Letizia and Mojito at Bar Bonci, in Spello, Umbria, italy

Unless you’ve been hibernating under a socially-distanced rock, you know that the pandemic is in its second wave. Well, in Europe anyway. In the States, a quick look at rates over time will show you that while Italy has a big spike in March that dropped down and for the past few months had been relatively flat, the United States had a spike in April and then dipped maybe a little before surpassing April levels. In other words, the graph in Italy (and the rest of Europe) looks like a little mountain followed by a long valley and now a larger mountain, while the US graph looks like a steep slope up, followed by a series of slight dips and rises and now another slope up.

Now, like most of you, I listened as people smarter than me talked about if COVID19 follows the course of the 1918 Spanish Flu, we’d get a second wave in the fall. I’m still unclear on why that would be; I know some people credit the warm weather with depressing rates which then spiked again with cooler temps, and that might explain what happened in 1918. It’s likely not what caused the dip in Europe this time around though, as the coronavirus seems to not follow weather-norms and anyway, it never “went away” in America’s summer, we just got better at ignoring it.

Maybe because the virus seems less weather dependent, or maybe because I can be relentlessly optimistic, I didn’t believe we’d get a second wave. I figured, we have access to tools now that we didn’t have 100 years ago, there’s no way we’d let the virus spin out of control again. No, as soon as rates started to increase, we’d institute regulations based on all the things we’d learned about the virus in the last six months, we’d bring it right back down.

Spoiler alert: That didn’t happen.

My total layperson opinion is that the virus was allowed to go too long unchecked and now the measures are too weak to work. Kind of like you can control a tiger with a boop on the nose when it’s small, but allow it to get bigger and stronger, and you’ll need something more akin to a cattle prod. File this under :Things I learned from watching Tiger King during my own bout with COVID-19.

Olive tree in the fog in Montefalco, Umbria, Italy

Rates started increasing after school started. The Italian government announced a new decree, masks were now required, countrywide (before, they were only required inside, or outside if you couldn’t be a meter away from someone).

The virus seemed to snicker with self-satisfaction at such meager half measures, and it roared to life.

In October, a new decree— bars and restaurants had to close at midnight. No changes to school. Around this time, I discovered the immuni app, which tracks users and lets you know if you’ve crossed paths with someone who later tested positive. I’m not sure how effective the app is (it’s yet to ping for me), but I definitely admire the effort and ingenuity.

Soon after, the government released an addendum: Bars (the drinking alcohol kind, not the get a cup of coffee or a glass of wine kind, the former almost always closed in the evening anyway) and restaurants had to stay closed until 5 AM. Apparently, some clever fools had been skirting the rules by closing their bars at midnight and reopening at 12:05. IN A PANDEMIC. I would sooner dip into a cesspool than a bar at this point, everything we know about how this virus spreads convinces me that bars are to viruses as sponges are to bacteria. Gross. You know how your nose recoils at a stinky sponge? That’s what I do when I think about drunk people falling all over each other in low light IN A PANDEMIC.

Then, at the end of October, poop got serious (hey, it’s a family page). Restaurants couldn’t be open past 6:00 (so that means restaurants can only be seat people at lunch, anything later is carryout), malls and grocery stores had to be closed on Sunday. Travel discouraged.

We had planned a trip to Piemonte, and decided to cancel. I know some might think that with at least some in our home having antibodies to the virus, we could assume we were immune, but actually, my calculus went like this… what if we picked up the virus in Piemonte, but because we had it before, we mounted a good enough immune response that we stayed asymptomatic. We’d sashay back, smug in our health and ability to do that we wanted, and Gabe would go to his Italian lesson with our dear 80-year-old Angelo and BAM!

I don’t want to even think about it.

