The pandemic and containment measures are affecting everyone, without exception. Yet factors such as housing, financial means, gender, access to technology and employment status are changing the way people are experiencing this health crisis.
There is a steady stream of people at the American Fortitude Ranch sites. With chalets fitted with underground bunkers, unlimited supplies, woodland for walking and a moat in which to bury infected bodies, these facilities offer a refuge for "surviving any type of disaster and long-term loss of law and order." When entrepreneur Drew Miller launched the business, he was probably envisaging a scenario much like Covid-19. And indeed the number of Americans leaving their homes to take refuge in these rural havens has doubled compared to 2019.
This flight is not so different from the craze for nuclear bunkers being recorded across much of the world. In California and Australia, companies in the sector have seen a boom in requests over recent weeks, while an Italian firm specialising in shelters has revealed that its phone keeps ringing. In England, meanwhile, a wealthy local entrepreneur has opened his estate to London families: 600 hectares of land with vegetable gardens, barns, mills and animals.
While the Fortitude Ranch sites require membership of the community and the payment of an annual fee, nuclear bunkers cost several tens of thousands of euros. The English entrepreneur has not revealed the price of quarantining in his mansion, but judging by the photographs it falls firmly in the luxury bracket. The one element that all these experiences share is, in short, the financial means of the guests.
Over the past month, the hashtag #stateacasa has gone viral in Italy. The appeal has come from family members, friends and acquaintances, as well as from politicians. But not only. From their penthouses or their villas with gardens that exceed in hectares the public parks (closed to the public) of urban centres, celebrities and footballers too have been multiplying their posts. Bored on the sofa beds squeezed into their studio flats or one-bedroom apartments, or in flats without a balcony, "ordinary people" have had no choice but to listen to those appeals, even ending up empathising with those living in privilege who have now found themselves in quarantine, just like them. What separates them in terms of their situation is a few hundred square metres of space in which to move around.
What separates them in terms of their situation is a few hundred square metres of space in which to move around.
And yet, there is always someone worse off than someone else. In Italy, some homeless people were fined precisely because they had no home in which to quarantine. This is just the tip of the iceberg of other problems that have worsened their already precarious situation: soup kitchens closed, shelters with restricted access, a drastic reduction in volunteers, showers and laundry services suspended. The cramped spaces of a studio flat, the absence of gardens and terraces, have suddenly become nothing compared to stories like these — stories of people who cannot even count on a roof over their heads and are criminalised for it besides.
The cramped spaces of a studio flat, the absence of gardens and terraces, have suddenly become nothing compared to stories like these — stories of people who cannot even count on a roof over their heads.
A similar argument applies to prisoners, who have seen the already claustrophobic spaces available to them shrink still further, with the suspension of external work, visits inside and many other activities. In Italy's permanent repatriation centres, meanwhile, the 400 migrants who inhabit them continue to live in detention conditions without health protocols being observed. All of this in the customary institutional silence, further proof of how, in the common perception, there exist human beings of two distinct categories.
There is a steeply vertical social structure, where the differences between the 1 per cent that occupies the penthouse of the pyramid, those on the middle floors and the marginalised people living under the stairs never miss an opportunity to make themselves visible.
There is a steeply vertical social structure, where the differences between the so-called 1 per cent that occupies the penthouse of the pyramid, those on the middle floors and the marginalised people living under the stairs never miss an opportunity to make themselves visible. And yet it is not only between these levels that the differing experience of the pandemic is emerging. Even among the spaces inhabited by ordinary people there are no shared fates. On the contrary, there is no shortage of stories of vulnerability and precariousness, further proof of how inequalities characterise every corner of the social fabric.
Since the quarantine period began, calls to Italian support networks from women who are victims of domestic violence have halved. A paradox, in a situation where increased contact risks exposing victims to more abuse. And indeed that is probably what is happening — there is simply a lack of privacy to be able to come forward. This is not the only way in which gender-related issues are coming to the surface during the current emergency. States such as Ohio and Texas have downgraded abortion to a non-essential medical procedure, at a time when Covid-19 must take priority over everything. Women in those states thus find themselves stripped of a fundamental right, suspended in the same way as the possibility of having a moscow mule at the bar across the road.
