This is not a drill : people and work in times of the Covid 19 emergency

Abstract

«Epidemics, like disasters, have a way of revealing underlying truths about the societies they impact». Anne Applebaum, a journalist for «The Atlantic» who was in a desolate Bologna under lockdown at the beginning of March, used this revealing sentence in an op-ed praising the reaction of Italian universal health system to the dramatic outbreak of Covid19. This is an incontrovertible truth: not only moments of great stress allow us to rethink the habits of life and work, but also urge us to reassess the sustainability of consolidated models. In addition, such unpredictable events end up having harmful consequences precisely because they risk turning unpreparedness, and even superficiality, into disaster, thus exacerbating fragilities along physical, social, economic and psychological lines. It goes without saying, this is not a drill and we all would have gladly done without the far-reaching challenges posed by the pandemic. Nevertheless, the adversities caused by the infectious disease and the consequent social distancing have already demonstrated the poor ability to predict risks and the inability to manage a calamity that «quarantines» every routine.