Coffee with a view in Spello, Umbria, Italy

So we stayed here instead, and went to the grocery store on a Saturday and moped a little, but it’s hard to mope too long when you are in Italy. There’s always something to take your mind off your perception of a problem. Keith and I did a morning date (since we can no longer take in a dinner together), driving around Montefalco so I could take photographs of the changing vines in the fog. We stopped at autumn market and bought a kilo of the sweetest, juiciest, tiniest pears for €2,50 (less than $3.00 for over two pounds). We picked up pastries at my favorite Sicilian bakery in Foligno. We picked up guanciale for pumpkin risotto and red onions for fennel and red onion and orange salad (we’d gotten a farm share and had lots of produce to use). We decided to enjoy being in Umbria, rather than seeing something new.

How have these regulations worked? Meh. Sometimes it looks like they’re helping, sometimes not. Mostly not.

Which is why, on November 4th, Giuseppe Conte, the Prime Minister, held a press conference to tighten the rules for the fourth time in three weeks. He announced a more complicated, but to my mind, possibly more effective set of regulations that are in place until December 3rd. More effective because the response varies by region, and Italy, like anywhere, has hotspots. The goal is to contain those hotspots, and let people in other regions continue to let the economic wheels spin to some degree. They’ll reassess periodically, but for now, Umbria, like much of Italy is in the “yellow zone”, the area of least restriction, thanks to the relatively low number of cases (not that low, though, Paola just told me about two people we know who tested positive, and I know of another). So we can travel to other yellow zones and our rules are relatively unchanged, except there is a national 10:00 curfew (unless for reasons for work or school, and you have to have a declaration form to indicate this), and museums are closed, along with casinos (does Italy have those? I guess so, since “bingo and slot machine activities” are curtailed), gyms, and pools. High school moved to distance learning.

Neighborhood madonna in spello, umbria, Italy

The orange areas includes Puglia and Sicily. These regions have all the aforementioned rules, plus their travel is restricted—they can’t travel from one municipality to another, unless required by work or school (in which case, they have to fill out the declaration form). Restaurants and bars closed all together, except for takeout and home delivery.

Red areas are the very southern and very northern parts of Italy: Calabria, Lombardy, Piedmont, Valle d'Aosta. They are, in many ways, back to the lockdown they had in March. You can’t leave the house, though this time, there is an exception for home or school. Newsstands, tobacconists, pharmacies and parapharmacies, laundries, hairdressers and barbers remain open, though I’m not sure who can go to them, since you’re to allowed to leave the house except to go to work or school. Beauty centers closed. Distance learning is provided for secondary school, for the second and third grade classes. Therefore, only preschools, elementary schools and junior high schools remain open. Universities are also closed.

These crocheted bags hang on every single doorknob in nearby Bettona, Umbria (Italy). Women made them during the pandemic for a bit of money and if I understand Sante correctly, people could leave each other flowers and coins.

I’ve asked Spellani how they feel about the new regulations. Uniformly, I’m hearing “Speriamo”, we hope it works. Not much grumbling about it, rather, people are hoping the virus gets under control so that when Christmas comes we can “stay together.”

The government is supposed to reevaluate in a week or two, but with doctors begging the country to shut down, and hospitals filling up, it may not be that long.

Please stay safe.

Wherever you are.

Well.

That was fast.

Between the time I wrote the above, and twelve hours later when I started editing, the Italian government has moved Umbria (along with some other regions) to the “orange zone” as of tomorrow, Wednesday the 10th of November.

This means Keith and I will need to fill out a form to leave the comune Tuesday for my meeting with the questura in Foligno about my permesso, and all bars and restaurants are closed as of tomorrow. We’d been having lunch every Friday at Pinturicchio, which had taken on the luster of our American tradition of “Taco Fridays”, a way to bookend the week and put on our party hats for the weekend. When we walk in, the waitstaff now smiles that it must be Friday. Sad for us to lose this, of course, but I’m really worried about these restaurants. We’ll start ordering takeout where we can, but not every restaurant has it in place. And what will this mean for Bar Bonci and Bar Tullia and the rest?

Stay tuned.

Did I get any of the above wrong? Tell me! There is so much government speak and I myself had COVID during Italy’s shut down, so my memory is imperfect.