Annalisa and the others

The virus took over thirty thousand people. The virus took away grandparents grandmothers dads mothers sons daughters brothers sisters. The virus took away rich poor good bad healthy sick. The virus carried off young old men and women. The virus carried away doctors, nurses, pharmacists, mayors, priests, carabinieri nuns and other good Samaritans in various capacities. The virus has taken thirty thousand lives that could continue to live love to work suffer rejoice do good do evil cry suffer laugh celebrate help.

They said and wrote and sang that everything will be fine. It's not true. Pitiful lie for days of mourning. They took the dead away in military trucks. Not even a tear on the coffins, a flower, a caressing hand in the last moment. It didn't go well. He could not.

That invisible obnoxious stubborn creature produced tears, blood and pain, carried out a devastating invisible silent massacre. You see a war, you feel it, you defend yourself. The virus no, it enters your lungs with the air you breathe, destroys them, suffocates you, takes your life. Thus, without a reason.

It didn't go well. Except for the courage, self-denial, dedication, sense of responsibility of the opposing army, men and women in white coats who declared war on the evil being and in the end took so many lives, defeated him thousands and thousands of times. Often dying next to their sick.

It went well because we discovered rediscovered medical nurses and volunteer civil protection collaborators who, with love and a sense of responsibility, did not shirk duty, fatigue, helplessness and defeat, tiredness and tears. Many many many. Unknown Samaritans who bent over pain did not flee, paying to the extreme.

Impossible to list them. We remember one for everyone: Dr. Annalisa Malara, who discovered the first patient at the Codogno hospital, and took care of him without thinking about it and without worrying about job role protocols. He said: it's my turn, in the land of the clever ones who repeat the litany of someone else's turn. With that gesture, the young Lombard doctor allowed her colleagues from Italy to prepare and organize themselves to go into the trenches.

Without that gesture, who knows the extra dead. It didn't go well. Without Annalisa and the others, it could have been worse.

Renzo Agasso
NP June / July 2020