Funny that they don't explicitly mention the analogy to corona but I guess that's still their point. I am wondering if this is an intended jab at Italy. They co

Funny that they don't explicitly mention the analogy to corona but I guess that's still their point. I am wondering if this is an intended jab at Italy. They could have prevented the spread if they had locked down the region where it was occurring first. This would have been a perfect moment for the EU to shine and to actually resolve an issue. If they had removed all olive trees within hundred kilometers of the original area, the loss of trees would have been huge, but the impact would have stayed small. Like corona, the original areas didn't profit from the loss of their trees so they had no incentive to cut them down. With EU funding, the incentive could have been provided. Similarly, it would have been relatively easy to contain the box tree moth [1] if the first areas had cut down all box trees. They haven't, and now it is a global problem. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydalima_perspectalis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydalima_perspectalis