Thursday 10 December 2020 Xylella-infected trees in mesh quarantine. Much of the grove has already been uprooted. These plants will soon be next Caimi and Piccinni To make sense of the infodemic that exploded in the wake of Covid-19, you don’t need to go all the way back to the cover-ups and misconceptions surrounding the disastrous 1918 Spanish flu – just look to the blight decimating Italy’s olive trees. It was 2013 when the first branches began to wither on olive trees in Apulia, the “heel” of the Italian peninsula. Soon, whole plants would turn brown, dry out and die. Today, olive trees keep dying in the millions, and the reason is something we’re all familiar with: an epidemic. The culprit is