American in Italy

Penny Lazo joins us to talk about her experience living in Italy during the pandemic.

Your c1 it's been more than a month since italy locked the country down.

Continueds of thousands of people are living under quarantine and officials say it maybe too soon to reopen.

We spoke with an american living in italy.

What it's like and her warning to us at home.

>> joining us now is penny lasso.

She lives 20 minutes outside of venice.

Welcome.

>> thank you jodie for having me.

>> mainly what i wanted to talk to you about today is what you see americans doing over here that concerns you over what you have been through.

>> the main concern is the lack of following the mandate to stay at home.

I have see pictures and videos of people at the park and at the beach, travelling around as if there's no threat from the virus.

The fact that some think it's a flu is just a mistake to think in that way seeing what we have been through here.

We started with the attitude.

We have the attitude well, it's like the flu.

It's only for the elderly or the already sick.

But all that has proven to be absolutely false and the only thing that has caused our numbers to downturn in the past three days is people actually following the lock down mandate.

Stay at home.

As much as possible and only exit when needed.

For groceries and the pharmacy.

That's all you can exit for here.

>> what do americans need to know about how this disease has progressed in italy and why it's taken this long to see the death numbers come down.

>> well, we started in february actually late february.

They were two epicenters and had 15 cases each.

One of the places actually did a mandatory lock down of the entire town it was only 3000 people.

Not the population there in all of italy.

All that town has been free of the virus for three weeks because the people stayed in town.

No one in, no one out.

The day they did, those mandates for the other epicenter.

People started leaving and going to the beach.

People went to ski and acted as it was an extended spring break.

That's when the cases exploded.

People going from different places.

You saw it grow exponentially within two weeks.

We were having 4000, 5000 deaths a day.

One day we had a record of 900 dates in one day.

>> the u.s. seems to be at that level.

What are your thoughts about us not having a country wide lock down?

I know the problems with it.

It's such a huge population to try and get under control and try and force everyone, not really force but strongly suggest this.

The fact that each state was doing different things.

Each state is still doing different things.

There's no one solid mandate for each state or the whole country.

People are doing as they please as they feel.

That's been the problem.

We had a national lock down.

Every territory.

It was consistent.

I am seeing a lot of inconsistency.

First the bars were open.

Then they were closed and then they were open again.

It's just a lot of inconsistency.

You have new cases because the matter of these is the virus is the fact it's unpredictable.

Carriers walk around with no symptoms and pass it along.

>> penny, thank you so much for joining us.

We want to wish you all the best for