A Tale of Four Countries

I’ve lived my life in four countries – Italy, Germany, the US and the UK – and have good friends and family in all of them. So when people ask me where I’m from, I don’t have a straight answer. I don’t feel like I belong to any one place. All places I’ve lived, live in me and are a part of me and yet in all places I am perceived by others or by myself as an outsider. It’s a curious situation which has made me observe and reflect on cultural norms rather than take them for granted. The development of this pandemic has been interesting to track and I’ve been wondering what underlying cultural traits may be affecting the different responses to it by these four countries.

I started off collecting numerical data on cases and deaths in each place but soon realised that the data can’t be used as a basis for comparison. The main reason has to do with testing, on which these numbers are based. (You can read more about the importance of testing in “Andra Tutto Bene.”) Each country, and in many cases each region, has followed different testing protocols. Some are testing only those with severe symptoms, some are testing large numbers of people where there are outbreaks, some are doing post-mortem tests and some aren’t, and there are still some who are barely testing at all either for lack of test kits or lack of will. Scientifically, therefore, data comparison between and across countries is fairly meaningless unless a systematic protocol is agreed upon globally. Instead I focus on how individuals and governments have been dealing with the rise in numbers in Italy, Germany, the UK and the US.

Italy

I was born in Italy, have been coming back for visits all my life and now live here. Besides its wealth of art and history, it is a country known for its apparent chaos and affectionate social interaction. Perhaps this all-too-superficial view is one reason why many countries thought the explosion of the pandemic here to be due to the Italian nature rather than that of the virus itself. In any case, it is clear that Italy like much of the rest of the world, initially thought of COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus” as if it were an immigrant that could be denied entry. Here too I met several Italians who waved it off as less severe than even the flu. Given that Milan has the largest population of Chinese in Italy and that some of the first cases registered in Germany were people who had been to Lombardy, it is likely that the first Italian cases went undetected because the country was slow to begin testing.  Once testing did start up, the numbers literally exploded.

It is interesting to note, however, that not a single Chinese case was registered in Prato, a city with the largest density of Chinese in all of Europe. As I wrote in more detail in “Living in the Midst,” many had gone home for the Chinese New Year but quarantined themselves as a community, without any government directive, from early February. Ultimately, Italy moved quickly to try to contain the virus not by testing but by locking down the areas of contagion. As we know, this was not effective enough and nor was the subsequent closing of schools and universities. Italians are an extremely sociable people. They greet each other by kissing on both cheeks and they love to frequent crowded little bars, cafes and restaurants. Families live in close proximity to each other and multi-generational meals are a common weekly occurrence. Grandparents help with school runs and out-of-school care of their grandchildren and the public transport systems of busses and trains are widely used by all ages. Let’s not forget that 9,000 people in Milan boarded trains south the evening before the lockdown of much of northern Italy. These gregarious social and cultural customs unfortunately encouraged the spread of the virus in the three weeks it took for the government to declare a national lockdown. The death rates amongst the elderly have been high not only because they make up a quarter of the Italian population (2^nd highest globally after Japan) but also because many either live with their families or are visited frequently by them.

Of course there is also the fact that, like the UK and the US, the Italian government has decreased spending on health care and has reduced hospital beds in the past decade. Little surprise, therefore, that the hospitals quickly became overwhelmed with the exponential growth of cases. Protective clothing, respirators and ICU beds ran out and led to the tragic situations of desperate medical staff in the hardest hit areas having to decide which patients had the greatest chance of survival and which patients would be left to die.

Hopefully we are now seeing the curve start to flatten. The country has been under enforced orders to stay at home for four weeks now and most people have been compliant. In this land famed for its chaos and red tape, the question is why. Is it the enforcement? No. I don’t think so. It is the Italian nature. First of all, Italians like to fit in. They like to eat traditional dishes cooked well like everyone else, they like to wear the latest fashion like everyone else, and they like to go to the same crowded popular beaches as everyone else. But they also come from a Catholic tradition that values human life and not just human life of those who are young and beautiful and fit, but all human life including those who are wrinkled and old and frail. So the rising number of deaths, even if the elderly were disproportionately affected, stunned everyone. Non-compliance was seen not only as indifference to a national emergency but also an affront to the lives being lost and the work of those trying to save them.

