Coronavirus, writing and Yves Rocher

Coronavirus and writing. It could be a great title for sure. It was the end of december when I posted a review of a book I loved very much, Viral Modernism

by Elizabeth Outka published by Columbia University Press. The Spanish Flu was read through the lenses of creatives, writers and their personal interpretation of an abnormal "flu" to my point of view a pneumonia for sure, in their writings.

I was surprised and happy! we are always when our reviews are noticed or appreciated, to see that someone shared my review. A commission about epidemics, new viruses and so on, American.

Previously I reviewed and read with great appreciation 1918

L'Influenza Spagnola La Pandemia che cambiò il Mondo by Laura Spinney published by Marsilio. A big introduction to the Spanish flu.

My interest for pandemic flu or whatever it is, started when my dad, once, watching on tv a documentary I guess in channel one, started to telling me the situation of the community during the pandemic flu.

"Anna, an entire family lost the existence here. Everyday there was a new funeral, and five members of that family passed away. The only survivor was a son of the couple. His siblings, parents, all gone." Morena, the community where I live in, in 1918-1919 counted more than 600 people. No other departures reported by my granny and grand-dad regarding the spanish flu to my dad, so I imagine (dad was born in 1926) that the dead people "just" that ones. The community at that time was isolated. Maybe these people died because they afforded to a town or village where it was possible to catch this flu.

The "spanish" killed globally 100 million of people appearing when there was also the First World War; attention was, at first, distracted.

I could not imagine that so soon we would have assisted at a similar scenario that I had read just months before.

My feelings...

I tend to writing and reading a lot, so I spend a lot at time at home; at the same time I am a person who enjoy freedom. Freedom of movement to me is important, but much more is the idea of going outside, in the world without risking anything, without perils. It's this little difference that makes me a bit anxious. I can't know who I will meet; I don't know if sick or healthy. We want to trust everyone but we can't know. 

I follow every single guideline that our government ask us to follow when I go to the town or city because our personal destiny and the one of our beloved ones or strangers are potentially in our hands as well.

I read too much for not being scared, and at the same time for not knowing. 

A man on tv days ago said that maybe sometimes it would be better not knowing, because we would be more relaxed but knowledge open best scenarios to my point of view, because can give us the opportunity of a choice that differently wouldn't be lived with relaxation but like an imposition: what it is good and what it is potentially dangerous in our existences and the ones of other ones if we don't follow these guidelines.

I am a reporter, unemployed, but I am and when there was the first outbreak in China I thought: oh no, it's arrived.

I started to post articles of the most important english and Americans newsmagazines, imagining a potential dangerous arrival in our territory.

I couldn't think that the Chinese Pneumonia would have "priviledged" so massively our country, no, I didn't predict it, but again, I read many books regarding pandemic flu or past pestilences and what there was to do was fighting against a phantom.

What did the italian government was exactly what it had to be done. If most people could not imagine a scenario like this one, well past generations experienced this.

There is a big consolation: the possibility of not lose a big portion of population thanks to medicines that in the 1918-1919 didn't exist. No vaccines, no antibiotics, no paracetamol. The idea of a good hygiene still unknown; Anti-virals for HIV patients didn't exist for sure; we know that plasm of healed patients of Covid-19 has a good effect on sick people. World evolved and if sometimes progress is a regress, in this case, in the scientific field of medicine, meant a global success.

Yves Rocher: maybe you will know I implemented my work as reporter selling Yves Rocher products, where I saw money after a long period of absence with my other work.

No doubt that this month has been tragic. Customers need to know how and where I will bring to them products. It's unthinkable as we did in the past to share time in the kitchen of a friend, eating a good cookie, sipping some tea while we chat and later we take the order, surely hugging her, kissing her on the cheeks when we arrive in her house.

It will be important to change the modality of payment: I think that electronic money could be important in this phase. Germs love to spend time in money and this illness is nasty. Of course a quick delivery maintaining the distance of security is indispensible. Not only: for order superior at the 35 euros maybe it's better that the package arrive to the house of the customer. So we won't interact at all, and the customer will receive also a discount of the 15%

These ones the guidelines during the so-called times of the Coronavirus.

God Bless Us All!

Anna Maria Polidori