Hi! Long time lurker here and first time poster
I am Italian, but I go to university in England. All my lectures have been moved online, so I'm staying in Italy (at least for semester one).
Anyways after this brief introduction ahah I wanted to say that it really breaks my heart to see how badly the situation is being handled in the UK.
In Italy things were tragic in March/April , we were having the worst covid numbers in Europe and now ironically we have really good ones
What helped us flattering the curve and recover from covid were definitely the strict measures they put us into.
You have no idea of how tough our lockdown has been. It started on the 9th of march (and I was still in England, I'm not going to tell you my whole story on how I managed to go back to Italy
) and it ended on the 18th of May!!
What we couldn't do:
-No household mixing, no bubbles or whatsoever. Even if someone was living alone, that person could not visit anyone else. My nan stayed home by herself on Easter Day for example
- We weren't even allowed to exercise outdoors. You could not leave the house except for food shopping and to go to the pharmacy. And well also key workers could
- Every time you left the house for those purposes you had to carry an auto-certification document where you have to declare who were you and where you were going and what was the purpose
-Masks were compulsory both outside and inside
-School / unis online
-And police stops were placed all over the cities. You literally have no idea of how much we were controlled and how many people got fined. The controlling system has been super effective. There were even helicopters flying to control the city from up above, I'm not kidding.
Not gonna lie, it was hard. It was the longest spring we've ever had but definitely it has helped us to get where we are now.
If you would like I can make a post on what the measures that we are following are now!