I am currently in Vienna, where in the neighbouring "Bezirk" a whole street was blocked off by the police when suspicion arose that someone in a school with around 500 children was infected by coronavirus. The test was negative. But the fear and paranoia in Vienna is rising. A few days earlier, a train from Italy to Austria was stopped at the border for fear of infection. Now the supermarkets are already noticing higher demand for products such as canned food and pasta.
One memorable reaction to the current great fear of coronavirus could as well be a sketch from the famous American sitcom Seinfeld. This was a video recording shared in recent days by an elderly Italian man on social media.
He was filmed at the exit of an empty Italian supermarket emotionally saying "The pasta shelves are empty! What's happening?" His response not only deserves a medal for dark humour, but invites us to seriously rethink our current historical moment: "There wasn't this much panic when World War II started!"
