# Reflections on covid19 

I never was one of those people who need to write. 

I am in a small town in the north of Italy right now. It's not my home, but it
is the home of the parents of my girlfriend. We are here since  one month ago.
The lock down prevents us to go home (still in the north, not Milan).

This small town is beautiful and it is close to my ideal town, though I'd like
it to be smaller. But there are mountains everywhere and I like mountains and
the sun reflecting on them.

Thank God we are fine: mother of my girlfriend buys groceries once a week and she
is still fine. We always clean everything with alcohol every time she goes out
and comes back. In case of necessity we could eat for more than two weeks. Other
that this, I don't feel that much of a difference.

The lock down seems the right thing to do, or at least the one thing that has had
some kind of positive effect. But I am worried: people are forced to stay at
home, the army is in the streets, new laws pass without our consent and the
government is tracking our movements actively. 

Note: to say that this is just for our sake and it will revert once the COVID19
is gone means trusting the government. Which worries me anyway, but right now it
seems the government is not abusing this power. 

On the work/job side, I already worked from home, so I do not see that much of a
difference.

------------------------------

I think a good exercise is to understand the first order consequences of this
crisis and speculate of the second order consequences. This can help us get a
glimpse of the third order consequences, which are those that will impact our
way of living the most. For example we are getting used to robots in the
hospitals[1].

The only thing I want to say right now is this: it is unlikely that the
government will revert from actively monitoring (via drones[2] and smartphones'
position gathered from tower cell[3]) people, so there will obviously be some clash
on it. 


[1] 
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2020/03/18/how-robots-and-drones-are-helping-to-fight-coronavirus/
[2] 
https://web.archive.org/web/https://www.panorama.it/Tecnologia/i-droni-a-caccia-dei-furbi-da-covid-19
[3] 
https://web.archive.org/web/https://www.corriere.it/tecnologia/20_marzo_18/coronavirus-controlli-celle-telefoniche-tracciamento-privacy-223ea2c8-6920-11ea-913c-55c2df06d574.shtml

*Created on  2020-03-27*