Germany

Meanwhile, our neighbour to the north, Germany has followed a different tack with regards to combatting the coronavirus. Having lived there for nine years as a child, attending German schools and becoming friends with many German children and their families, their approach to the crisis does not surprise me. Like the South Koreans, they are following the handbook of “What to do in the case of a pandemic” because they are methodical and pragmatic. The first step is Containment. This is done through wide-spread testing in order to identify individuals with the virus promptly to prevent large-scale outbreaks, like the ones in Lombardy and Veneto. Most countries have unfortunately skipped out on this phase and have moved straight to Mitigation, which in our pandemic involves trying to flatten the curve through social distancing measures.

Like the US, the social distancing measures in Germany have been introduced not by the national government but by its federation of states which also oversee many smaller health care systems. However, the efforts have been well-coordinated by the various levels of authorities working together systematically making the response more effective. Furthermore, in my experience, the Germans overall are self-disciplined and compliant, traits that are instilled and reinforced through a rigid and quite tough educational system, public disapproval of aberrant behaviour, and a tendency towards practical rationalism. Historically, this cultural characteristic – discipline and compliance based on a seemingly rational vision and logical demands – has at times had disastrous consequences, but in the case of this pandemic, it has been beneficial in Germany’s ability to deal with the crisis.

Although Germans sometimes come across as having a brusque exterior, once you get to know them on a personal basis, differences of opinion (even political or religious) do not easily threaten the relationship and they don’t mind changing their opinion either. Chancellor Merkl’s first response to the Italian crisis was not friendly. In fact, they wanted to wait to see whether they might need their respirators, masks, and protective gear rather than coming to the aid of their southern neighbour. Now that Germany’s curve is flattening, patients from Italy, Spain and France are being flown to German hospitals which are not only well-supplied but also have one of the highest number of beds per capita in the world thanks to a socialised health care system and an appropriate level of taxes to pay for it.

The UK and the USA

My closest family live in the UK and the US which have responded in similar ways to the pandemic with some notable differences. In fact, my posts started in great part to offer information and advice to family and friends in those countries, especially as it became clear that neither government was studying the outbreaks in China, South Korea and Italy to inform its decisions about how to prepare for the eventual arrival of this virus. The speeches by the leaders were either flippant denial of the severity of the virus or bombastic displays of presumed action that wasn’t happening. Precious time was lost, therefore, in preparation and early containment.

In puzzling over why these countries were so cavalier about such a serious situation, I’ve tried to look beyond the caricatures of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump to the nature and social norms of the English (as distinct from British) and of the Americans. I am by no means an expert; my observations come from living for long periods of time in each country and marvelling at the distinctions and commonalities which I will touch on rather than go into depth.

In the UK, the initial responses both in the media and the government were dismissive and snide, often implying that the Italians and even all the Europeans to whom Britain has recently waved good-bye didn’t deserve any serious attention no matter what kind of flu-like virus was troubling them. Furthermore, it seemed Social Darwinism was at play here as it was mostly the weak and the aged who were succumbing. The underlying and even upfront messages could be summed up as “many loved ones will be lost but the fittest will survive, chin up, keep calm and carry on”.

Time and again the prime minister spoke reassuringly of the scientific theory of ‘herd immunity’ in which it would take time for the population to build up natural immunity to the coronavirus and that the government was taking action to safeguard the most vulnerable… but instead they did nothing, for weeks. From our lockdown in Italy, we watched incredulously as the British cabinet turned a blind eye on what was happening abroad, to the real-time scientific data and very clear characteristics of COVID-19. How could such an intelligent country put the lives of hundreds of thousands at risk by choosing to ignore the reality of this pandemic?

Here are some possible explanations. Although Britain has worked on levelling the class system, it still exists in the form of a more privileged class that includes education in elite schools often finishing up at Cambridge or Oxford. Nowhere is it clearer than in recent reactions to Johnson’s recent hospitalisation by members of parliament in which they berate or educate the public that this virus can affect even the rich, the famous and the privileged and therefore everyone needs to stay home. Layer on top of class a colonial mentality that regards places like Italy and China as inferior, unhygienic, and scientifically untrustworthy, you have a conservative government that prefers in this situation to rely wholly on its own superior judgment.

