What's up with WTI: Editorial # 125

Mar 16, 2020 1125

Ciao from Rome to all the friends of We the Italians.

In three weeks, everything has changed here in Italy. We are in lockdown. The explosion of the coronavirus has disrupted the lives of all of us, and the fear is that this thing will last a long time and will spread, indeed it is already spreading, everywhere. These are very, very difficult days, and the worse is yet to come: but We the Italians is not stopping.

From the first day of lockdown we started a daily videobroadcasting, called We the ItaliaNews. Every day we publish a short video from Italy in lockdown, in which we try to tell what happens, the numbers of this tragedy, what Italy is doing: a country hit hard but also a country that reacts, resists, behaves well accepting limitations and restrictions, suffers but goes on, hopes, and bets that it will make it. We will make it. We'll get up. We will come out of it: very tired and tried, certainly sad, but stronger than before. You can find these daily videos on our YouTube channel, which we ask you to watch and share as much as you can: let's all tell the rest of the world about the strength and resilience of Italy. According to Bloomberg.com Italy has the forth best health care system in the world.

We've also started a fundraising. The Lazzaro Spallanzani National Institute for Infectious Diseases (Istituto nazionale per le malattie infettive "Lazzaro Spallanzani") is an infectious disease hospital in the Italian city of Rome. The institute is named after the eighteenth-century Italian biologist Lazzaro Spallanzani. During the 2019/20 coronavirus outbreak, the Spallanzani Institute was the first research centre in Europe to isolate the genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 and upload it to GenBank. We the Italians is working on this together with the General Manager of the Hospital, our dear friend Marta Branca, who explains in a video what they need most and how they will use for the most urgent needs related to the coronavirus crisis the funds they will receive.

We the Italians would like to thank Marta Branca and with her all the staff of the Spallanzani Hospital - a true Italian excellence we are proud of - and all the other doctors and nurses in Italy, which has been tirelessly taking care of people infected by the virus for weeks. Spallanzani Hospital has always been. For this reason, We the Italians and I personally ask all Italian American people, associations, clubs and companies to continue to show their love for Italy by donating to help the Spallanzani Hospital in the incredible work of care and research that it does and will do. Today more than ever Italy needs the Italian American community. To all who have been appreciating our work, now is the time to show it with a good gesture: no amount is too small, but please, donate, share this fundraising on your sites and on your social networks, and do everything possible to help Italy. THANK YOU!!!

In this magazine, richer than the other months of excellent Italian stories, we also publish the abstract of an exceptional report made by Fondazione Qualivita and ISMEA on the Italian food and wine sector. It was written before the coronavirus epidemic, and describes a situation that we will all have to work hard to bring back. We publish it because we believe in Italy, which at other times has recovered after terrible events. Now more than ever, we’re glad we have in this magazine a column called “Italian Good News”. We need it.

Finally, but it seems like a century and not a month has gone by, last February 18th I had the pleasure of being Monica Marangoni's guest on the RAI Italia program "L'Italia con Voi", where I presented the 2019 yearbook of We the Italians, which you can buy here.

That’s all for now. Stay tuned, stay safe, please follow our daily video broadcasting and don’t give up on Italy. I won’t gonna stop saying this: the future’s so bright, we gotta wear shades!

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