Hello from Italy.
Disclaimer: I'm no medic, I'm just about to share some infos/ideas I gathered on different media/ talking with friends involved in the medical field etc., still, there could be a few inaccurate statements..so bear with me.
The problem with covid-19 is that (to put it in a simplistic way) it's pretty contagious and there's no vaccine / 100% proven treatment.
A few asymptomatic carriers can be the cause of quite a high number of contagions.
The Average Italian Guy still doesn't get that all the restrictions put in place by the government are not meant to deprive people of their freedom, but rather to "save" the elderly (here the median age is pretty high) and immunodepressed patients from a virus that would be way more dangerous for them and also to prevent the overload of our hospitals and national health care system.
There's already the risk of a shortage of beds in intensive care units all over the country.
Just plain people's stupidity could be a factor for the high number of cases here.
Also, tests are "free", and the number of tested people is way higher than in other countries, so the higher total of infected people could also be simply connected to a higher number of tests carried out by the health care system.
I hope things will get better in the coming few weeks.
Death rate as of now seems to be quite higher than the one for common cold and flu, but since there's no sure way to know how many people are actually infected worldwide (unless they take swabs from everyone, everywhere ha..) it's sill a bit unsure if those numbers can be considered realistic or not.
Schools closed, no cinemas, no concerts, no bars, no museums, no sport events, no masses etc. etc.
There have been a few riots in prisons, with 12 dead inmates in total (that's a tricky situation to deal with on many different levels, I won't go into details..).
People are advised to stay at home unless they have pressing/serious matters to deal with (work/health related, need to buy food and so on).
Nothing "life altering", imho, and I'm 100% willing to "endure" the restrictions the government is putting in place, also because as I said I don't feel at all confident in the Average Italian Guy's sense of responsibility.
Today one of the main isp had huge technical problems for some reasons...if THE INTERNET goes down, then I'll get way more worried for the reactions people may have in this situation, ha.
For those interested, this is a good site to keep track of the situation worldwide:
https://www.rivm.nl/en/novel-coronav...ovid-19/spread