Italy seems to me the only western country to have taken decisive action. For once I am actually rather proud of my country. What are the other European countries waiting for?
I'm not proud at all: communication was horrible (what do you think you can accomplish by changing things every few days?), caused panic (it's the fault of those who cause confusion, not of the confused), and it was reluctant in getting a no-red tape team up (even "emergency" supplies of respirators needed to go through the stupid bureaucracy).
There is a lot that could've done better than the current approach.
I think that given the magnitude of the adopted measures it is understandable that they were decided in the course of a few days. Stopping a country of 60 million is no joke. I'm not sure about the panic, but it seems hard to avoid when you tell a whole coutry to not leave their homes. We were also in uncharted territory, in the west: other countries can watch and follow what Italy has done. And yet they seem too slow in taking action. The US hasn't even started testing people.
> I think that given the magnitude of the adopted measures it is understandable that they were decided in the course of a few days
There were a few errors done in my view:
1. First, no preparation at all was done at any level. Other countries are now prepping their ICUs to prepare for the incoming tsunami.
2. Horrible communication and execution. The PM can't be both the head of the government and the one enacting the emergency measures (as in putting them into practice short of giving orders), at least not in bureaucracy-land like my country, and this PM in particular is weak and not particularly capable (and made key communication errors like blaming the hospital where the first case was recorded).
3. Laws given without clarity of "appropriate" or "not appropriate" behavior, which required constant clarification from the government
4. The leak of the "executive order" (inappropriate wording, hard to translate it to the actual Italian way of doing it) draft before it was completed, which caused mass panic and exodus (and instead of blaming the "idiots", people should investigate why that happened).
5. Total lack of clarity of how long the lockdown measures will last (if they don't change yet again).
It's not like changing measures every day will change the curve immediately (first lockdown on Sunday, then another on Monday, then more restrictive measures within a few days).
Lastly, all of this flurry of activity from the PM, aside pressure from other involved parties (like local governments), is, according to rumors, done because the current PM is likely to be asked to step down sooner or later (the country was at a political paralysis before the outbreak, and his handling of the crisis made matters worse).
