We've cancelled our holiday. Of everywhere we were going, I was looking forward to Sicily the most.

I realise that there are going to be many businesses suffering and going under because of this pandemic, but am interested to see who is going to profit from it.
Once it is over, the usual suspects will gave made money from the misery of so many. Do you imagine Warren Buffet has followed the bear market?
There will also be some unforseen benefits - pollution levels have dropped in northern Italy.

This typifies everything I love about Italy and Italians. True or made up it matters not…. I do not intend to put a Twitter (I call it something slightly different) link here, but if you look for “Italians singing to each other out of the window” it comes up with the results of what it says is happening in Siena – superb!

My neighbours belong to a karaoke club and they are singing every night. They are shouting a lot more now since they are stuck at home.

The infection rates in the UK and Ireland are substantially lower than in Continental Europe (combined UK + Ireland have about the same number of cases as Denmark), and the CTA not being part of Schengen, means there are at least some checks and border controls. Being islands also helps to be able to the situation a bit more. That is why they were left out of the ban but that will be revisited if/when numbers spike in the UK.

Exclude Italy, and the number of infected in Continental Europe is still about 9x higher than in the United States. The Americans may be having huge issues testing but so are most of the Continental European countries - and European governments have been a lot slower and a lot more sluggish in appreciating the gravity of the situation than the rest of the world.

It was evident the moment the first major cluster appeared in Lombardia that it was going to explode across the continent, for all of these reasons - I said it to my wife the night the news broke, when she asked why only Italy seemed to be affected. I said - it isn't just Italy, the world just doesn't know it yet.

Xi apparently showed up in Wuhan last week, and if my Italian is good enough, I think I read in the online papers that China has sold 2 million facemasks and something like 10,000 ventilators to Italy. All very good indicators that the Chinese think they have a handle on it now - so the blueprint is there. The infection rate in South Korea has also plunged.

Donated I read. Not sold.

Did you read anything about China also sending 10 or 12 virus experts, who I think are now already in Milan?

5 experts I read. Plane landed yesterday or the night before with the experts on board and something like 5 or 7 cargo pallets of all those masks and ventilators.

My wife also just said "donated" and not "sold." Can't remember where I saw "sold" or if I just imagined that.

Stolen from Guardian

UK and Ireland just added to the USA ban

Best not to shout this in a public place "Sono positivo."
https://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/cro...4d20fc75a.html

We don't know what category he was in - mentally ill or just 'terminally stupid' Whichever, it's not a course of action I was planning on