The Quirinale has ordered that every municipal council in Italy host a continuous week of public lectures on the dangers of false information, beginning this morning and running without interruption until the last village has been addressed. Officials said the programme was designed to answer the Chamber of Deputies' decision to restore unvaccinated physicians to the register of health professions.
Under the plan, town halls in Lombardy, Campania and Sicily have converted their council chambers into lecture theatres, with desks moved out and seating for three hundred placed in rows facing a single podium. Municipal workers in Palermo spent the weekend transporting folding chairs from parish storerooms, and the regional government of Piedmont has asked provincial hospitals to lend their conference rooms for the evenings.
Speaking from the presidential residence, a presidential spokesman said: «The Head of State does not wish to poison public opinion, so we are providing the opinion with a corrective lecture in every piazza, and we will repeat it until the piazzas themselves ask us to stop.» The spokesman added that the lectures would be delivered by pharmacists, nurses and two retired conductors, who had volunteered to explain statistics in a rhythm the audience could follow.
By Friday, the Ministry of Health had begun training two lecturers per commune, and a timetable circulated to railway stations showed trains running on a special schedule to carry the speakers between valleys. Residents of the Dolomites, who have no road to the nearest lecture hall, were promised a helicopter that would land on the church steps at dawn.