8 sincere sayings about the life the coronavirus has changed

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

People from different countries - about how they experience fear, experience illness and hope for a new world.

Today, the world of many has shrunk to the limits of their own home, but at the same time, people are more connected to each other than ever. We experience fear and boredom, anger and gratitude, dissatisfaction and anxiety. Uncertainty about the future makes you look for metaphors and images that will help you comprehend what is happening.

But something different happens to everyone. Everyone is adjusting in their own way to the pandemic and its consequences. Acquaintance with someone else's experience, even frightening, eases loneliness and fear a little and reminds us that what we ourselves experience is simultaneously unique and shared by everyone.

For some, starving to death is a much more pressing problem than the virus

For the first time since the nineties, when there were fewer people and fewer cars, I can't hear car noise from my bedroom window. Silence replaced him. The curfew is imposed from five in the morning until eight in the evening. But during the day, the streets of Karachi, the largest city in Pakistan, are far from empty.

The old part of the city is eerily reminiscent of the tightened military measures of the past. The silent calmness hides the feeling that society is unsettled, and the usual rules no longer apply. Small groups of pedestrians watch like spectators following a slowly unfolding performance. People stop at intersections and in the shade of trees under the watchful eye of the military and police. […]

Not everyone can afford to isolate themselves. For some, starvation is a far more pressing problem than the virus. A young guy sweeping the driveway of our apartment building comes in every other day. Buses no longer run, and he rides his bike from home, one of the many slums that lie within prosperous neighborhoods. […]

In February, prior to the virus, a toxic gas leak at the port killed 14 people and sent many more to hospital. The state structures investigating the case did not find an explanation for this, and over time they stopped mentioning it. In the eyes of many, the coronavirus is just another threat to life in a city that moves from one crisis to another.

My mother was discharged from the hospital, but I won't be able to see her for many weeks

Alessio Mamo Photo reporter from Sicily. After his wife Martha confirmed the coronavirus, she is in quarantine with her.

Doctors asked for a second test, but again a negative result. Maybe I'm immune? The days in the apartment seemed black and white, like my photographs. Sometimes we tried to smile, pretending that I had no symptoms because I am a virus. The smiles seem to have brought good news. My mother was discharged from the hospital, but I will not be able to see her for many weeks.

Martha began to breathe normally again, and so did I. I wish I could photograph my country in the midst of this disaster: battles waged by doctors on the front lines, crowded hospitals, Italy, on its knees fighting an invisible enemy. Instead, the enemy knocked on my door one day in March.

“Passers-by who meet us on the way do not know that we are guests from the future”

Jessica Lustig Works for the New York Times Magazine in New York. Her husband suffered an illness a week before the threat was taken seriously.

We stand in the doorway of the clinic and watch two elderly women chatting outside. They are completely in the dark. Wave at them to get away? Screaming for them to go home, wash their hands, not go out? Instead, we just awkwardly stand still until they are removed. Only then do we leave, starting a long - three blocks - road home.

I point to early magnolia, blooming forsythia. Tee says he's cold. The grown hair on his neck, under his beard, is white. Passers-by we meet on the way do not know that we are guests from the future. Vision, warning, walking punishment of the Lord. Soon they will be in our place.

“At first I lost the touch of other people, then the air, now the taste of bananas”

Leslie Jamison New York City writer. Leads the Non-Fiction Program at Columbia University.

Virus. What a powerful, secret word. How is it in my body today? Shivering under the blankets. Hot sand in the eyes. I put on three hoodies in the middle of the day. My daughter is trying to cover me with another blanket with her little hands. Pain in the muscles, from which for some reason it is difficult to lie still. The loss of taste has become a kind of sensory quarantine. First I lost the touch of other people, then the air, now the taste of bananas. […]

When I wake up in the middle of the night with my heart pounding, the sheets in my bed are wet with sweat that must be full of the virus. This virus is now my new partner, the third inhabitant of our apartment, wetly wrapping my body at night. When I get up to get water, I have to sit on the floor halfway to the sink so as not to pass out.

For those who have lost track of time: today is the unclear, the eleventh of the day

Heidi Pitlor Writer from Massachusetts, USA.

During isolation, the actions that usually set the boundaries of our days - driving to work, getting the kids to school, hanging out with friends - disappear. Time becomes flat, continuous. Without any structure of the day, it's easy to feel disconnected from reality. A friend recently wrote on Facebook: "For those who have lost track of time: today is the unclear, the eleventh mapplaya."

Now, when the future is so uncertain, it is especially important to give shape to time. We do not know how long the virus will rage: several weeks, months, or, God forbid, it will return in waves for several years. We don't know when we will feel safe again. Many are held captive by fear. We will stay there if we do not create at least the illusion of movement in our lives.

I am afraid of everything that I cannot see

Lauren Groff Writer from Florida, USA.

For some people, fantasy is played out only from what they can see. My imagination works the other way around. I am afraid of everything that I cannot see.

Fenced off from the world at home, I am afraid of suffering that I do not see in front of me: the fact that people run out of money and food, how they choke on the fluid in their own lungs, the death of medical workers who fall ill in the line of duty. […] I am afraid to leave my home and spread the disease. I am afraid of how this time of fear is affecting my children, their imaginations and their souls.

This is a portal, a gateway from one world to the next

Arundati Roy Writer from India. Book author "".

Who now, without a slight shudder, can say about something that it “became viral”? Who can look at ordinary objects - a doorknob, a cardboard box, a bag of vegetables - without realizing how invisible to the eye, not living and not dead creatures with suckers, waiting to cling to our lungs? Who would kiss a stranger without fear, jump on a bus, or send a child to school? Who can think of ordinary pleasures without assessing their risks? Who among us is not a self-styled epidemiologist, virologist, statistician or predictor? What scientist and physician does not secretly pray for a miracle? What priest does not submit to science?

And who, despite the spread of the virus, is not delighted with birdsong in cities, peacocks dancing in the streets and silence in the sky? […]

Previously, pandemics forced people to break with the past and re-imagine their world. The current pandemic is no different. It is a portal, a gateway from one world to the next. We have a choice: to walk through it, dragging with us the remains of our prejudice and hatred, our greed, our dead rivers and smoky skies. Or we can walk through it lightly, ready to imagine another world for ourselves. And ready to fight for him.

Now I take care of my neighbors in the same way that I express love for my mother: I stay away from them

Nora Kaplan-Bricker Journalist, critic from Boston, USA.

On Saturday I talked to my mother, then to my brother, and then I went to a virtual bachelorette party. I tried to pretend that every interlocutor sits opposite me, that the office with unkempt bookshelves in my image opens into the rooms that I see behind them. I ended the call with the feeling that everyone I know is now sitting in the same room and having a common frightened conversation.

It's a nice illusion: it's great to feel like we're all together, even if my real world has narrowed down to just one person, my husband, sitting with his laptop in the next room. It's as enjoyable as reading articles that reimagine social distancing as cohesion. […] If you squint, you can almost see in this quarantine an attempt to straighten (along with the sickness curve) the differences that we draw between connections with other people. Now I show concern for my neighbors in the same way that I show love for my mother: I stay away from them.

At times this month, I have experienced love for strangers with an unaccustomed intensity. On March 14, Saturday evening after the end of my usual life, I went out with the dog and found that the street was quiet: there were no queues at restaurants, no children on bicycles, no couples walking with glasses of ice cream. To create such a sudden and complete emptiness, it took the joint will of thousands of people. I felt incredible gratitude and incredible loss.

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