ROME (AP) – From his newspaper at the bottom of two hilly streets in Rome, Armando Alviti publishes newspapers, magazines and good cheer almost every day for dawn until dusk.
“Ciao, Armando,” his customers greet him as part of their daily routine. “Ciao, amore (love)” he called back. Alviti laughed when he remembered how, when he was still a young boy, newspaper deliverers would drop off the day’s stacks at the parents’ newspaper, sit in the empty baskets of their motorcycles and make a turn.
Since he turned 18, Alviti has been operating the kiosk seven days a week with a wool tweed cap to protect it from the winter humidity of the Italian capital and a table top fan to cool it off during its stormy summers. A fierce battle ensued when the coronavirus reached Italy and its two adult sons demanded that Alviti, 71, who is diabetic, stay home while taking turns juggling their own work to open the newspaper. keep.
“They were afraid I would die. I know they love me, ‘said Alviti.
During the pandemic, health authorities around the world stressed the need to protect people at greatest risk for complications from COVID-19, a group that rapidly discloses information about infections and deaths, including older adults. With 23% of its age 65 or older, Italy has the second oldest population in the world, after Japan, with 28%.
The average age of COVID-19 deaths in Italy has turned around 80, many of them people with previous medical conditions such as diabetes or heart disease. Some politicians advocate limiting the time that elders spend outside their homes to avoid closures of the general population that cost the economy dearly.
Among them was the governor of Italy’s northwestern coastal region of Liguria, where 28.5 percent of the population is 65 years or older. Government Giovanni Toti, 52, has argued for such an age-specific strategy when a second outbreak of infections hit Italy in the autumn.
Older people are “mostly in their retirement, not indispensable for the productive effort” of the Italian economy, Toti said.
For the news seller in Rome, it was fighting. Alviti said that Toti’s remarks disgusted me. They made me very angry. ”
‘Older people are the life of this country. That is the memory of this country, ‘he said. Self-employed older adults like him especially cannot be kept under a jug, he said.
The heavy toll of the pandemic for older people, especially those in nursing homes, may have reinforced the age-enhancing or prejudice towards the population segment commonly referred to as ‘elderly’.
The label “old” means “40, 50 years of life are united in one category,” said Nancy Morrow-Howell, a professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis. Louis, who specializes in gerontology, said. She noted that people in their 60s nowadays often look after parents in their 90s.
“Ageism is so accepted … it is not questioned,” Morrow-Howell said in a telephone interview. One form it takes is’ compassionate age, ‘said Morrow-Howell, the idea that’ we should protect older adults. We need to treat them like children. ”
Alviti’s family won the first round and kept him away from work until May. His sons begged him to stay home again when the coronavirus reappeared in the fall.
He made a compromise. One of his sons opens the kiosk at 6am and Alviti takes it in two hours later, limiting his exposure to the public during the morning rush hour.
Fausto Alviti said he was afraid of his father, “but I also realize that he would be psychologically worse off if he stayed at home. He must be with people. ”
In the outdoor food market in the Trullo area of Rome, producer Domenico Zoccoli (80) also mocks the belief that people who have a retirement age should not be protected.
Before dawn on a recent rainy day, Zoccoli transformed its stall into a cheerful range of colors: boxes of red and green cabbage, radicchio, purple carrots, leafy beets and cauliflower in shades of white, violet and orange, all harvested. about 30 miles from his farm.
“Old people need to do what they feel. If they can not walk, they do not walk. If I feel like running, I run, ”said Zoccoli. After packing up his stall at 1:30 p.m., he said he would work several more hours in his field and skip lunch.
Marco Trabucchi, a psychiatrist based in the northern Italian city of Brescia who specializes in the behavior of older adults, believes the pandemic has led people to reconsider their attitudes for the better.
‘Little attention has been paid to the individuality of the old. ‘They were like an obscure category, all equal, with the same problems and suffering,’ ‘Trabucchi said.
In Italy, with chronically scarce care centers, legions of older adults become effective as essential workers by caring for their grandchildren a few decades after retirement.
According to Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics bureau, 35% of Italians over the age of 65 look after grandchildren time and time again.
Felice Santini, 79, and his wife, Rita Cintio, 76, are such a couple. They take care of the two youngest of their four grandchildren several times a week.
“If we did not care for them, their parents could not work,” Santini said. “We help them (a son and daughter-in-law) to stay in the productive workforce.”
Santini still works himself, half a day as a mechanic at a car repair shop. When he gets home, his hands keep him busy in the kitchen: filling homemade cannelloni with sausage, making meat sauce and baking orange-flavored Bundt cakes for his grandchildren.
Cintio finds it painful not to be able to hug and kiss her grandchildren. But she embraced 9-year-old Gaia Santini when the girl ran to her with joy after her grandmother roamed the narrow streets of Rome to pick her up at school. Cintio takes Gaia home for a breather before accompanying her to an ice skating lesson next time.
The couple’s son, Cristiano Santini, is concerned about the second rise of COVID-19 and said he is trying to limit the frequency with which his parents watch the children, but too little.
“They are afraid (of infection), but they are afraid of not living any longer” because of their age and missing previous time with their grandchildren, he said.