A young Napolitan actor made a video about how he was confined to his flat several hours alongside his suddenly infected (and now late, sadly) sister with the bitter impression that all medical, emergency and funeral services were criminally slow to help them.
The contrast between Italy and France is mindboggling. Restrictions on large public gatherings have started raining in over the Alps as well but nothing to the extent of what Italy has put in place already. Life has mostly gone on for now here but I'm a bit apprehensive we're just on the same course with some delay, it's hard to imagine it isn't spilling in Southern France if Northern Italy has been hit that hard.
The French government and Macron are very cautious and the official discourse is that most of the epidemic is in front of us. They're trying to flatten the curve of infection to avoid having hospitals being pushed beyond critical levels (the Ministry has lifted limits on overtime, so it's already at full capacity), try to delay the worst of it after the flu season to avoid confusion in diagnostics. Maybe to try soften the economic blow too, but it's already projected growth will probably be close to 0.
It's not great that Italian and French healthcare is already under that amount of stress from "just" thousands of cases. There's been a great deal of financial pressure on french public infrastructure in the last decades and it feels healthcare is coasting by on sound but aging infrastructure.
The mayoral elections should go forward, as I said earlier but there's a lot of wider questions not yet debated on the effects of all the restraints on public discourse. French authorities exempted protests from the limitations, as the unions were worried, but should this last months it's gonna become a real issue.
