I have family in Milan and Sicily, incidentally including former carabinieri and a former mayor of his small Sicilian town. They obeyed curfews because they knew how many people this was killing. Not because they were afraid of getting arrested. The nation, opposition right wing populist parties included (though Salvini etc al have changed tune recently), unified around defeating the virus once it became clear how serious it was.
That never happened in the US and that's why we're fucked right now. Not because state and local govts weren't set up well to track and trace and isolate the most lethal and contagious respiratory pandemic in a century, one that spreads asymptomatically and presymptomatically, something public health departments have never seen before.
Our chance to try and contain this was by unifying against the virus as the common enemy as a nation. Most national leaders, after realizing the severity of this, pursued this approach. Trump, and Bolsonaro, did not.
That never happened in the US and that's why we're fucked right now. Not because state and local govts weren't set up well to track and trace and isolate the most lethal and contagious respiratory pandemic in a century, one that spreads asymptomatically and presymptomatically, something public health departments have never seen before.
Our chance to try and contain this was by unifying against the virus as the common enemy as a nation. Most national leaders, after realizing the severity of this, pursued this approach. Trump, and Bolsonaro, did not.