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Nobody raises their voice in Piazza Chanoux. At 11.30 in the morning the protest announced by restaurateurs and bartenders takes place on the shorter side of the rectangle in the center of the capital. On the sidelines, almost as if not to bother, as if everyone was aware of the existence of concerns even higher than economic ones. Fifty people and a silence so composed it seems out of place. In this extreme appendage of Italy that uses it in this way, we cry out for the collapse of commerce of all kinds and types without making much of a voice. In the rest of the country everything arrives cushioned, as if wrapped in cotton.
The numbers
Even in the world apart from Aosta Valley instead, exceptional things happen and, unfortunately, not in the good sense of the adjective. The smallest and least inhabited region of Italy is the first in each entry of the second pandemic wave.. With 576 positives out of a total of one hundred thousand inhabitants, it has the highest incidence of contagion compared to the population. If it were an isolated event, it would be a statistical curiosity. But it’s not like that. There is also the highest number of deaths in a week (7 out of a hundred thousand), the number of hospitalizations (60 / 100,000), and a staggering fifty percent of positive cases and people tested during the last seven days. In the eleven micro-communities of elders, the public RSA, 120 of 319 hosts were affected by the virus, 51 of which were symptomatic. At the top of each of the elements considered as alarms, if not disaster, is the Aosta Valley (here the newsletter of October 28).
And contagion
Not only did it happen again, even worse than the first time. And there aren’t even skiers everywhere to blame, as was the case last March, when the decision to keep the ski lifts open until the last minute before the lockdown was cited as the main reason for the high number of positive cases. The scapegoat race is not as easy as it sounds. The proximity to the city is not a sustainable argument either. Aosta’s infection rate, which with its 34,000 inhabitants is certainly not a metropolis, it is in the same line as other cities of the same size, and much lower than that found in towns and villages of a few hundred inhabitants. So what’s going on? The exponential increase in positivity began three weeks after the schools opened. Other experts, such as Silvia Magnani, an infectious disease specialist at Parini in Aosta, the only hospital in the region, point to the proximity to France and Switzerland.
The zero event
The conditioned reflex always leads to the search for event zero, identified here at the recruits party held at the end of September, a score of children from Verrayes, Chambave and Saint Denis, the first towns of the second wave to be declared a red zone, and the third had already been in March. We are the black sheep, as happened in the first phase, but between May and October we were also the region with the least contagions together with Molise…. Luca Montagnani, health coordinator of the crisis unit, answers the question about the causes of this second time with a kind of riddle. For him, the correct answer is the reopening of schools. And this applies to everyone. The acid test lies in the first results that arrive after choosing distance learning for one in two high school classes. The curve appears to have stabilized. But this could also apply to any other region.
The communities
There is a specific Aosta Valley, almost of a constructive nature. Each village has its own tavern, says Montagnani, picking up a local adage. The life of the people of Valle d’Aosta is much more communal than in the large regions. The same places, the same bars, the same houses to meet at night. The same customs, like recruit parties and festivals. The virus did not come from the classrooms, the schools were just the trigger from the return to a normal daily lifestyle, to a way of life rooted in small communities, and the Valley has the highest Italian density of Municipalities with less than two thousand inhabitants in relation to the extension of the territory. Contact tracing has worked better than elsewhere, but a small consolation, also because increased testing has bogged down machines, personnel are short, and the local USL has asked the military for help. Sanit Councilman Roberto Barnasse looks at the glass half full, what else can he do. At first glance I recognize that the numbers are tremendous, but at least the least aggressive virus, and we only have nine patients in the ICU. In the Parini hospital, the fourth Covid ward was opened, there are 115 hospitalized and there are no doctors. Now it’s not even more important to understand the causes, Montagnani says. In the restaurateurs’ meeting there is no anger but resignation, a feeling of unequal struggle against a virus that disrupts secular habits and customs. Let’s hope the storm passes, they all say. Nothing else. That’s why the usual silence in Aosta today is a bit scary.
October 29, 2020 (change October 29, 2020 | 07:08)
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