When a city closes

Today, it’s been three weeks. I mean, it started earlier, of course, but it was three weeks ago that I became aware of it—aware beyond a distant notion of a virus epidemic going on in the world, somewhere far away. An epidemic that potentially could pose a threat to me. In my brain, I had put the notion of this epidemic somewhere between the “swine flu pandemic ten years ago that I had to be vaccinated for,” and “the theoretical risk of the earth being hit by a massive meteor pushing us out of orbit.” A theoretical threat—not a real one.

It was a Wednesday when I realized that this is really happening. It’s happening in my life and it’s going to affect me. I realized that I had no idea how it was going to affect me, or in what way, or how to get ready for it––just that it was going to happen.

I should have realized earlier, of course. Two days before that Wednesday, a friend from Japan sent me a Facebook message. She was worried about the COVID-19 development in my home country, Sweden. I replied that there was no real reason for concern, that we were containing it, that it wasn’t spreading within our country, that we were in control. That’s how naïve I was.

Two days later, we had the first fatality in Sweden. The same day, our government decided to ban gatherings of 500 people or more. Back then (all those years ago that the past three weeks have felt like), banning large gatherings in a democracy seemed like a huge step. There was an outcry from theatres and sporting venues. A lot of them considered ways to cut down their audiences to 499, because then they would be “legal.” Apparently, no one cared about “safe.”

The ban made me realize that this is not theory. This is not some story about something far away that just means I’ll eventually need to get another vaccine. The next day, I was on campus when we got the email that all extracurricular activities were cancelled. The day after that, all in-person classes were cancelled. Soon after, the libraries were modifying their routines and opening hours. I didn’t go in to my library job the following week.

Every day when I woke up, the world had changed. Every morning, I knew it would be a different reality—and it wouldn’t be a better one. I just didn’t know how much worse: how many more fatalities, what new constraints, what new cancellations? I didn’t want to get up in the morning anymore because I didn’t want to discover what that day’s new world would be like. I wanted to hibernate, to sleep through it all and not wake up until it was all over.

Can you bring to mind those images comparing “then” and “now”, showing commuters or people waiting in line, in which the “now” photos always show everyone staring down at their smartphones? We used to think: “wow, how much the world has changed in just a few years.” It was last weekend that everyone in the street started taking a couple of extra steps to keep their distance––cut that corner just a bit earlier, step out on the grass next to the sidewalk, or turn around to take the next aisle. It took about a week, not years, for that change to happen in our behaviour.

It’s what we do, I guess. Adapt. It’s what humans do. From the moment we’re born as completely helpless babies, we learn, we change, we adjust to our circumstances. That’s at the core of the success story of our species. We’re creatures of habit, and for the most part, we prefer things to stay the same. Nevertheless, we adapt and we survive. That’s what we’ve been doing since day one, and that’s what we’ll be doing in this situation as well.

It has all happened so fast, and for a lot of us, our lives won’t be the same after this. Getting up in the morning isn’t quite as bad anymore, because gradually, this has become the new normal. I’m still tired, so tired, but I do get up and I did even manage to write this piece. We don’t know exactly what our lives will be like once this is over, but one day it will be over. We will adapt, and one day we will be past this.