Lopalco: “Italy is an enemy of science, but there is something incredible about the pandemic”
“Unfortunately, we knew that Italy is a place where science has little citizenship. But what is happening in the wake of the pandemic emergency is incredible. They tell you about these things at the bar and you say: “No, come on, are you kidding?!” This is how the epidemiologist Pier Luigi Lopalco comments on the conclusions of the Bergamo investigation and the announced appointment of a parliamentary commission of inquiry in a post on Facebook to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. 19. “Italy is being hit, first in the western world, by a pandemic whose magnitude had not been foreseen even in the worst forecast scenarios. However, the health system, for all its atavistic weaknesses, has withstood the crash – Lopalco recalls – even showing other Western countries, with unpopular and decidedly drastic decisions, how best to slow the spread of the virus. Then comes the vaccines and Italy is proving to be the best in terms of speed of implementation and getting coverage.”
“Finally the state of emergency is over and what happens? A prosecutor is investigating everyone who lost nights to save the country, from the biggest to the smallest, for terrible crimes like a culpable epidemic. And the parliament appoints a commission of inquiry (politics) provide an insight into who knows which misdeeds”. According to Lopalco, “One thing had to be done, as is done in civilized countries: a technical-scientific commission to assess how the system, the state, responded to the greatest pandemic in contemporary history responded. An analysis on that to make tomorrow’s pandemic plans. But this is for scientists. Let them go and do it somewhere else.”
“In the meantime, since no one has, I sincerely say thank you to everyone who didn’t bat an eye (literally) during February and March 2020 to find workable solutions with the weapons available at the time to save as many lives as possible – emphasizes the expert – I say this because I am sure that in the next pandemic it will be really difficult to find someone who is sane and puts his expertise at the service of a country that in all likelihood will one day in “After the dramatic scourge of defensive medicine, Italy has managed to invent defensive public health as well. A masterpiece,” comments Lopalco.