Milan at the time of Coronavirus

Between February 13th and 16th I was traveling freely and happily on my motorbike between Switzerland, France and Germany to go to the Altes Elefantentreffen. Now that I’m forced into my house due to the pandemic, it seems like science fiction to me. I was driving happy, I was having fun. Just that weekend Mattia, a 38-year-old from Codogno (LO), was running a marathon and was feeling great. Four days later, however, the first European infected with the new virus was declared. No one yet knew that in reality this primacy belonged to Germany, since mid-January: but the Teutonic authorities had decided to keep everything hidden. Since February 20th everything has come to a head, as you well know. The announcement that Codogno, Casalpusterlengo and other neighboring villages were becoming a red zone was shocking. Red zone? You don’t come in and you don’t come out, like after an earthquake? Incredible. On February 22nd, just two days after the announcement, we were already paranoid, but we went on our motorbike without any psychological hesitation. I went to an exhibition on robots in Milan Bicocca (lacittadeirobot.com) wondering if it wasn’t dangerous. There were a lot of people, but the next day it had already been closed, like all the other exhibitions. On the 23rd there was the famous attack on supermarkets, decidedly premature, which made us think of the disaster films I was talking about at the beginning, and which made us discover the Italians’ hatred for smooth feathers and butterflies. In the meantime, the virus was spreading throughout Lombardy. On February 24th Luigi Corrù, the legendary inventor of the Sette Guadi series races, turned 60 and organized a party in the bar he owns in his town, in Cavenago d’Adda, just 13 km as the crow flies from the red zone . In the chat created for the occasion, the guests were divided between the scared (“I can’t risk infecting my family for a party”), the bold (“Flu causes more damage, what do you want it to be”) and the fatalists (“The virus is everywhere now, we might as well go to the party”). The event was stopped by the ordinance that forced bars to close at 6pm. This ordinance was later revoked, because the economic damage was great and, still, it seemed normal to go to bars and restaurants in the evening. I did it too. In those days we began to understand that it wasn’t just a simple flu, but we did the usual things: going to work, going to a pizzeria, going skiing, going to exhibitions and, above all, riding a motorbike, both for pleasure and to do Motorcycling services: testing, tourism, presentations with journalists from all over Europe. Then came the cancellation of all events, even motorcycle themed ones. Some resisted, like the staff of the Cycling Tourism Fair, who first sent us the press release “The three reasons why we will organize it anyway” and then, two days later, canceled it.