In the end the company è arrived. The Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte signed the decree providing for theisolation of Lombardy and 14 other provinces, with a strong limitation of movements, to avoid a further spread of the new coronavirus. A decision that is anything but unexpected, given that the news of the chiusura started shooting several hours before its official release, which took place on the night between 7 and 8 March, creating in the citizens disconcert, confusion and in some cases panic, with the flight of people who did not want to be stranded in the affected areas.
In the eagerness to publish and attract scared readers on its own pages, to be counted in what will be a excellent the month of March, all the main Italian newspapers reported the draft decree leaking (obviously) from sources within the government itself. This requires a reflection on ours profession of journalists: there is no doubt that the draft was news. It is an extraordinary, new and important event: on this there is not no doubt. And maybe it's not even about having the burden of giving news that creates panic: this unfortunately we risk doing it every day, so we should weigh our words, stick to the facts and present them in the most understandable way.
In this case, it is a question of taking responsibility to disclose a news that is provisional. That draft was still in progress, information that at the beginning was not even well reported by the newspapers and that readers took as certain and clear news: Milan and Lombardy are in quarantine. And those who were afraid of getting stuck (for more or less valid reasons) decided to from in a hurry, making the precautionary principle on travel on which the decree is based less effective. The less you travel, the less the coronavirus spreads. More than thinking about the common good, we have been thinking about the personal good. And to say that in the final version of the decree there is no mention of an absolute ban, but rather of proven needs linked to work, emergency situations o health reasons valid for leaving the Region. With all the confusion that this entails, but that's another story.
What to do then? In the era of speed and social networks, it would have been enough expect. Waiting for a signature that strangely took place in the middle of the night, by a government (or by the Lombardy Region, says the CNN) who let a complete draft of the decree arrive absurdly to the journalists, who in turn irresponsibly published the news of a non-definitive document. A rush that has not really benefited anyone, if not the clicks accumulated in one night of ordinary madness.
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