Women in Ohio and Texas thus find themselves stripped of a fundamental right, suspended in the same way as the possibility of having a moscow mule at the bar across the road.
Further gender-related issues are becoming intertwined with the concept of smart working. Italian women dedicate an average of seven hours of unpaid work per day to domestic activities. With schools closed, external working life suspended and no possibility of obtaining outside support with household tasks, many women are experiencing a further compression of their already limited personal space. As well as accumulating, care work and professional work end up overlapping during this phase, further proof that inequalities do not exist only between families but also within them.
This is also emerging in the world of work. There is the factory worker forced to go into work in the absence of any real health protections; there is the self-employed worker who has been unable to work for more than a month and, at best, hopes for the one-off payments allocated by the government; there is the employee on furlough who has to give up part of an already meagre wage. What is certain is that this phase is exposing more than ever the stigma of precarious employment, with those at the very bottom of the labour market paying the highest price for the ongoing health crisis. The forecast of 25 million unemployed created by the pandemic at a global level is a snapshot of a socio-economic system built on very fragile foundations, with a social lift that does appear to have started moving again — but on a one-way journey downwards.
It is a snapshot of a socio-economic system built on very fragile foundations, with a social lift that does appear to have started moving again — but on a one-way journey downwards.
These stories of precarious employment then have an impact on the lives of the children of those who live them. In 2019 only 76.1 per cent of Italian families had access to the internet, a problem partly due to the uneven rollout of the network across the country. But often what makes the difference is the fragile economic situation of households. There is no money to access technology, and when there is, devices have to be shared. Accounts are emerging of parents and children competing for the household's one computer, with adults needing it for remote working and children for online learning, or where the smartphones available are not up to date enough.
While remote learning is being celebrated, it is exposing more than ever the violence of the digital divide and, hand in hand with it, the fact that education remains a privilege rather than a universal right. These are stories of precarious employment, discrimination and barriers that reveal how a home is a necessary but not sufficient condition for making #stayathome sustainable. There are a myriad of other factors that today, more than ever, are making their weight felt in people's lives.
These are stories of precarious employment, discrimination and barriers that reveal how a home is a necessary but not sufficient condition for making #stayathome sustainable.
If there is one thing that keeps being said during these weeks of Covid-19 containment, it is that we are all in the same boat. None of the more than three billion people caught up in the emergency is allowed to go to a restaurant, a museum or the seaside. The quarantine applies to everyone, everyone must change their daily habits, and no one is granted an exemption in this regard.
If it is true that all of humanity is in the same boat, it is undeniable that it is a boat with many compartments, each characterised by a different degree of suffering.
And yet, even in a dramatic situation such as the current one, the inequalities that characterise our society are emerging more than ever. If it is true that all of humanity is in the same boat, it is undeniable that it is a boat with many compartments, each characterised by a different degree of suffering. From celebrities without symptoms who have access to swab tests while crowds of citizens with a temperature of 39 are confined to bed without being able to know what illness they are fighting, to the most marginalised, forgotten on the streets without even a home in which to comply with the law, by way of the in-between world that lives with daily gender inequalities, technological barriers, and precarious working and educational conditions — the pandemic has served as a reminder of just how socially fragile and heterogeneous the planet is.
The pandemic has served as a reminder of just how socially fragile and heterogeneous the planet is.
Even when everyone shares the same fate, it makes itself felt with greater or lesser force depending on one's circumstances. And in the future it can only get worse. When a vaccine for Covid-19 eventually arrives, for example, the risk will always be the same: that it becomes a luxury product, accessible only to those who can afford it economically — as has been the case with other medicines in the past.
"Pre-existing social vulnerabilities only worsen after a disaster, and this is a perfect example," said Nicole A. Errett, co-director of a resilience research centre at the University of Washington, in reference to the current tragedy. They say that when all this is over a different, better reality will take shape. The feeling is that while the world will change, what will not change is its nature. That of a system founded on the multiplication of social inequalities.
Even when everyone shares the same fate, it makes itself felt with greater or lesser force depending on one's circumstances.