The Human Stories of the Coronavirus Pandemic

Before she left Spain, Deb Monti, a 22-year-old painter, started making pieces of life under lockdown. In one painting, two people stand on a balcony, sharing a cigarette. In another, a girl’s face is segmented by a window, trapping her indoors.

“It’s so all-of-a-sudden,” Ms. Monti said. “It makes me feel so suffocated and restrained.”

Across the world, many people are confined to their homes as the pandemic sweeps by outside, and sometimes inside. Many are keeping diaries in both words and pictures: pantry inventories, window views, questions about the future, concerns about the present. Taken together, the pages tell the story of an anxious, claustrophobic world on pause.

When future historians look to write the story of life during coronavirus, these first-person accounts may prove useful. Because history isn’t usually told by the bigwigs of the era, even if they are some of its main characters. Instead, it is often reconstructed from snapshots of ordinary lives. In today’s diaries, anxiety is constant.

What’s your “Quarantine Routine”?

For people without imminent serious health or financial challenges, who are “merely” dealing with the anxieties of a global pandemic, worldwide financial domino effects and the illnesses of friends and co-workers, there’s a lot of time at home. Staying at home is the number one request medical providers are making of those of us privileged enough to not need to travel for work. (And it seems to be working.)

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/us/coronavirus-world-news-updates.html