Italy We are effectively under 'house arrest'....

...I am sure it will please one or two on here.
Measures to lock down Italy came into force last night and they are pretty draconian. Local commune (town council) have published the details of last nights decree:

Until at least 3rd April....

• Bars and pubs only open 6am to 6pm and must maintain 1 metre between customers.
• Only one person per family allowed out to go shopping (again 1 metre distance must be maintained between customers)
• Visits to other family members or gatherings of family members not living at the same address completely banned
• All shopping malls and supermarkets closed on holidays and Saturdays and Sundays
• Cinemas, nightclubs, swimming pools museums etc all closed.
• ALL social events concerts, festivals art exhibitions etc cancelled
• ALL Schools and Universities closed
• Leaving from /returning to local commune allowed if working but above rules apply
• Access to red zones e.g. for work only allowed with written permission and when leaving you must go directly home and nowhere else. You are then only allowed to travel between work and home.
• Spot checks on roads will be made and anyone found making unneccessary journeys can be fined and/or given a 3 month prison sentence
• Rail travel will be subject to checks at stations to confirm travel is essential . If deemed uneccessary you will be turned back. Same applies at airports where any flights are still taking off. Returning people will be checked and MUST self isolate as per above.

Over 65s (us) are supposed to stay at home and the comune have arranged a system for delivering prescriptions and you can even order staple foods like bread and milk from the local shop and the commune will deliver it next day (not sure if it is just ours being a small town of under 1000 people) Joy!!
Fortunately we were out yesterday for our tetanus jabs and did a big shop and have a freezer full of stuff anyway, so we are OK for several days. We just have to try not to kill each other or go stir crazy for the next few weeks
Annoyingly we were supposed to be visiting our family in UK on 7th April flying KLM Bologna-Amsterdam Leeds having booked non-refundable tickets as well as car hire and non refundable Freccia Rossa Ancona- Bologna train tickets (although I believe KLM and Trenitalia are relaxing rules re cancellation). If KLM cancel flights we should get a refund anyway but in any case the complexity of doing anything simple like getting refunds here is a nightmare of bureaucratic red tape.

Still, better safe for us and our daughter son-in-law and grandaughter even if we are £900 out of pocket!!

 

Are you more likely to get Coronvirus at night then!?

 

Sounds ****. Hope you stay healthy.

 

Yes. Sleep has been found to strengthen your immune system, so it is slightly weaker in the evening than the morning.

 

Apparently...that is when the little blighters must come out to play (although apparently like most viruses they dont like the hot sunshine- not that there is much of that about at the moment)
Seriously...some of the stuff coming from experts is a bit arbitrary and contradictory...e.g. 1 metre rule whilst some official advice states you are at risk if you are with 2 metres of another person for more than 15 minutes?? (I must get the stopwatch app set up on my phone

 

Sakes of metre sticks will be through the roof!

 

As for the fines, is Italy the same as here whereby if you knock the coppers helmet off they lose the legality to arrest you?
There’s your solution to be able to go where you like.
Seriously, hope you and your family remain well.

 

Stay safe mate.

Our Prime Minister meanwhile, has decided to basically do nothing by the sounds of it - if a few poor and old people die, it's not his problem.

 

Best place for lots of space between people will be at Oakwell. Will soon be about ten metres at least !

 

The UK will be the same by this time in 2 weeks. Seems crackers we aren't doing more after seeing what's happened in Italy.

 

Just wow!
I was reading in the U S that the complaints were that there were mixed messages. ie. Two states had kind of advised their population to think about stocking up on essentials like sanitary products...hence the shelves have become bare at places like walmart.
Then you head central govt claiming there is no need to panic and stockpile anything. Then you had a professor who represented medicine and diseases....saying there should be one uniformed attitude and not each state claiming they know what is best.
Italy sounds like a fun place to be!!

 

That's an urban myth mate. Trust me, knocking a coppers helmet off is a sure fire way to get arrested and they'd be within the law. In Italy I wouldn't fancy your chances much with the carabinieri, always in twos or threes and what they lack in sense of humour they make up for in machine guns

 

He is, he wants you to sing "happy birthday" twice when washing your hands its a bit like saying abracadabra when doing magic and hoping it works.

 

Whereabouts in Italy are you, if you don't mind me asking? Somewhere near Bologna presumably.

 

I was in Italy skiing - not last week f=but the week before just as it was all starting to kick off. They shut all the ski resorts yesterday as well. Looks like we got in and out just in time before getting stuck... I've wfh since i came back but all seems good. I posted on here that there were zero checks when we came back. Seemed a massive own goal at the time and even more so now.

 

Italy is statistically the 2nd most affected place in the world: the UK has 300 + diagnosed cases. I advocate martial law whereby the government can further brutalise our citizens.

 

Very woolly messages from Rome. Italy is in dire straits anyway, particularly the banks and this will almost certainly push it into recession. Govt has announce a multi billion pound package already which they announced when they quarantined Northern Italy. It will spread thin if extended nationwide. No doubt the banks and big business will get the lions share.
I feel for the small bars and restaurants, hairdressers and the thriving local music scene nearly all the bars have local musicians and bands 2-3 nights a week (how do you maintain 1m distance from customer if cutting hair - mine is coming nowhere near me with his cutthroat razor with a pole extension!) All the small businesses, bars, restaurants, round here will be decimated especially as, even when it is over, tourism this year at least will be massively affected. It is worse as this year our region (Le Marche) was on a massive promotion for tourism to build it back up after the 2016 Earthquakes and it was just starting to recover. Our small commune 'Bar Centrale' got taken over last year by three young energetic and enthusiastic people who transformed it from being a place where a few old guys sat outside playing cards with one beer between them into a thriving bar with varied music twice a week, Sunday lunches with occasional hog roasts/ Vegan options and a micro brewery with excellent craft beers which also supply local bars restaurants etc and they are in that first critical year. This could kill them off!
Most people are less concerned about catching the virus than the economic impact after the triple blow of Earthquake, storms and floods and now this.
We have some friends who are struggling to get back from abroad as well as 'house sitters' (a couple from NewZealand) looking after a friend's house whilst he is in the U.S.) who were supposed to go home this week and are stuck.

 

Apart from telling you to isolate I'm not sure what "checks" would have been done?

 

If locked up, will it be one per cell only?