![]() There are two kinds of post-lockdown people. And although that life doesn’t look like the present nightmare those still locked in coronavirus limbo are experiencing, it doesn’t look like the pre-COVID-19 past either. One of the strangest things about this pandemic is that while it’s afflicting the entire world, it’s doing so asynchronously, transforming countries into cautionary tales and object lessons, ghosts of outbreaks past, present, and yet to come.Īs the United States engages in its own agonizing debate about how far to go in easing lockdown measures, I’ve spoken with people in China, South Korea, Austria, and Denmark to get a sense of what they’re witnessing as their countries’ respective coronavirus curves flatten, their social-distancing restrictions abate, and they venture out into life again. If I wanted to buy something from that kebab place, I would have to scan a code or show them my paperwork,” he said. ![]() It’s to go to even those small restaurants that I just showed you. Suzanne carried a card, a kind of pass to the outside world, that listed his temperature each time he left the compound. When he arrived at the gated community where he lives, a masked police officer wearing gloves scanned his wrist to check his temperature before allowing him inside. When he caught a taxi to head home, Suzanne had to present the driver with documents detailing his health status, which were checked and photographed. That’s Wuhan culture, just without the siesta,” he explained, his voice muffled by an N95 mask. “If you’re familiar with Spanish culture, they the siesta during the daytime, and then they’ll come back out at night full force. He walked past dark, boarded-up storefronts one lit-up restaurant with three empty bar stools assembled outside and some perceptible human activity inside another restaurant with a table blocking its door and a menu planted on the sidewalk for customers wishing to place their to-go orders a few people in masks milling about the entrance to a kebab joint. on a weeknight, Suzanne showed me a largely lifeless street that would typically be bustling at that hour. On a video call, as he ran an errand around 11 p.m. Or more precisely, one of several possible post-pandemic futures.Ĭhristopher Suzanne, an American who teaches English in Wuhan, China, took me on a tour of the city where the novel coronavirus originated, where the first lockdown was implemented, and where restrictions are now being eased as the outbreak ebbs. Last week, confined to my home in America, I glimpsed the future.
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