Covid, family victims: ‘You owe us the truth, never caught off guard again’
“The sacrifice of our loved ones is not in vain. Never again will a pandemic or an emergency catch us unprepared.” This is the appeal of Consuelo Locati, of the association “Serene and always united”, which represents the families of Covid victims, and today in an informal hearing at the Social Affairs Commission of the Chamber as part of the examination of bills establishing a parliamentary commission of inquiry to deal with the Covid-19 epidemiological emergency. “We want to know what happened, we’re not interested in politics. We’re asking you for a different truth,” he says. “You have a duty to restore hope to all of us, to believe in something, the truth.”
“We were abandoned, we felt like we were living in a surreal reality. The Bergamo area was the scene of the most devastating massacre since World War II. In about a month, more than 6,000 people died from an excess of mortality compared to the last 5 years,” points out Locati, who raises a number of questions: “Why was the first WHO warning not at least from January 5 2020 action taken? Because we were not told that the virus was already in our homes and , instead of being aware of the risk we were taking, they told us that it was little more than a banal flu?And in the Bergamo area, why have Didn’t they immediately intervene to isolate us? We asked to be isolated but nobody ever did. Why was the military sent to the Bergamo area on March 5, 2020 and then withdrawn three days later? It certainly cannot be a state secret, we cannot accept this explanation”.
Locati then mentions “the inadequate, unimplemented pandemic plan.” The truth, he insists, “is that we had to be ready and we weren’t. Whoever represents us officially should give us clear, honest and transparent answers – he warns – we believe we have this right because we believe these answers represent the respect that our institutions show us as family members and before that our loved ones who are no longer there. We have placed our trust in Parliament, but this trust has not yet been returned to us. The commission of inquiry would do it as proof that the institutions, too, want a relationship with their own citizens again. And the answers must be given in a reasonable time. We don’t take a day to remember our loved ones because we remember them every day and we promise you that you will get justice, not only in court but also through those truths that only Parliament can tell us The hope is that a bicameral commission of inquiry will be set up to bring attention to one of the darkest pages of our history, as the analysis of every error and misjudgment serves to ensure that the massacre, that we have experienced, never repeated.”