[ad_1]
Now he sits right on the Olympus of Italian virologists, in good company with many others. But the notoriety of Andrea Crisanti it was less fast than those who beat their illustrious colleagues. At first it was Roberto Burioni, oracle of TV, then came Gismondo, Bassetti, Galli, many others. And also Crisanti. Known to most as the father of the “Vo ‘method”, for some time he has been praised for his indisputable successes: having conceived the “study” of two swabs in Vo’, having found a machine capable of processing 9 thousand swabs a day . , having warned everyone about the danger of symptomatic. For some time a reference virologist in Veneto with traction from the Northern League, he is now disowned and is in open war with the Venetian governor and health. Tensions that come from afar, but that in the most critical phases of the March epidemic seemed completely overcome.
The conversations between Chrysants and Luca zaia occurred between March 8 and 11, as reported in the Coronavirus Black Book. In those days (read here) Crisanti is analyzing the data from the second round of tests in the small village of the Euganean hills and is convinced that he can suggest to the governor a screening strategy in the entire region to be able to extinguish the virus ” without necessarily closing all “. On Monday, March 9, after receiving a “confidential” preview of Vo ‘results, Zaia informed the director of Microbiology at the University of Padua that he had asked the newspapers to interview him. And indeed the next day in the Messenger Service Della Sera appears in a talk with the professor entitled: “Massive swabs in outbreak areas, time is short.” It is not the first interview granted, Crisanti had already appeared on television. But it is from the end of the follow-up on Vo ‘(paid for by the Veneto region, it must be said) that its popularity grows. Until almost everyone in Italy will not only recognize the validity of the “Vo method”, but will basically attribute everything to their ideas. Unleashing the wrath of many in Venetian healthcare.
The first confrontations had already arisen at the beginning February. Crisanti had invited Padua students, researchers and teachers returning from China to undergo the test, even if they were asymptomatic. A revolution at that time, since no one dreamed of doing it and even the directives of the ministry advised against it. The news reached the newspapers, then the colleagues, and finally the ears of the general director Domenico Mantoan, who on February 11 had sent a letter to Crisanti to ask him “on the basis of what ministerial or international indications was this health choice public “. Crisanti had answered him firmly – he will admit it later – a “little lie”. The clash had touched politics, with protests from M5S and responses from the Region. Then everything had calmed down in the name of war in the first outbreaks. Crisanti and Zaia from February 21 appear together on television services, there is no shortage of mutual praise, no one questions the qualities of the other. To May.
With the decline in infections, disagreements reappear, as he had said for Giornale.it. Crisanti’s excessive exposure, Zaia’s interviews in which he attributes the credit for the Veneto miracle to the prevention department, the professor’s responses, the new interviews. Clashes, quarrels, intrigues. In May, while whispering to reporters, Crisanti remains convinced that it can be fixed (“don’t let me fight them, I have to work with them”). But then the rope breaks completely. Zaia for a time tried to mediate between the two “thoroughbred horses” (Francesca Russo, director of prevention, and Crisanti). Then he sides with his sanity. The rest of the story is a constant pinch from a distance. In the electoral campaign P.S me M5S They exploit his notoriety to try (uselessly) to put a wrench in the works for the president. From the left they propose to do it “at least an emergency commissioner.” Someone even suggests giving him the Golden Lion, after Padua had given him the seal of the city. But for Zaia at the time, the teacher is just a thing of the past.
Tensions also gradually arise with colleagues from the regional technical-scientific committee. The challenge of “mosquito experts“With Palù, Francesca Russo’s letter to be poisoned to” dismantle “the research published in Nature from Crisanti, the summer dispute about the “weakening of the degree of infectivity” of the coronavirus with the coordinator of regional microbiologies Roberto Rigoli (“Just talk”). Zaia knows, and wishes to underline, that much of the success of the “Veneto method” can be attributed to her decisions to order the first round of massive tampons at Vo ‘and to close the Schiavonia hospital. And then there are the merits that will be distributed to the team (“Chrysanthemums came later, but we had been ready for a month “). The professor for his part claims (read here) the authorship of a massive projection that officially, in Veneto, will arrive only after their proposals are sent directly to the governor. Positions in theory reconcilable in a “good all” But now there is a lack of mutual trust. When the vase breaks, putting the pieces back together is almost impossible.
