Italy is on lockdown as it tries to stop the spread of the coronavirus
Hi everyone, thanks for joining us for Plain English lesson number 244. I’m Jeff; JR is the producer; and today’s full lesson can be found at PlainEnglish.com/244.
Coming up today: Italy has suffered more than any country other than China, and its government has imposed serious constraints on its population. That didn’t stop them from singing in harmony from their balconies, however. The expression we have today is “out and about.” And our video lesson has the word “out,” as well. The video shows you how to use “out of” when you’re talking about a portion of a whole. A portion of a whole—to get the full story, check out the video lesson at PlainEnglish.com/244.
Travel restrictions and business closures in Italy
The country to have suffered the greatest from this year’s coronavirus outbreak is China, where the virus first appeared in humans. But the second-most affected country is Italy. It’s not clear whether the first case came from China or Germany, but out of all the countries in Europe, Italy has the strongest connections to China—the most tourism, the most international flights to China of any European country.
They also suffered from some bad luck. In the study of epidemics, there’s a concept of a “super-spreader”—a person who will spread the virus to many more people than the average person. Indeed one of these tourists in Italy became a super-spreader, giving the virus to 43 people.
From there, it was off to the races. The infections started in the north of Italy, but quickly spread throughout the country and beyond. Confirmed cases in Italy surged from just a few hundred in late February to 3,000 on March 3, to 10,000 on March 10. Tourists and business travelers from Italy were traced as the source of new infections in many European and Latin American countries; Italian scientists attending a biotech conference brought the disease to Boston.
As Italy faced the rapid spread of the virus, its leaders enacted gradually tighter restrictions on movement. The first measures applied only to the town of Lodi on February 21. Police cars blocked the roads and people were allowed to move about only to get food and medicine. By March 8, the prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, expanded the quarantine’s reach to most of northern Italy. The first day was fraught with confusion, as people didn’t know what they were allowed to do, and even the police weren’t clear on what was allowed and what wasn’t.
The rules soon came into focus. No public gatherings: that meant no entertainment, no weddings, no funerals. Places like museums, gyms, bars, and nightclubs were closed. Stores, restaurants, and some markets were open during the daytime only; people were instructed to stay a meter apart. Tourists could still travel out, but you needed a valid reason to be out and about.
Two days later, the quarantine was expanded to the entire country. Italy became the first nation to be in a total nationwide quarantine. Travel was restricted to work and family emergencies. All businesses were ordered shut; the only exceptions were for stores providing essential supplies like food and medicine. The prime minister said, “This is the moment of self-responsibility.”
A country of 60 million people had come to a standstill. Only one person in each family can leave the house to get food and supplies, and only one person in a family can be out at a time. If you’re out for a walk, the police can give you a ticket. If you have a legitimate reason to be out, you need to fill out a form describing your reason. Lines for markets extend extra-long, as everyone stands a meter apart and only a small number of people are allowed inside the market at once.
People light candles and place them in their windows in a show of support for health care and other emergency workers. People sing songs from their balconies to pass the time and have a little human contact with their neighbors. Coordinated times to sing songs in Rome have resulted in virtual music festivals, with everyone participating out their apartment windows. The quarantine is especially tough on a culture famous for large family gatherings, physical touch, and clustering in cafés for an espresso. Daily routines now feature frequent hand-washing, wiping down phones, and disinfecting surfaces with bleach.
The lockdown will deal a terrible blow to Italy’s already-fragile economy. Even before the virus took hold inside its borders, Italy was facing an economic slowdown from a decline in luxury purchases and the fashion industry, two staples of its economy. But now, with all economic activity frozen for at least a period of weeks, its economy is all but guaranteed to hit a recession.
Small companies, especially those in the services sector, will be hit hard. Unless they have the cash to survive a few idle weeks, they’ll have to furlough or lay off employees, or close entirely. Hospitality, tourism, and food services employ almost two million people, and those businesses will suffer the most. Many people in these industries are on one-year contracts and aren’t eligible for unemployment benefits if they lose their jobs.
The services sector will be hit harder because spending on those businesses is lost entirely, rather than postponed. If you had been planning to buy a car, for example, you can delay the purchase a few months—but you’ll still get the car. But if you had been planning to go out to dinner on Saturday night, you’ll cancel that dinner, and the spending will be lost.
Now worries are extending to the financial system, as small businesses and workers face loan payments even as they have no cash coming in. Government ministers are looking into ways to provide a national forbearance system, which forgives delayed loan payments. Even if the government responds with fiscal stimulus, the country is likely to suffer its fourth recession in just over ten years.
As I’m preparing this, I’m about to start working from home for about two weeks and I’ll be practicing “social distancing.” That’s the term that describes voluntarily limiting social contact with others—not going to restaurants and bars, not taking public transit unless it’s necessary, limiting shopping trips to just the necessities, and generally placing some added distance between yourself and the rest of the world. We won’t be on a full quarantine or lockdown—at least not for the foreseeable future—but social distancing is the strategy we’re following here.
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