The doctor Laura Received, internist, was the first to admit Mattia to the ward. The doctor Annalisa Malara, anesthetist, on duty when he returns, and in the face of the devastation revealed by the radiography he suspects a viral origin: There was very little left of the lungs. Valentina Maestri, lto Mattia’s wife, a muscular Marcantonio, athlete, marathoner, footballer but now already attached to life through an oxygen mask, he remembers a colleague who had perhaps been to China at a dinner two weeks ago. But the buffer, at that time, provided for by the protocols only for those who personally return from China.
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The anesthetist’s insistence that he wants to swab
Annalisa for she does not trust; he insists, he wants to swab Mattia, eventually gets it and sends it to the Sacco laboratory in Milan. That same evening Valeria Micheli, virologist on call in the hospital, calls Annalisa and gives her the news trembling: Mattia the first positive coronavirus identified in Europe. From that moment the war begins. Maria Rita Gismondo, director of the laboratory of microbiology and virology of the Sacco, informed by her colleague, runs to the hospital: The nurses have begun to incessantly give us swabs to use. Five hundred in one night …. This is the story of how the worst year of our life began in Codogno. Even if without the many live details that Bruno Vespa tells in his latest book, you already know it. But pay attention to one detail: apart from Mattia, the unfortunate, the protagonists are all women: Laura, Annalisa, Valentina, Valeria, Maria Rita. Indeed no, there is a man, Annalisa’s head physician, Enrico Storti, who fortunately listens to her and authorizes her to swab, despite being against the protocols. After all, there is a man in the part of the head in every story of women. Or a man who is given credit.
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Who saved the Veneto? Chrysants? No, Francesca Russo
Another chapter of the Vespa book, entitled Who saved the Veneto? Chrysants? No, Francesca Russo: unpublished details have been revealed on the maternity of the so-called Vo ‘model, and on the role played by the doctor at the head of the Health Prevention Department of the Region. All these female presences really shouldn’t come as a surprise. Among health workers, women in Italy are almost twice as many as men. For in the roles of general managers they represent only 16%, and men occupy the remaining 84% of the posts. Why are women less prepared and capable? One would say no, reading the endless stories of researchers, doctors, surgeons, nurses, who fought and are still fighting on the front line against what ends in his book Vespa The dictatorship of the virus. Yet the Technical-Scientific Committee, which for almost a year ago the functions of the National Virus Liberation Committee, was initially composed of twenty members all male. Months later, with the first wave practically over, only a strong parliamentary protest gets it to be integrated with the names of six women.
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A piece of history from the past with the current events of today
Why? I will be wrong, but one of the origins of this Italian backwardness can perhaps be identified in the first part of the Vespa book, entitled Perch l’Italia am Mussolini. As always in the volumes of the popular conductor of Porta a Porta, once again a piece of history of the past is juxtaposed with the actuality of today, told as if it were history of the present. And if you want to look for the characteristic traits of a certain Italian machismo, the reading of the events of the dictator is singularly instructive. Especially in the chapter entitled Le donne del Duce. In recounting his frequent and promiscuous meetings with the fascist visitors, a woman a day every day for twenty years, Vespa describes them as follows: The Duce was not generous with his guests. He didn’t offer tea, chocolate, soda. Never a little gift. He did not use perfumes and did not look for them in women. A lady who had often been to Palazzo Venezia told the writer Paolo Monelli: He knew how to be brutal, rude, violent, he started the conversation with blasphemies and bad words, pig this, holy that, executioner here, executioner there. But he also knew how to be tender, caressing, even paternal. Paternal. Many things have changed in Italy, but a certain model of male power has replicated itself, albeit adapting to the changes. Although it has not always become less brutal.
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December 11, 2020 (change December 12, 2020 | 00:31)
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