11 - Adapting to the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Distance Learning Experience of the University of Milan-Bicocca

Summary

Introduction

In the last two years our society was radically transformed in the face of the disastrous COVID-19 pandemic that suddenly struck the entire world. Every day, in our daily lives, we realize how our habits, practices and expectations are different, compared to how they were before the pandemic suddenly hit the whole world. A characteristic of disaster is in fact that it is perceived and represented as a chronological wound (Ligi, 2009) that cannot heal and that cuts stories of life in two, for individuals and for entire communities. The impact of disasters certainly changes according to socio-cultural and environmental contexts: just think that a disaster that happened 40 years ago is different from one happening today (Zizzari, 2019). The dynamics of these events are not always the same, and this fact poses additional problems when they must be faced, and an example is the COVID-19 pandemic.

The various studies that have reconstructed the dynamics of previous flu pandemics from a long-term perspective have shown that, since the 18th century, they have occurred on average three times every hundred years, but there is no periodicity of their occurrence and therefore no predictive basis. Their historicization is vital for risk management, preventing/mitigating future consequences. Risk scenarios, tied to viral behaviour, don't always mirror the past; they're novel with each occurrence. We are therefore moving in an insidious and complex situation, which tends to change as sensitivities and contexts change (Silei, 2020).

In public opinion the COVID-19 pandemic appeared exceptional and seemed to come out of the blue. This happens because, Assman (2008) argues, there is no communicative memory: for example, the Spanish flu of 1918– 20, which snuffed out more than 39 million lives worldwide and generated more than half a billion cases of infection (Bedyński, 2020), only re-emerged in public memory after the COVID-19 outbreak, thus reinforcing its tragic meaning rather than suggesting damage control strategies. In the numerous examples of such disasters, which have been repeated in human history with impressive regularity, a usual repertoire of ‘response’ seems to take place, unable to develop a process of progressive accumulation of experience and knowledge (Zaccaria and Zizzari, 2020).