Items

• 03/27/2020

  Bergamo Italy is Hit Hardest By COVID-19

  Personally, I believe this article needs to be kept in the archival record due to the depth of pain, sadness, and loss of life highlighted in the article. One of my professors, who lived in Bergamo for a few years, keeps me posted with news articles and families’ stories constantly. This New York Times article shows how a copious amount of deaths in the city is published in the local newspapers. There are numerous pages dedicated to the obituaries of loved ones who died from COVID-19 related illnesses. When this article was written in late March, almost 2,000 deaths were reported in the city. This number seems low compared to the number of deaths we have currently in the United States. However, the city has a population of roughly 120,000 people. Compared to Massachusetts today, we have a population of 6.9 million people and a total of 4,000 deaths. Bergamo’s death rate, at the time this article was published, was 1.66%. Massachusetts’s death rate today is .05%. The city of Bergamo is small, but the intensity of COVID-19’s impact on the community is immense. Cities like Bergamo, Italy need to have their stories archived to keep the stories of loved ones, who died, alive.