An infrared thermometer, a sanitizer dispenser and a sign with meaningless orders stand at the entrance of Cisternino’s post office, completely ignored by people who just walk around them, probably without even noticing them by this point.

One wonders for how long these useless, Chinese-made contraptions will keep plaguing our public spaces, and how much money has been wasted on them or how many billions of tons of garbage they will leave behind, in landfills or in our oceans as microplastics and other pollutants, inching their way back to us through the food chain.

What we know for sure is that we will never forget nor forgive how some people – in the name of their fear of death, their desire to give some purpose to their bleak academic careers or to cling to their positions of power – have laid waste to years of our lives, and filled our world with paranoia, mutual distrust, plastic and cops checking people’s documents and making sure they don’t hold hands.

One day we will make you pay for all this, and not out of a more than justified thirst for revenge, but simply to prevent nightmares like this one from taking place ever again, as we venture into an uncertain time of pandemics and environmental collapse caused by the very same people, institutions and business conglomerates that have profited so much from this “crisis”, and will undoubtedly try to profit from futures ones.