Monday 20 April 2020

Back in the Bubble

   Yes! We are all back in the bubble! While we read of woefully inadequate virus testing around the world, Italy sent a three person team to our girls. Both had their throats swabbed, and a day later we were told the tests were negative for SarsCov-2. The relief, it's difficult to describe. I don't think any of us really believed that we were infected, but when you don't know, you just start making stuff up. The relief comes from knowing.
swabbing Isolde

  Last night we laid the table for a homecoming supper and at the last moment, Alex began to feel ill. As I was getting into the car to bring the girls home, Alex walked downstairs to say she felt sick and then walked right back upstairs and was sick. When we arrived, Alex received them in her bedroom.
She had tested some old hummus at lunchtime before throwing it out and that must have been the culprit, because by 11pm, she joined us for chocolate and wine.
------<<<O>>>------

   If you want to make your parents nervous, just tell them you're going to quit working, have a baby or two, and move into a derelict in rural Italy. With no water, power, windows, or job. The clever strategy, which I didn't realize at the time, is that every subsequent message home short of death by starvation is good news. "We stapled some plastic in the window." "Oh my gosh! That's wonderful!"
   You can find the rest of the good news somewhere else in this diary, but the good news today is just a consideration of our dumb luck.
   Consider the dumb luck of being in Italy and watching the inconclusive general election of September 2018 result in the appointment of a little know law professor to be prime minister. Giuseppe Conte has no prior political position. And consider that at the same time Matteo Salvini was effectively silenced by the public. That was six months ago. I don't pretend to know anything about Italian politics, but I am aware that Conte has proved to be the real thing against Salvini's utter "populist" fakery. Luckily, Conte sat in the PM's chair when the virus clobbered Italy. He clobbered back fearlessly, locking up the entire country, threatening our economic future and has barely managed to keep Italy from being completely overwhelmed. His approval is polling over 80%.
  Lucky for us, we are living here and not in the UK or the US where virus testing remains a fraction of that required to justify the "liberation of Michigan". 

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