The Lockdown? It Wasn't in the Charts

Right from the cover, Fallimento lockdown (Lockdown Failure), the new Egea book by Piero Stanig, who teaches political science, co-authored with economist Gianmarco Daniele, expresses the conclusions reached by the two experts. "We are neither biologists nor epidemiologists, so ours is not a judgment on the medical and health aspects of managing the pandemic," explains Stanig. "We have critically evaluated and read the policy choices implemented and the outline of restrictive measures, media campaigns or the upholding of individual rights during the emergency".

The study starts from the consideration that, despite what was believed during this pandemic, it was not a completely unexpected event, so much so that every country has a pandemic plan that is always ready. Yet, at the outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic, many governments, including the Italian one, completely departed from it.

"The first analysis we carried out was precisely the study of these plans, which had the advantage of being very clear because they were written not in an emergency context", reveals the teacher. "In these programs, every indication regarding the phases of the pandemic, its severity, the policies to be implemented, is analyzed individually, evaluating costs and benefits and considering its sustainability from every point of view. Perhaps the Italian one was not the best plan, but some, like the British one which seems to have been adopted by Sweden too, were well made. They respected, in particular, some fundamental principles, such as those of proportionality, precaution and flexibility, which alone make clear the difference with what was implemented instead.
With the lockdown, conversely, an approach prevailed according to which the virus had to be stopped at any cost, thus giving way to a rhetoric of sacrifice as a value in itself. As if the greater the sacrifices, the greater the benefits, when instead it would have been necessary to think of more efficient, less expensive and impactful solutions, which could have obtained the same result ".

In short, the historical reading returns to a context in which many decisions seem to have sprung from instinctive and irrational reactions rather than from real strategy: the red zones imposed after seeing the trains being stormed at the Milan Central Station, the recommendations of the Red Cross considered more important than the guiding principles of Western governments' plans drawn up in the previous twenty years. "I consider this to be a necessary operation, not so much to give pass judgment on anyone, but to avoid the danger that these bad political habits keep circulating," says Stanig.