomato sprouts on the ground. Marco Longo, Vo ‘nurseryman, emerges from the curve. These are the days of sowing, in a month he will have to sell the seedlings to the farmers. The two friends have a short chat, at a safe distance. «Oh, don’t forget me» says Marco. “How could I, you still have to pay me,” Federico replies. They both laugh.
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There are no dramas in this film situation. The inevitable inconveniences are also well metabolized. “If it helps to eradicate this disease, we will gladly bear them,” says Mrs. Serafina, stopped while trying to reach her sister in a fraction of Vo ‘. The number of confirmed cases has risen to 34 in all of Veneto, and twenty-five of these are from this country. But the three areas of contagion are the same as yesterday. When it is evening, on the ground floor of the school, men in white overalls and full face masks can be seen entering the classrooms to place the boxes of tampons that have just arrived on the desks. On the walls hang the children’s drawings depicting trees, merry-go-rounds and many smiling faces. Let’s hope.
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February 24, 2020 (change February 24, 2020 | 10:20 pm)
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