The Rant (Lo Sfogo)

There is a video that has gone viral (appropriate term) here. It is a young mayor of a smallish town in Sicily. He blows off steam about the casual manner the citizens of his town are making light of the mandate to stay at home. Unless you understand Italian you really can’t follow what he’s saying so with a lot of effort (and help from Laura) I transcribed at least a significant portion of it.

I am posting it because you can see feel his sincerity and frustration and above all it you can watch his expression and gestures. He get’s pretty worked up to the point that I gave up trying to transcribe it about 2/3 of the way through.

So here is the transcript as best I could do with a little paraphrasing here and there keeping the same meaning.

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Many you have made posters saying ” everything will be alright”. Lots of people write on Facebook and with text messages. But I would like to understand how everything will be alright if we continue every day to go out grocery shopping? Grocery shopping should be done once every 10 days. How will everything be alright if lots of people go out every day and buy cigarettes? Instead of taking care of yourself, ah, OK  you have a vice of smoking, I’m not going to go into that.  You buy a bunch of cigarettes and take them home. Don’t leave the house every day to buy cigarettes.

How will everything be alright if the people go the the filling stations? What good is this gasoline if you need to stay at home? How will everything be alright if lots of people ask to have their hair done at their house? But what good is that? How will everything be alright if lots of people ask to have their hair done at their house? What good is it? This hair done at the in this time, what good is it? Make me understand.

How will everything be alright if lots of people call me to go out for a little run because they are stressed out? Guys I’ve been running for 20 years. Where I run there are a maximum of 20 people running. Now everyone wants to run. But where are you going to run if the last time that you ran was when you were in elementary school. (obviously just an excuse to get out of the house). But where will you go to run?

Today on Sunday many people are in the countryside to roast meat. To barbecue? Are you kidding me? You are risking our life and that of all of our citizens! Having a party in the condominium! But the contagion is right there! Stay at home means stay with your own family, not with the neighbors. – At this point I gave up. It’s harder to understand when he really gets worked up.

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BTW a glimmer of hopeful news today. The rate of infection increase was only 10%. The previous 3 or 4 day it has been between 13 and 15% and before that it was between 20 and 30%. So 10% is hopeful. I hope it continues to go down. By the way in the US the rate of infection increases has been pretty consistently at an average of 30%.

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