Zangrillo and the selfie outdoors: bandana yes, mask no

Alberto Zangrillo takes a selfie outdoors without a mask and the shot immediately ends up in trend on social media. The director of the intensive care of the San Raffaele in Milan has posted on Twitter a photo of him, against a background of trees, with the bandana on his head and sunglasses. No coverage, however, for the nose and mouth. “Outdoor mode for sane people”, Zangrillo wrote in English accompanying the photo. Translated: outdoor mode for sensible people. Many of his followers have interpreted the photo as a message about the uselessness of the mask in the open air and this, as often happens, has sparked the debate between those who argue that the anti Covid device is still necessary even outside and those who instead he thinks it is now a superfluous measure. Moreover, Zangrillo’s thinking is now well known on this point. And it was the San Raffaele head physician himself who made it clear on TV: “When I am in the mountains on a path in the woods and I see a person in the distance with a mask, I think he is developing a psychiatric pathology”, said Zangrillo recently. “Living with the virus means behaving with intelligence and having respect and responsibility towards others. Young people must behave with intelligence, but as we speak there are thousands of terrified, stunned elderly people, they have not left the house for 15 months. If I see a person from alone on the Lungotevere at 6 in the morning, I feel like saying: ‘poor thing’. We put on a mask when we enter the pharmacy, the bank, at work. Otherwise, no. It is the difference – he concluded – between being a population of Boeotians and a people of responsible people. We probably get more attention if we think of controlling a flock of Boeotians, I expect a lot more from my fellow citizens “.