city reflected (and a bit of a rant ... sorry!)

Almost exactly a year ago, as evening approached (and I headed home from work on my trusty bike "Betsy"), the last of the soft October light was casting warm reflections of the city on the river and the first touches of autumn seemed to have brushed color accents on the city parks trees. Shortly after that, I was once again working remotely from home, as a new wave of Covid19 swept through Italy.

A year later, 80% of the eligible population in Italy is fully vaccinated and another 5% has received the first dose. We still wear masks in indoor venues, on public transportation and in crowded outdoor places, but we can move around, all shops are open, if we need healthcare for something other than Covid we can get it and kids are mostly back in school.

We could probably dispense even with masks and social distancing if our national quota of vaccine hesitant folks (or their parents, in the case of kids over 12) were not being mislead by the misinformation trash that is still rampant on social media. Because of this trash, and the handful of orchestrators that originate it, we are still losing people who could have been protected by the vaccine, people of varying ages, including up to 25 kids each week, end up having to be hospitalised for Covid, we still have to wear masks and we had to implement vaccine mandates (which would not have been necessary if people's minds had not been poisoned against making rational choices). In my opinion, these orchestrators should not just be banned from social media. They should be brought to justice and made to answer for the deaths and the suffering of the people who unfortunately believed their lies.