When people have appeared, they’ve given one another a wide berth. So un-Italian. Normally, people charge into each other and greet with affection, shaking hands, kissing and embracing. Italy is a touchy-feely society. We tend to trust our senses and intuition more than grand ideas (those are Germany’s trademark). For us, life is food, wine, music, arts, design, landscape; the smell of the countryside; the warmth of one’s family, and the embrace of friends. Those involve our mouths, our noses, our ears, our eyes, our hands.

Fear of Covid-19 forces us to repudiate those senses. It’s painful.

Crema is less than 15 miles away from the original lockdown areas of Codogno and Castiglione d’Adda, and our hospital has been swamped by Covid-19 patients. I know several people who work there — doctors, nurses, staff. They’re exhausted, but don’t give up. Lombardy’s public health service is the best in Italy, and Italy’s is widely considered the best in Europe. Still, it’s hard. As of Wednesday, there were 91 Covid-19 cases in Crema, and 263 in the wider area around it known as Cremasco. On Tuesday, three young people started a fund-raising campaign to support our hospital; in one day they collected 80,000 euros (close to $90,000). “But what do you do with the money if protective equipment for doctors and nurses is not available?” an acquaintance who works at the hospital texted to me.

You might assume that our inboxes would be bursting with emails, now that people are at home with time on their hands. Not so. Most emails announce the cancellation of events and the interruption of services. Even the deluge of WhatsApp messages, which flooded smartphones with news and jokes at the beginning of the epidemic, has dried up. Facebook posts, by contrast, haven’t. People put up little manifestoes to tell the outside world what’s on their minds, like messages in a digital bottle. Irene Soave, a colleague at Corriere della Sera and a fellow author, wrote: “The least panic-stricken are the people like me, who tend to panic. My so-called ‘calm friends’ call me ten times a day to ask: ‘Are you worried?’ But their voices sound an octave too high.”

After lunch — at home with my wife, Ortensia: Large groups are to be avoided — we go for a walk with our dog, Mirta. We’re allowed to do that. Detailed instructions from the government include a list of FAQs, and walks in the countryside are permitted “as long as it is not in a group, and keeping a distance of one meter from each other.” Other common questions? “Can I go to work?” (Answer: yes, but you have to prove that’s where you’re going.) “Can I go and see my friends in another town?” (Answer: no.) “Can I go away on vacation?” (Answer: forget about it.)

So off we walk, in the lukewarm sun, among flat fields and shallow ditches, with the snow-covered mountains around Bergamo in the background. The sky is lacquered blue. Mirta — a black Labrador — is blissfully oblivious of the epidemic, enthusiastic about the smell of the coming Italian spring. Along the tracks, normally used by local farmers, we meet a few joggers. Most wave hello. No one stops.