«I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.» (Albert Einstein) Net of what the well-known aphorism hinted at, at the dawn of the second twenty years the Third World War will not see the deployment of nuclear weapons, but the opposite scenario will occur: the battle will be fought on the sofa at home and the only weapon challenged will prove to be a simple act of responsibility. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic puts the health of several states in crisis. Italy is the first country hit in the Western world, as well as the most sensitive target. It all starts in the oldest nation in the world, when a series of circumstances and conjunctures lead a microscopic packet of RNA to travel into the cells of a vendor in the Wuhan market. While the West stigmatizes the danger of the virus, China responds with a just quarantine and the construction of two hospitals in a few days. The underestimation of the phenomenon that took place in the Old Continent will catapult the rest of the world into an unprecedented historical lockdown. Forced isolation will be useful for rethinking our habits and customs, a new model of society and rediscovering the civic sense and collective good, but also to unleash plots and to underline the greed of the God money to the motto of "It's just a 'influence". A terrible fake news that, just like a virus, has infected all the systems of society: from institutions to the media to public opinion. The writing, which mixes news, fiction and non-fiction, touches on various themes such as the possible social and economic implications of the pandemic, the tragedy of Northern Italy and the disaster of what happens when the economy becomes an end and not a means, defeat metaphorical of institutionalized faith, the re-evaluation of science in a society governed by humanism, the conspiratorial plunder and, finally, will ask the reader a question about a possible moral of the fable.