Having taught for a number of years in the British school system, I was impressed that independent and original thought is considered an important mark of intelligence. This leads to healthy debate and a diversity of opinion in the public sphere. However, there is also a downside to this which is a propensity towards one-upmanship by being cleverer than your opponent. When this is your entire focus, such as it often is in the parliamentary debating style, then you will naturally try to come up with an original idea to deal with the new crisis of the moment. In addition, the tradition of analytical rationality propelled the government to consider theories based on the analysis of hypothetical pandemic models rather than on the specific qualities and practicalities of this coronavirus, COVID-19.

It took a while for the debate to kick off after Johnson floated his idea of ‘herd immunity’ (aka “keep calm and carry on”) because, I think, people were surprised and to some extent impressed by this novel idea. Once again, England would have a new and original take on the thing. Unfortunately, precious time was lost in this dallying; stay-at-home measures were only encouraged at first rather than enforced. The UK took a whole week longer than Italy to come to its senses and even then there was little actual enforcement. But this may have much to do with a more recent tendency to follow the social and cultural norms of its American cousin.

In both the UK and in the US, consumerism, the free market and modern libertarian ideas of personal autonomy and civil liberties have dulled the appetite for decisive action which might hurt the economy, and therefore impact the level of comfort that the populace is used to and a politician’s popularity. With a lack of decisive leadership, both countries have experienced panic buying, rumours of secret plots and hoaxes, and people taking opposing attitudes and measures, all three of which we have seen very little of here in Italy.

Although panic buying has moved more into the realm of US states bidding against each other for key resources like masks and ventilators, the rumours, false facts and lack of social distancing in too many areas still plague American efforts to combat the virus. Much of this comes from a deeply polarised country. The Democrat vs Republican friction resembles the long-standing conflict between Capulets and Montagues in Romeo and Juliet.

The roots of this, I believe, go back to the fact that modern America is, at its core, a country of immigrants. Many Americans today can trace themselves back to immigrant ancestors who left their homelands to seek freedom from economic strangulation or religious or political persecution. Having spent my early years in Europe, I was struck as a teenager how divisive political beliefs were in the US, to the point that in my extended family any discussion of politics was forbidden lest it cause irreparable damage to familial relationships. This distinctly American Achilles Heel makes sense if you consider that immigrants had to leave behind something that had always formed a key part of their identity: their home and their land, their homeland. Some clung to their customs, many to their beliefs. Beliefs, political and religious, form the core of an American’s personal identity to this day and it is why the people line up and do battle along party lines.

The tragedy, however, is when national leaders try either to ignore the crisis to save the economy or to politicise it for personal aggrandisement. Sadly this means that, in the end, countless more lives will have been lost in this pandemic than needed to be. What these leaders are finding out too late is that this virus knows no political parties, no class, no religion. It does not distinguish between rich and poor, white or black or brown, between those who pray to one god or another or don’t at all. Risk levels and access to care are human factors and often disproportionately affect poorer sectors of the population who are not safeguarded in their economic or social vulnerability. For example, families in the south of Italy and the US have already run out of money and are starving.

This pandemic is also exposing the lack of a global community that is capable of cooperating in a global crisis. All the systems for political collaboration have been based more on economic hankering than on a desire to take care of the planet and all the life that it supports. This has led to very individual approaches in which cross-border assistance has been the exception rather than the norm.

Certainly, this virus that survives and multiplies by spreading from one human being to another through air and through touch is laying bare endemic problems in each country. The strengths and weaknesses are being exposed – of health care systems, of structures and strategies that support of the most vulnerable, of the workings within and between levels of government, of the fabric of social and civic organisations. The reality we have taken for granted is shifting like a landslide and the best chance we have to build more resilient nations once this is over is to observe and learn from each other’s responses to this crisis.

This is not the time to judge and point fingers; it’s time to try to understand which social and cultural characteristics can contribute to more equitable, just, and nurturing local and regional communities and, ultimately, a more sustainable and peaceful world order. Earth will endure far into the future with or without humans but we can choose whether or not to work together now to build our roles as caretakers and care-givers.