Italy was the first European country to be massively hit by the pandemic.
It was hit in the form of a hospital onset outbreak that hit older&vulnerable people first & foremost in an environment highly conducive to infection before medics realised what was happening&could react.
1 https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1287749488841498625

Italy was the 1st European country to decide & implement a local lockdown (of about 50.000 people) & then the 1st to implement a national lockdown.
It was the 1st E-country to be criticised for the outbreak itself, for the lockdowns & for the (at the time) lack of mask-wearing.
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Italy was also the first country from where images of sick people in ICUs & of caravans of coffin-bearing trucks & overloaded graveyards were circulated widely&openly (often accompanied by sensationalist and racist headlines & framing ,at least in the British press & socials).
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Italy was also a country that relatively quickly(& picturesquely) pulled together to limit the infection rate (which never reached Lombardy's levels far from Lombardy),to support its NHS,its teachers,its Public Health institutions&local healthcare services,&even its government,
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which in Italy's case is truly a feat.
Now Italy is cautiously releasing the national lockdown & has widely&quickly promoted&normalised mask-wearing, & a debate relatively saner than elsewhere (e.g. in the UK&US) is taking place on how to reopen schools safely, thanks (imo) to
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the trust that most Italian residents have in their national NHS & PH institutions (though trust in the decentralised local HC network is much more nuanced, especially after the state-of-the-art one in Lombardy spectacularly failed, mostly because of political bad management).
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To sum it up:Italy has been scarred,&the actual direct, unquestionable experience of how bad it can get & how quickly is -for now- sustaining the widespread compliance and respect for 'the rules' (of social distancing, mask-wearing, etc), despite the huge economic consequences.
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I'm not sure this balance can be kept for very long (& -of course- many mistakes were made).
But it is certain that the relatively clear&transparent way in which the ITgov has dealt with the emergency(compared to other countries like the UK)has been crucial in facilitating this
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(like it was in other countries whose governments acted transparently -often with drastically better results, which were also due -though- to the much lower number of cases they had at the time they reacted, compared to Italy).
This -transparency- is something that is proving
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hard to achieve in the UK, for example,with the dire consequences that we are all well aware of.
So,how to achieve that here?How to persuade enough people to follow reliable scientific advice when the UKgov itself muddles communication of it & misapplies it?
How is it possible
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that people are not striking in the UK in support of the NHS workers & teachers (like in France) & are instead ignoring or even turning against them?
I find this truly incredible & inexplicable, notwithstanding all the obvious reasons why this was never likely to happen here.
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To sum it up: Italy has learned its lesson the hard way,& so (to varying degree&in different contexts) France&Spain have.
The UK(incredibly,given the number of people who died) hasn't,yet, & I don't truly understand why.
Time will tell, but not before many more will have died.
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