Kick the unvaccinated out!

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<https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/when-being-unvaccinated-means-being
-locked-out-of-public-life/ar-AASRLW2?ocid=msedgntp>

<https://tinyurl.com/52fjh38y>

When being unvaccinated means being locked out of public life
Chico Harlan, Stefano Pitrelli - 9h ago.

OSIGO, Italy — After many rounds of rules targeting the unvaccinated,
the chamber musician’s new life is unrecognizable from the old. Claudio
Ronco once performed all over Europe, but now he can’t even board a
plane. He can’t check into a hotel, eat at restaurant or get a coffee at
a bar. Most important, he can’t use the water taxis needed to get around
Venice, his home for 30 years — a loss of mobility that recently
prompted him to gather up two of his prized cellos, lock up his Venetian
apartment and retreat with his wife to a home owned by his in-laws one
hour away in the hills.

“Isolation,” Ronco called it, on the fourth day in a row that he hadn’t
left the house.

At this complicated stage of the pandemic, the lives of unvaccinated
people are in major flux, at the mercy of decisions made everywhere from
courts to workplaces. But their lives are changing most dramatically in
a handful of countries in Western Europe, including Italy, where
governments are systematically reducing their liberties, while beginning
to return the rest of society to a state of normalcy. And while regular
testing, until recently, was permitted as an alternative to vaccination,
even that option has now been largely removed as countries harden their
mandates. For people like Ronco, the choice is to get inoculated or face
exclusion.

Ronco, 66, knows some people who have relented, including a fellow
musician with three kids and a mortgage. He knows others who are
scrambling for hard-to-get medical exemptions. But Ronco — an Orthodox
Jew and a specialist in 18th-century music who tends to distrust the
trends of the masses — figures this is an instance when he can try to
withstand the mounting pressure. His savings are thinning, but not gone.
His children are grown. His wife, Emanuela Vozza, a fellow cellist, also
unvaccinated, feels as he does. So day after day, his resistance has
continued: A musician who once played at Milan’s famed La Scala has been
instead working alongside Vozza, editing recordings they’ve made in
their countryside living room, unable for the foreseeable future to
perform for a crowd.

“Even in a public square, it would be impossible,” he said, because he
and the audience would still need the Green Pass, the European digital
vaccination card.

He gestured at the forest beyond his in-laws’ home. He has found himself
in recent days dreaming of putting on a concert in a clearing in the
woods.

“I could put out a call on Facebook and hope nobody comes to break it
up,” Ronco said.

Some of the unvaccinated people Ronco knows keep a low profile. Ronco
understands why: Their decisions have been criticized vehemently by
politicians, by virologists, even by Pope Francis. Days ago, Italian
Prime Minister Mario Draghi said the unvaccinated are responsible for
“most of the problems we have today,” disproportionately occupying
intensive care beds.

Pope Francis calls anti-vaccine sentiment ‘baseless’ in his annual
state-of-the-world speech “We’re flat-earthers,” Ronco said, describing
the view of people like himself that has taken hold. “With total
disrespect for the system and humanity itself.”

But Ronco says leaders are overlooking how their moves are cleaving
society into two groups, one accepted and one not. As Italy, over
months, built up its Green Pass rules — first for indoor dining, then
for workplaces, then for public transit and much more — Ronco turned his
Facebook page into a mix of Torah passages, cello movements and fiery
claims about government overreach. He re-shared the testimony of various
vaccine skeptics and in the process lost roughly 1,500 of his 5,000
followers, only to find new friend requests pouring in — presumably from
people who were more like-minded.

Most of that churn didn’t matter to him. But one consequence struck a
painful chord. He’d been close friends with an expert Italian
stringmaker — “we were like brothers,” Ronco said. When Ronco visited
the string factory several months ago, his friend had enforced masking
and distancing and temperature checks. But the visit, Ronco felt, had
been warm.

Vaccine mandates are spreading. Italy shows what to expect.
Then, a few days ago, the stringmaker unfriended Ronco on social media.

To Ronco, it was one more form of isolation setting in.

“This is somebody I’ve known for 30 years,” he said quietly. “There is
no bridge from one side to the other.”

Video: Italians weigh in on vaccine mandate for the elderly (Reuters).