The Patrimony of our Elders

My friend Marcus, whom I went to school with in Rome, this morning sent me the link to a recording made yesterday in Bergamo, the Italian city hit worst by Coviod-19, and where doctors and nurses have for weeks been desperately fighting to control the coronavirus outbreak. As of today, 7458 people from Bergamo have tested positive for the virus, more cases than any other city or town in Italy, with 446 deaths including hospital staff.

Bergamo is not Florence or Torino, but very moderately sized, only 110,000 inhabitants. At least 130 out of the city’s roughly 600 GPs is ill.

The interview is with architect Francesco Macario, of Bergamo province, who states that the actual number of deaths in the province of Bergamo is actually five to ten times higher than the stated figure, in reality 5000 to 10,000 as those who die at home are not counted as coronavirus-related mortalities, but have their stated causes of death recorded as pneumonia or heart disease. He warns that Bergamo, opulent, with an avant guard health system, is a flag to the rest of the world that unless countries go into total lockdown — measures considerably more severe than those now in place in Italy — the catastrophic situation in Bergamo will repeat itself everywhere.

“Keep your elderly at home. Hug your loved ones to you. Do not underplay the incredible tragedy of this disease.”

Reading Italian papers today, I found editorials and comments that returned again and again to the elderly. “An entire generation is being cancelled”, wrote one reader. Another said “this is our DNA, this is our history, this is our past”.

A whole generation is being cancelled, this is the reality. We are losing the repository of our culture.

This photo essay is dedicated to the elders of Italy.