Ninety to ninety-five percent of the people I knew — on social media, in real life — completely agreed with the government's measures. Everyone had become a self-appointed risk expert, explaining why stepping outside your front door meant betraying your country. Such popular fervor hadn't been seen since the rallies at Piazza Venezia during the fascist era.
As a communication professional, I was stunned. The prime minister's effect on the masses was something extraordinary, contradicting every theory about the progressive fragmentation of modern societies. He worked perfectly on fear and the conformist tendencies of Italians to pull off a genuine communicative miracle.
Who was actually questioning things?
Criticism came only from analysts, a few very competent doctors, foreign newspapers, and sometimes veiled comments at WHO press conferences. And from the famous hundred university professors who signed a petition to quickly end the lockdown. Very few Italians dissented. Even people with expertise in numbers, risk, and virology. People who could and should have spoken up. All silent.
Silent even in front of the obvious age-cluster infection curve — available since mid-February thanks to Korean and Chinese data — which screamed not to put young and elderly people together, since most young people were asymptomatic. If I figured this out by early March, where were all the experts?
The absence of democratic debate
How were decisions being made? Why was no one questioning them? Where was the democratic debate? The only politician with a different vision was Renzi, while everyone else competed to tighten restrictions further, catapulting us into the strictest lockdown in the world — tied with Spain.
When the WHO suggested that people should exercise more in the sunlight to stay healthy, the government did the opposite and no one objected. When I started explaining the Korean contact-tracing model, nobody knew what it was. We had to wait a week until a famous journalist explained it to the public.
Voices from the front lines
The episode that best captures that period is my waking up a few days after the "stay home" decree. My chats and inbox were flooded with messages from doctors, nurses, and researchers screaming their outrage at what was happening and at the lack of real debate. The people truly at the center of the battle weren't being heard. They were moved by my efforts at raising questions and wanted to share their experiences.
And where was the industry association? When all small businesses started shutting down? Perhaps saving a few large corporations. But what about everyone else? The healthy debate happening in the US between Democrats and Republicans about whether the virus or the recession killed more — where was that in Italy?
Narrative versus reality
When every newspaper claimed our lockdown was a model for the world, nobody checked. I spent hours compiling a table of containment systems across major nations. Yet everyone was certain the Italian model was a beacon imitated by all — "the WHO said so," they claimed. No. It never did. Everyone swallowing lie after lie with zero mental antibodies.
It seems to me that very few people raised their hand and actually engaged their critical thinking. It was a massively successful exercise in mass persuasion, where anyone offering the slightest criticism was silenced. The debate in other countries was far more democratic, diverse, and stimulating. As it should be in any nation that isn't totalitarian when discussing its citizens' future.
