Military trucks rolling through Bergamo, Italy, are among the most enduring “pandemic” images of early 2020. Their message was unmistakable:
A new spreading coronavirus has “hit” the area so hard the Army is needed to help manage the dead.
Recent testimony to an Italian COVID-19 Commission seemed to contradict that message.
Press Kit Quotidian On Line quoted the head of an Italian police union as saying in November:
“The coffins of Bergamo: we asked ourselves a question, why a truck coffin when could two, three go? What did that image want to bring to the population?” asks Antonio Porto of Osa Polizia, answering a question from Senator Borghi in the Covid Commission on November 19 [2024].
The Press Kit headline interpreted Antonio Porto as confirming the trucks of Bergamo were each carrying one coffin. Numerous social media users did too.[1]
We were not as quick to think Mr. Porto was verifying the number of coffins carried. To us, it sounded like he was reacting to something he’d heard, rather than testifying to what he had witnessed or had first-hand knowledge of.
We asked an Italian contact, Tommaso Zanini, to translate Porto directly from the recording:[2]
“They [the coffins] made us raise a question: ‘Why one coffin per truck when they could have put two or three?’ ‘What, with that image, was wanted to be delivered to the population?’
These are questions we asked ourselves. That’s why the Association of Operators Security Associates [OSA Italia] was born in 2020 (which is here next to me [the representative]), and then subsequently OSA POLICE was born, precisely because we immediately realized that something was not going well.”
For further clarity, we reached out to Antonio Porto, who agreed to speak with us via Zoom in a recorded interview.[3] What we learned during and after the conversation supports our belief that the spring 2020 Bergamo death curve is fraudulent.
What Antonio Porto Heard
Antonio Porto became suspicious of the establishment “pandemic” narrative early on and began to view what was being said by authorities and reported via media through that lens. He recalled feeling like the TV was casting a “spell” or “enchantment” on people, and as though he was inside some kind of “experiment.”
“It was all about COVID, and there was nothing else besides COVID, and everyone was dying because of COVID and nothing else,” he said.
It should be noted that Porto actually lives near Naples and did not go to the Lombardy region in spring of 2020. Hence, as we suspected, he was not confirming (from direct observation) the number of coffins in the Bergamo truck processional to the COVID Commission last November – nor was he speaking in any official capacity about the actual number. Rather, he was repeating a reaction to information relayed to him and others after the event.
In the first months of the pandemic declaration, Porto said, there were various internal police chat groups across Italy. Many were (in his words) “kind of dissident” and questioning what was really going on. Italian media had reported conflicting information about the number of trucks in Bergamo and decedents inside. For example, one major newspaper reported there were 70 trucks used to transfer bodies; another said there were 65 bodies total being carried by the trucks.[4]
These discrepancies were being discussed in a WhatApp group Porto belonged to when one member of the chat who claimed to be a lieutenant in The Carabinieri, technically a branch of the Italian Armed Forces, said he was in Codogno and Bergamo in March 2020. This was the source from whom Porto and others in the group heard the Bergamo trucks were each carrying only one coffin. So, Porto’s comments to the Italian COVID Commission were actually hearsay. He was not presenting what he had heard as evidence of the trucks’ cargo and has no way to confirm if what the Carabinieri officer told the chat group nearly five years ago was true.
An Intentional Order?
Although Antonio Porto has never served in the military, based on his law enforcement experience, he said it was impossible that authorities didn’t take into account the effect of the “evento mediatico” (translation: media spectacle).[5] He felt the trucks driving through a desolate town was a strategic choice, and that the formation of one truck following another slowly could not have been a mistake.
“A parade comes from an order,” Porto told us, “and the only ones who can know the truth about the number of trucks and number of bodies are in the military.”
He thought there might be a document archived somewhere within the military that could show what happened but wasn’t hopeful such records could be readily obtained. Some of his colleagues had submitted freedom of information requests for other records to different local administrations in Italy without any response.[6]
Regardless of how many coffins or bodies the trucks were or weren’t carrying, Antonio said the purpose of the parade was pure spectacle. “If they [the government] didn’t want to get to be seen, and they didn’t want to create fear in a population, they would just go one by one.”
In other words, assisting with a true mass casualty emergency would not involve a parade. If Army trucks were needed to manage a cataclysmic number of bodies, they could not and would not “wait” to proceed in a ceremonial fashion.
He recalled the ostensible reason for the need for military assistance being a shortage of coffins — specifically, coffins lined with metal inserts that prevent leakage. The shortage had apparently resulted in burial agencies refusing to transport decedents from hospitals because liquids could damage their vehicles. Without help from the burial agencies, military transport was needed…or so the story went.
Porto wasn’t sure about the model of truck used in the operation. Based on information in a TV program he’d seen, he estimated the bed size as 4 x 2.5 meters (capacity for 5-6 coffins). X user Robert Morton speculated the trucks were the IVECO M-170 model and could hold six civilian coffins. If there were 10-12 trucks in the Bergamo scenes, that’s 10 bodies minimum and 72 at most.
Does It Matter?
In many ways, it doesn’t matter who or what was inside the trucks of Bergamo. Their purpose as propaganda was served and the mission accomplished. The spectre of scary, somber military vehicles stoked fear and persuaded the populace (in Italy and elsewhere) to obey orders and “take the virus seriously.” Even if the vehicles were empty, it doesn’t change the effect. The damage was done.
But what do the trucks mean for the question of whether the official toll can be trusted? Many who reacted to “one coffin per truck” on social media were quick to grasp the “psy-op” side of the processional, without appreciating what relatively empty vehicles imply about the total deaths that allegedly occurred. A dozen trucks carrying 1-6 coffins is not nearly enough to substantiate the reported number of casualties.
