I first understood how serious this was because I was lucky enough to have a student from Beijing who had been watching Wuhan unfold first hand. In the second week of classes she showed me videos of her friends and family and colleagues as they started dealing with confinement. I think I said something naive like “Isn’t this just like SARS?” and she gave me a sort of look, half shocked and half pitying, and she said, “No. This is very different. Things will get very serious, very quickly.”
She was, of course, already wearing a mask when she attended class.
That was the week of January 23rd. After that things unfolded both slowly and rapidly. From my student I found out how real the quarantine was in China: shortly after Wuhan, several cities followed, and the week after, nearly the entire country. Other friends of mine in the U.S. couldn’t quite grasp the enormity of it, and I don’t blame them — it seemed abstract when you read about it in the paper, but all too real when my student described the day-to-day that her friends and family were experiencing.
The last time I left the house for a social occasion was March 12th, to a bar with a friend. I already had the feeling I shouldn’t go. I felt a twinge of guilt. I’d already canceled some other in-person plans, but I went anyway. The bar was nearly empty. I was hyper conscious of everything I touched. My friend and I didn’t hug, and we sat a few feet apart without touching. It felt reckless all the same.
In retrospect, it feels breathtakingly irresponsible to have done that.
Since then, it feels odd to me how rapidly we’ve normalized certain aspects of this time of isolation. When I watch films now I’m amazed at how freely people shake hands and hug. Amazed and, if I’m honest, slightly horrified. And then I wonder if I’ll ever feel comfortable shaking hands with someone I don’t know.
I doubt it.