“Turn the page or you’ll feed the conspiracy theories” –

“I believe that continuing to talk about Covid, making it a front-page topic in newspapers every time there is an increase in the number of cases, while the thousands of people who die every day in Italy from infections from resistant bacteria never get any limelight, is a glaring communication error, which continues to fuel conspiracy theories and the anti-vax world.” This is what Matteo Bassetti, director of Infectious Diseases at the San Martino Polyclinic Hospital in Genoa, highlights to Adnkronos Salute, taking stock of the current Covid situation and the messages that are reaching citizens. To give an idea, the expert also publishes on X the screenshots of an email received in which the sender talks about Covid, hypothesizing international conspiracies and laboratory manipulations.

Bassetti then broadens the reflection and points out: «Many cases of colds or mild forms of Covid, almost all at home. Almost no serious cases in the hospital and no one in intensive care. Does it still make sense to talk about Covid with the emphasis of the last few days? We continue to make the same communication errors that have already been made. Unfortunately, in Italy we are unable to turn the page». And for the infectious disease specialist this means that it «fuels conspiracy theories. The message I received this morning is proof of this. It was enough to say very simply that elderly people, over 80 years of age, and the very frail, must get vaccinated once a year. Thanks to this, the virus is no longer a problem for the general population: between vaccines and various Covid infections that have stimulated our immune system, today it looks more like a cold virus than the pneumonia virus of 2020».

“After that – Bassetti urges – if we have to look at what is hurting Italians and the entire world today, let’s talk about the fight against antibiotic-resistant bacteria: we already have 5 million people dying every year in the world” because of this. “Do we want to talk about problems that can affect anyone, those who go to hospital, those who stay at home with cystitis, those who have a skin infection? This is not talked about and we continue to make mistakes”, underlines Bassetti referring to the inappropriate prescriptions of antibiotics that continue to be recorded. “It is the real present problem. We are talking about something that already exists. Then, for goodness sake, let’s also look at avian flu, Dengue, which are problems that could exist” in the future. “But today” on the communication front “there is a continuous turning around Covid, which has certainly been a huge problem, but which we must be able to put behind us”.