An area that usually experiences 31 deaths a day suddenly seeing 28 days straight of deaths in the triple-digits – with a 1,000% increase from baseline to peak – needs considerable manpower to move the dead. Local or national authorities should be able to produce witnesses to and documentation of that movement, including final destinations and decedent disposition.
If deaths in a single month really were 600% above normal, not only would there be a coffin shortage, there would have been far more military assistance with handling bodies from hospitals, care homes, and personal residences. There should be all kinds of footage – including from citizens captured on smartphones – of trucks driving through the province for weeks and (as Antonio Porto suggested) moving in a manner consistent with handling an urgent and overwhelming situation. And yet there is no sign of any such thing.
Further complicating the body movement question, there were at least two sets of videos captured for the world to see on 18 March 2020, the day the Army was sent because (it was said) “the bodies quickly piled up” and the crematorium in Bergamo city (pop. ~120,000) “failed to keep pace with the surge, despite working around the clock.”[7]
Daytime film purported to show a military convoy “transporting bodies of coronavirus victims from Bergamo to the Serravalle Scrivia cemetery in the Piedmont region,” according to Reuters, and to elsewhere for cremation, according to a different source [screenshot below].
Nighttime footage of the trucks – later alleged to bear coffins – conflicts with reports which said the bodies were being brought to be cremated. Coffins like those featured in news stories at the time are the kind that would be buried. Bodies destined for cremation don’t require such containers – and could not be cremated at all while inside metal inserts.
Signs of Staging and Signals of Fraud?
If the trucks were part of staging a pandemic emergency – as refrigerated trucks appear to have been in New York weeks later – is it possible the coffin shortage was either false or not as severe as reported?
Similarly, could reports about funeral homes being somewhat overwhelmed and/or not wanting to carry dangerous bodies be essentially “true,” but not to the tune of 6,000 extra deaths?
Consider two news reports in late March [emphases added]:
- On 25 March 2020, Reuters said 1,176 people had died in Bergamo province by 23 March 2020, most of them elderly pensioners, and that the mayor of Bergamo city Giorgio Gori had estimated the real number could be four times higher with many people dying at home or in care homes, where they were not tested for coronavirus.
- On 27 March 2020, The New York Times said, “And in Italy the most deaths are in the Bergamo area. Officially 1,969 people have died there. The actual toll may be four times higher, so many that the local paper is given over to death notices.”
Neither source was explicit about cause of death or said how much above normal these figures were. Real-time death reporting is impossible, of course; there are always delays. Authorities noting that the actual number could be higher is therefore expected and reasonable. A toll four times as high, however, is unreasonable and not well-corroborated by eyewitness accounts then or since.
The NYT number of ~2,000 deaths in less than a month was more than 150% above normal.[8] Yet officials were saying the toll was closer to 8,000 – as though ten times the normal rate could have happened without thousands of Bergamo province residents speaking to media about what was happening and/or self-recording testimonies and videos of scenes far more consistent with a war-like mass casualty event.
However disturbing to contemplate, it seems possible the military coming in and taking away bodies for cremation could be part of a well-crafted cover story — one that helps hide the fact that nowhere near as much excess death occurred on the ground in March and April 2020 as spreadsheets claim.
Before speaking with us, Antonio Porto had not considered whether the Bergamo death spike could be exaggerated. Reacting to the idea, he said,
“You know, at that time we were all a bit distracted, and no one really considered something important: that it could have been all a setup. At that moment, we were only thinking about protecting ourselves from the virus, about not catching it, about staying cautious.”
He agreed the provincial death tolls should be substantiated at the local level:
“There should be access to records in the municipalities to understand how many deaths were actually registered. Some have tried to request these data, but they never received responses. A real investigation by the public prosecutor’s office is needed to clarify all of this.”
Nothing Porto shared, or anything we’ve learned since talking to him, changes the fact that, similar to New York City, things one would expect to see and hear are either absent or have little supporting testimony or documentation.
Digits on a screen show a Bergamo death disaster of monumental proportions. A dearth of concrete evidence continues to suggest otherwise.
Bergamo province is at the center of the Lombardy region of Northern Italy and the city of Bergamo at the center of the province – a striking coincidence with being the “epicenter” of an alleged coronavirus outbreak.
Notes
- e.g., Robin Monotti 1 December 2024 | Concerned Citizen 15 December 2024
- Original source: https://webtv.camera.it/evento/26677
- Tommaso Zanini assisted us in contacting Mr. Porto and was also our translator during the interview.
- A story published on multiple sites in March 2021 said, “The camouflaged vehicles took away up to 70 coffins a day from the church, where they were collected after the local mortuaries filled up. The coffins were transported to cemeteries in other northern cities such as Bologna and Ferrara.” (“In Bergamo, memory of coffin-filled trucks still haunts”)
- Per our translator, in context, Antonio Porto used evento mediatico to mean “a spectacle for an audience” – i.e., a media event/circus or something that is put on display to “feed” the public.
- Our translator explained that, unlike in the U.S. or UK (for example), there is no legal mandate in Italy for authorities to answer ordinary citizens’ FOIA requests. Therefore, journalists and researchers can’t rely on such mechanisms to obtain records that potentially could embarrass or expose officials.
- “A Deluge of Deaths in Northern Italy” (Reuters)
- 3 March 2019 – 27 March 2019 compared to the same days in 2020.
Article republished with permission from Wood House 76
All Wood House 76 articles related to the Bergamo/Lombardy COVID Event can be found on this page | Jonathan Engler’s Lombardy analyses from 2022 are posted on our PANDA Substack here and here. | X thread version of main points in above article Alt: ThreadReader App
