A Chinese Red Cross plane filled with 30 tons of medical equipment and nine medical staff with experience battling the disease arrived in Italy today.
The medical team includes an expert from the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and two respiratory disease specialists from Sichuan University's West China Hospital.
The planeload of medical supplies, including masks and respirators, is much needed in the country that's the second-worst hit by the virus after China. Since Feb. 21 Italy has had over 1,000 deaths and 15,000 confirmed cases of the virus.
To stop the spread of the virus, restaurants and shops have been closed throughout Italy. The government is fining people between €60 and €80 (around $70 to $90) for leaving their homes without the required permission.
The Chinese hope their coronavirus experts and supplies can help stop the spread of the disease that's believed to have originated in the country's Hubei providence late last year.
"In this moment of great stress, of great difficulty, we are relieved to have this arrival of supplies. It is true that it will help only temporarily, but it is still important," Francesco Rocca, head of the Italian Red Cross, said according to Reuters.
"We have a desperate need for these masks right now. We need respirators that the Red Cross will donate to the government. This is for sure a really important donation for our country," Rocca said.
Over the course of just three weeks, the healthcare system has been overloaded in northern Italy. Hospitals have been turned into triage wards where nurses and doctors have to make the unthinkable decision between who lives and who dies.
One doctor said the situation in Italy is an "epidemiological disaster" that has "overwhelmed" healthcare professionals.
An exhausted nurse .A HERO! She's working since 15 days with 4 hrs stop for a nap. Cremona Hospital. Some time to recover energy and return to the trenches.
Best of Italy pic.twitter.com/9ATU6BSW50
— LuigiJ.B.O'MalleyHub (@LuigiJBOMalleyH) March 9, 2020
The Chinese are able to lend a hand to other nations because it claims to have made significant progress in stopping the virus's progression throughout the country. On Tuesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that victory was in sight.
The Chinese aid to Italy began after a phone call between Italian and Chinese foreign ministers on Tuesday.
"Although currently China itself still has great demand for medical materials, we will overcome the difficulties and offer material aid, including face masks, to Italy, and increase exports of materials and equipment to meet Italy's urgent need," Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi said during the call.
"If the Italian side requires it, China would also like to send medical teams to assist in combating the virus," he added.
China has also reached out to Spain to help in its efforts to fight the coronavirus. Spain has seen over 4,200 cases of the virus with about half of them happening in Madrid. The country has implemented a lockdown similar to Italy in which all unessential businesses have been shut down.
China's aid to Italy and Spain is a great example of one country sharing its resources to help another. This virus started in China and moved its way across the globe. So the only way the coronavirus will truly be stopped is by countries coming together to help each other.
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.