In Paris, the closure of the schools took place simultaneously with the start of the quarantine (unlike Italy, where the restrictions took place in stages), so we found ourselves locked in the house overnight, converting our routine to a sustainable life within the walls of the house. The first real change therefore came from the didactic point of view and from the modalities in carrying out the lessons, but I must say that they started immediately without problems. So now I proceed with my courses within the walls of the house.

The choice I stayed here is simple: my safety and that of my family. In this period, limiting travel and avoiding assembly places is one of the best ways to prevent the disease from spreading even further. I currently live with a French girl, and we considered that if we had to get in touch with the virus we will probably be able to overcome it without too many problems, being both very young, while my parents are already older, so our strategy was to minimize movements and contacts with each other and waiting for the situation to improve.

Due to the seriousness of the situation, the quarantine in Italy started earlier and today is still ongoing. However, having been the first European country to find a dangerous situation, many systems have found themselves unprepared, and this has been evident for me even just considering the small reality of my family, where my younger sister started lessons much later as the school was disorganized to take online courses, where my father found himself stuck at home without being able to go to work and with a lot of useful material in his office and where the bad communication of information did not make it easy for my mother to even understand if she was allowed to go and bring food to my grandfather.

Compared to the attacks on supermarkets and the restrictions in everyday life applied in Italy, here in Paris the situation is a little less suffocating. Citizens are allowed to go out once a day for a maximum of one hour, but without exceeding the distance of a kilometer from their home. Apart from the effort that is required of a person like me, who loves to go out and visit, to stay at home, I have not had particular «damage» on my present.

In Italy they are trying to hold on, obviously there is also someone who violates the rules, but in general it seems that many people are respecting the confinement, also thanks to the controls in the cities. My closest testimonies obviously come from my family and friends who all live in my home town, a small village in Piedmont, one of the most endangered arias, where therefore checking is easier and more necessary. Fortunately, the virus has not touched any close relatives within my family, if not my cousin who supposed to have had it (and to be cured) when it was just the beginning and had not speculated it could be that as it was not yet evident that the virus had arrived in Italy.

Obviously, I have heard stories of friends who have had losses, or who are still in a situation of uncertainty regarding the situations of some relatives. The worst thing is that in this situation you cannot stay close to the patient in his last days of life, due to the overcrowding in some hospitals and cemeteries in northern Italy, they are often transferred to other parts of the country.