L'Italo-Americano

LOS ANGELES ITALIAN COMMUNITY THURSDAY, JUNE 11, 2020 www.italoamericano.org 30 L'Italo-Americano W hat could h a v e been a conven- tion at the I t a l i a n I s t i t u t e o f Culture in Westwood just a few months ago, had to become an online meeting. Due to the recent harsh situation the world has been facing against a deadly virus, journalist Valentina Martelli asked some Italian professionals who fought coronavirus first hand to partake in a virtual panel and discuss the recent turn of events in Southern California. Mar- telli moderated the meeting with UCLA doctor Ema- nula Bonfoco, therapist A l b e r t o C o l l a z z o n i, UCLA professor Federico Raia and Immunologist A l e s s a n d r o S e t t e. A beautiful Italian represen- tation, in Martelli's words. To open the meeting S i l v i a C h i a v e, Italian General Consul: "In Southern California there is a great desire to start over again, to go back to our old life. But we are all aware we have to do it in a socially responsible way, so as not to fall back into the crisis of the last few months." When asked about the role of the Italian consulate in helping out its citizens dur- ing this difficult time, she added that "The communi- ty gathered around the consulate, which helped us do our job better." But not only citizens' lives have profoundly changed at the beginning of 2020, also doctors' lives have been completely turned upside down by recent events. Therapist A l b e r t o C o l l a z z o n i who's an expert in dealing with anx- iety at the Renewed Freedom Center in Los Angeles, at first had to stop seeing his patients through in-person meetings. "Many of them stopped their ther- apy path, while others, especially the elderly, sur- prisingly decided to shift to online encounters. I also noticed that some patients decided to change their therapy goals, they wanted to change their daily habits." According to Collazzoni, who's been practicing in Los Angeles since 2017, frustration became an issue, especially for those who could not be as productive at home with children, as they were before in their offices. "On the other hand some patients experienced an improvement in symptoms after the lockdown. For example, those who suffer from social-phobia, people who feared being judged, are now forcedly avoiding situations that had to face before. But that's a momentary relief in my opinion, there could be a rebound effect when returning to society." And the m o s t c o m - mon symptom that have been experienced by patients? C a b i n f e v e r tops all of them. "Cabin fever is a feeling of extreme irritability and restlessness that is due from living in isolation or a confined indoor area for a prolonged time. Beside this, most of my patients had anxiety disorders, uncertainty for theirs and their loved ones' health, for their job. Last but not least we are seeing an increase in requests for police intervention for domestic violence." And with regards with children, they appeared to have had the best response. "Kids are resilient and adapt to new situations." For F e d e r i c a R a i a , assistant professor and researcher in the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, interactions were distorted because every- thing was transferred to platforms, such as telemed- icine, new for almost every- one: "This new communi- cation medium brings very interesting research data; the fundamental thing is the first visit through the screen, which is small, and seems limiting. The patient is required to participate actively, which increases the patient's self-manage- ment ability; furthermore, there is renewed attention to public health, especially in the USA where there is a very fragmented system. "Science is often por- trayed by the media as a world of established and objective facts where puz- zles are solved." She adds "In this case, the situation gave the public the oppor- tunity to understand that this is not the case. Uncertainty is part of the way science and medicine are done. Everyone eagerly follows development and experimentation. Public figures like the governor of California G a v i n N e w s o m e and D r . A n t h o n y F a u c i have highlighted these uncer- tainties and also have con- tinued working and com- municating with the public, that has become involved. This can be seen in the acts of solidarity of people who spent the lockdown in the frontline of their family and community's life. This emerges from concrete life experiences, which help fight situations like this in a positive way. The audi- ence has matured. We have an interlocutor who urges us to move forward. A lot of things about Sar- CoV19 are still in fact unk- nown and had doctors working more than 12 hours a day. One of them is Emaunela Bonfoco, who is a practicing Family Medicine doctor in Santa Ana, who arrived in the States after graduating from Pavia Medical School, training as a surgeon for two years at the Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm and starting a PhD program in Neurotoxicology at the Karolisnka Institute. She is sure that on a gen- eral level healthy patient responds better, that peo- ple at risk are the geriatric ones and the asthmatics, but the scenario that was presented to doctors was never, and still is, so cer- tain. "From my experience I have seen families with only two people seriously affected and the others maybe even negative. Statistically we do not know how to explain it, but it is certain that in families it often did not necessarily seriously affect everyone. The immune response is stronger if you have a good immune system, but we still don't know how much it matters. There are differ- ent levels of aggression of this virus, healthy people who are intubated, so we do not know how to explain these things yet. Children have the lowest incidence, they are 10% of the infect- ed. There are inflammatory forms such as Kawasaki that have been found in later sequences that are thought to be related." On the other hand, scientists around the world are racing to develop a vac- cine to protect against COVID-19 infection, and epidemiologists are trying to predict how the corona- virus pandemic will unfold until such a vaccine is avai- lable. "We specifically chose to study people who had a normal disease course and didn't require hospitaliza- tion to provide a solid ben- chmark for what a normal immune response looks like, since the virus can do some very unusual things in some people," says Alessandro Sette, pro- fessor at the Center for Infectious Disease and Vaccine Research in La Jolla. "If we had seen only marginal immune respon- ses, we would have been concerned," he says "but what we see is a very robust T cell response against the spike protein, which is the target of most ongoing COVID-19 efforts, as well as other viral proteins. These findings are really good news for vaccine development." According to Sette, who has devoted more than 35 years of study towards understanding the immune response, measuring immune activity, and deve- loping disease intervention strategies against cancer, autoimmunity, allergy, and infectious diseases, "The precautions we need to take at the moment remain the same: wearing a mask, keeping a social distance, avoiding gathering. On a global level, as the risk of a new virus without pre- existing immunity develop- ing again in the future is known, societies need to set protocols and proce- dures as a prevention form." SILVIA NITTOLI Italian professionals stepping up in the battle against coronavirus

• Cover