https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/04/letter-from-italy-this-pandemic-is-showing-us-who-we-really-are

The coronavirus response, once a parallel dance, has become a chaos of separate choreographies

In March, the acclaimed Italian novelist Francesca Melandri wrote a letter to fellow Europeans “from your future”, describing experiences of lockdown. Now, as restrictions are eased, she has another message.

I am writing to you from Italy, which means I am writing from the accelerated present of the pandemic. What started as a parallel dance among successive epidemics’ charts has become a chaos of separate choreographies. Depending on the country, the dance moves have been authoritarian, orderly and effective, fallible but humane, incompetent, in denial, abusive or even genocidal. The Covid-19 dancehall, however, is the same for everyone. Its walls are covered in mirrors. They are showing us who we really are and there’s no way we can avert our gaze.