Ignazio Frenda

Lockdown Ignazio Frenda

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. (Albert Einstein) Net of what is suggested by the well-known aphorism, at the dawn of the second twenty years the Third World War will not see the deployment of nuclear weapons, but the opposite scenario will occur: the battle will be fought on the sofa at home and the only weapon available will be a simple act of responsibility. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic puts the health system of several states in crisis. Italy is the first country in the Western world to be hit, as well as the most sensitive target: on 11 March of the same year, history is made and the country officially enters lockdown. It all begins in the oldest nation in the world, when a series of circumstances and conjunctures lead a microscopic packet of RNA to travel into the cells of a vendor in the Wuhan market. While the West stigmatizes the danger of the virus, China responds with an ad hoc quarantine and the construction of two hospitals in a few days. The underestimation of the phenomenon in the Old Continent, driven by ignorance in good faith as well as by power games, will catapult the rest of the world into an unprecedented historic lockdown. Forced isolation will serve to rethink our habits and customs, a new model of society and rediscover the civic sense and the collective good, but also to unleash plots and underline the greed of the God money to the motto of "It's just an influence ". A terrible fake news that, just like a virus, has infected all systems of society: from institutions to the media to public opinion. The manuscript, which mixes news, fiction and non-fiction, touches on various themes such as the possible social and economic implications of the pandemic, the tragedy of Northern Italy and the disaster of what happens when the economy becomes an end and not a means, defeat metaphorical of institutionalized faith, the re-evaluation of science in a society governed by humanism, the conspiratorial plunder and, finally, will ask the reader a question about a possible moral of the fable.