Critical reflection on the thin line between prevention and limitation of freedom.
So it works like this: there’s an English tourist who goes wandering around Milanphotographs the Cathedralpops over to the Cenaclemaybe wander around Piazza della Scala and Via Montenapoleone. And then when he returns to the B&B that hosts him in the evening he finds it health police who questions him: «Were you by any chance on the Saint Helena-Johannesburg flight on April 25th?». Imagine the poor man’s embarrassment: “Yes, what’s wrong with that?”. Who knows what was going through his head. “Perhaps in Italy it is a crime not to have participated in the Anpi procession for Liberation Day?”, you may have asked. “In case I apologize.” But the health police do not want to joke: «On April 25th you were on the Saint Helena-Johannesburg flight in which there was an infected person fromHantavirus. So he must follow us.”
So they took him, loaded him into an ambulance and locked him up in the hospital.Sacco hospital. “He won’t move from here for five weeks.” In practice he is a political prisoner of the Bs, Health Brigades. It will not be released until the five hundredth appearance of Matteo Bassetti on talk shows.
Medical seizure in Milan: the case of the English tourist at Sacco
Please note: the English tourist is not infected with theHantavirus. Nor does he have any symptoms. Not even his partner shows symptoms: he too took a big risk, but then the Health Brigades they saw fit to release him, without bail. He had taken another plane. Danger averted. But that’s how it works: a kind of flight lottery, the jet lottery. If the right number comes up you are safe. If the wrong one comes up you’re screwed. Was there a hanta-infector on board? Goodbye. It doesn’t matter how big the plane is, where you were sitting, how long the flight lasted and above all it doesn’t matter whether you test positive or not: they take you and lock you up.
And we are already imagining, like in a horror film, what could happen in the coming weeks if they Health Brigades they will be unleashed in the same way throughout Italy. They will approach an English tourist as he enters the Uffizi in Florence: «Excuse me, were you on that plane?», and they will seize it. Then they will approach a French tourist as he boards the gondola Venice: «Excuse me, were you on that plane?», and they will seize it. THE’Hantavirus it will become the new Stendhal syndrome, in practice: in front of something beautiful you are kidnapped. Except that it is not the beauty that captivates, but the health guardians. And for 42 days you don’t get rid of it…
The virus of fear and the new EU guidelines
Yet everyone says that we are not as risky as we were in the days of Covid. «We are not in great danger», guarantees the Ministry of Health. “We are not in great danger,” repeat international experts. «We are not in great danger», follow the virostars of our house who have returned to cathodic vogue as in the good times of lockdown. But if we don’t run great dangers, what’s the point of picking up someone who’s photographing there Madonnawithout symptoms, without virus, and lock him up in hospital as if he were a plague victim? In words they all say they don’t want to create alarmism, but in reality it’s clear that that’s exactly what they want to do. They wallow in alarmism.
And not only in Italy: a Bordeauxin France, a ship with 1,700 people on board was quarantined because a ninety-year-old had gastroenteritis and died. Excluding Hantavirusexcluding Norovirus (whatever it is), excluding dangerous epidemics: the authorities have confirmed that it is only a small outbreak of gastroenteritis, a banal mess in short. But there are 1,700 people kidnapped. For a ninety-year-old with a cock. And then they say no alarmism?
Going forward at this rate, no alarmism after no alarmism, I don’t know where we can get to. And so I go back to seeing dangerous horror films before my eyes. Is there an 85 year old sneezing on the bus? They will quarantine all passengers. Is there an 82 year old coughing at the bar? They will quarantine all customers. Be careful: if you get in an elevator with someone who has conjunctivitis, they may soon force you into five weeks of solitary confinement, in the dark and blindfolded, so you learn. And, obviously, before boarding a plane, get the medical record of all the other passengers, otherwise there is the risk that when you land they will pick you up directly at the gate to take you to the hospital. Healthy ward, not infected awaiting trial. With the voice of Burioni in your ears 24 hours a day.
The architecture of control and the limitation of freedoms
But there’s nothing to joke about. The situation is serious. Because the virus is really dangerous. Not the virus that the mice attacked usArgentina: what everyone says is known and can be checked. The dangerous virus is that of fear. Because as the great scientist said Robert Maloneone of the inventors of mRna and then critical consciousness at the time of Covid«historically governments and institutions have always understood the political usefulness of fear. Fear justifies emergency powers. Fear accelerates financing. Fear increases media consumption. Fear creates social cohesion around conformist behaviors.”
And the demonstration lies in the fact that precisely in these hours the European Commission has adopted an “initiative against global health threats”, five guidelines which aim precisely to give more control powers (they call it “more effective and less fragmented architecture”) and to limit the personal freedoms (they call it «increasing prevention tools»). The Englishman kidnapped while being a tourist Milan and the ship blocked for a cagotto, therefore, could be just a taste of what awaits us. And I don’t know about you, but just tasting it is enough to give me a stomach ache. Aren’t they going to quarantine me for this?
