The formal acts were practically ready. Then … then nothing came of it. And we are still here to talk about it, to ask ourselves if the red zone in Val Seriana he would have changed something or not. The Lombard institutions asked for it, the data advised it. But in Rome the process got stuck, he postponed the decision for a few days, until it was no longer taken. Much has been said about the failure to close the Bergamo. Images of army trucks loaded with coffins went around the world. And the questions are still many. Could the massacre have been avoided by isolating the outbreak? Who decided to stall? The police were ready, but they remained helpless for days in the hotel: why were they not deployed on the territory?
We were hoping to find some answers in the missing book of Roberto Speranza. We are disappointed. However, the account given by the minister of those days is interesting, and deserves to be read. The chapter on “armored Italy” focuses on the first ten days of March, when – writes the minister – “Lombardy’s data are the most worrying”. In Codogno to tell the truth after a few days of blocking the situation provides positive signs. But it is out of the question outbreaks initials that the matter gets complicated. “The area of contagion is increasingly extensive”. Bergamo and the Bergamo area recorded dramatic numbers. “In these hours – remembers Speranza – we are considering whether to establish new red zones”. Why are they not made, if the experience of Lodi suggested they could be useful?
That Hope wanted to close everything is no longer a mystery. This was understood by the “stolen” audio of the meeting on March 4 in Milan with the former councilor Giulio Gallera and the governor Attilio Fontana. The resistances, in reality, are all in Rome, in the Palazzo Chigi area. On March 3, the CTS, as emerged from the minutes, analyzes the technical note of the ISS of the previous day and proposes to the government to extend the restrictive measures to Alzano Lombardo and Nembro. “For such a serious action – writes the minister today – a more in-depth evaluation is needed than two lines of minutes and, after reading it, on March 4 I ask Silvio Brusaferro a more structured relationship on the part of the ISS “. The delay that accumulates in the meantime favors the virus. It is not clear why the decision came quickly for Vo ‘and Codogno, while Bergamo needs “a more structured relationship”. The truth is that someone decides not to block the Val Seriana and asking for opinions on opinions from experts seems to be just a way to cover political responsibilities. So much so that the dpcm of 9 March which will give life to the first national lockdown will be “approved” by Cts only after the adoption of the measures. Couldn’t the same have been done for Alzano and Nembro?
“At the council of ministers on March 5 – reads the book – I warn Giuseppe Conte e Luciana Lamorgese of the request to create this new red zone in Val Seriana. The Minister of the Interior works promptly to verify the feasibility with the police, who in fact carry out the first inspections in the area “. Conte instead hesitates. Indeed, and this is perhaps the true revelation contained in the book, it stops a process that is now close to being approved. “The formal acts of this decision – writes Speranza – are already in preparation when the ISS report arrives on 5 March evening, while I am in Brussels. I turn it to the Prime Minister who, aware of the seriousness of the more general situation, had already asked for a further comparison with the Cts the next day”. Yet another day of waiting. “The meeting is held on the morning of 6 March at the headquarters of the Civil Protection” and it is “in that meeting that the CTS matures a paradigm shift: the virus is now too widespread for it to make sense to close individual municipalities with a national provision, small or large “. So it was decided to implement “red zones to much wider territories and perhaps to the entire country”.
That March 6 was late could also be true. But, as revealed in the Coronavirus Black Book (read who), Lombard representatives and experts had been asking for drastic measures for days. Now or never. The former councilor Gallera said it bluntly in a press conference on March 6: “When for the first time, three days ago, we met in a timely manner with the scientific Committee, that is with the Higher Institute of Health, and we had received an indication from the Institute that it had formulated a specific request to the government, if a response had been received three days ago, an uncertainty would have been avoided “and also the possibility that citizens would leave from Val Seriana “At the risk of creating damage to oneself and to others”.
Now the Bergamo prosecutor is investigating the case. It is difficult to say whether or not there will be convictions, provided that the facts constitute a crime. The political data, however, is clear: the red zone was more than a hypothesis, but we preferred to stall. Whose fault was it? Certainly not of Lombardy region, as someone in recent months has suggested (read Boccia and Conte). Among the most interesting political data in the book of Speranza, in fact, there is also this: the Minister of Health never writes that that decision could be taken independently by Governor Fontana.
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