To counteract loneliness, it is not necessary to intervene on lonely people, but on others

The WHO did not have time to announce the end of the Covid pandemic (hearing the news I would have expected carousels of cars in the square in Codogno not even if it were the Napoli championship party, with bonfires of masks, water balloons of sneezes, sparkling stars made with tampons, at least three doses of prosecco and grilled pangolins and bats brought in from the Wuhan market on purpose; but nothing, we sang on the balconies for the beginning of the pandemic and not for its end, then someone says we’re weird… ), we didn’t have time to get over a health emergency, I was saying, before another one was announced, and much more subtle: Vivek Murthy, the top US health authority, says there is an “epidemic of loneliness” – psychic and social – which would have already affected half of the American population, but which is also spreading in the rest of the world. It is not the first time this alarm has been raised: already in 2018, the English government of Theresa May had set up a ministry of loneliness to counter the phenomenon; and even President Mattarella, a few years ago, in some of his public speeches dedicated passages full of concern to lonely people. But now, after a pandemic that established isolation as a health protection and synonymous with one’s own safety and that of others, the phenomenon has spread and taken root; to the point of speaking of a real epidemic. As a person who wants to be left in peace, who likes to book a table for one at a restaurant and who, if I meet a person I know on the street, tends to change direction so as not to greet them, I ask myself: what harm am I doing? Apparently, I’m hurting myself: loneliness – say the reports on which Murthy’s alarm is also based – can prove deadly “like smoking” – with the difference that it doesn’t stink clothes, it doesn’t stain teeth and leaves no butts lying around – and can increase the risk of death by 30 per cent.

In fact, loneliness would trigger insomnia, eating disorders, anxiety, depression, addictions, oh well, the usual things. Side effects of being alive. (Furthermore, I point out that insomnia, anxiety, addictions are the things we talk about when we see each other, in short, they are a social glue). I won’t stand here and argue – that is, to list all the contraindications from the company, such as infections, noise pollution, irritability caused by the opinions of others and murder; but I wonder if and how we intend to counteract the phenomenon of loneliness. Obligation to assemble? Invitation to wear social masks instead of Ffp2? Vaccination campaign that promotes social life? – the whey would already be there: it’s called gin and tonic.

I think that the real epidemic of our times is this increasingly widespread tendency to pathologize everything, now even loneliness. Or perhaps the problem is the poverty of our personal vocabulary, which leads us to use “solitude” instead of “isolation” as if they were synonyms – while they are two very different things, and the serious one is the second. But since my educational qualification does not allow me to object in a qualified manner, I will take this epidemic alarm seriously; and allow me to propose a solution. To counteract loneliness, it is not necessary to intervene on lonely people, but on others. Yes, the others: you have to make them more interesting, smarter, kinder, more sexually attractive – or even just better dressed and more perfumed. I assure you that if people were better, we would all want to be in each other’s company more.