Grew up in the 70s and 80s in Italy where we had far right and far left terrorism galore. They were called "the lead years" for a reason. They'd bomb trains and train stations, public squares, anything. They'd get into shooting matches in the streets with the opposite factions. They kidnapped and killed or maimed business owners. Heck they kidnapped and killed the frigging prime minister! Oh and while all this was going on, we had the Palestinian terrorists hijacking every other plane and bombing airports. It was a frigging zoo. We even had a couple of failed armed attempts at overthrowing the government. At some point you just made peace with the idea that every time you took a train or a plane it could all go pear shaped.
Then in the 90s we had the mafia wars where different mafia families were "genociding" each other, killing every single member of the other family up to the 5th degree of relation. Women, children, elderly folks, wives, in-laws, anyone. Then the government said "enough of this chit" and put the military in the streets to stop the carnage. So the mafia went first on a killing spree of any prosecutor, law enforcement, reporter, and judge involved in mafia prosecution, including blowing up an entire section of the freeway to kill one judge. Then they went on a random terrorist spree with random bombings. I remember the judges, prosecutors, chief of police etc in their armored cars with army escort in toe zooming through the city sirens blaring, not stopping at anything: stop signs, traffic lights, pedestrian crossings, you name it. Fully armed soldiers at every corner.
So when people ask me if I'm scared of covid, I feel like laughing.
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