What Life Looks Like On The Other Side of The Coronavirus - The Atlantic

5/3/2020 What Life Looks Like on the Other Side of the Coronavirus - The Atlantic
CORONAVIRUS: COVID -19

I Have Seen the Future—And It’s Not the Life We
Knew
Cities around the world might slowly be coming back to life, but there’s no going
back to “normal.”
URI FRIEDMAN MAY 1, 2020
SONGJOON CHO / BLOOMBERG / GETTY
Last week, con ned to my home in America, I glimpsed the future. Or more
precisely, one of several possible post-pandemic futures.
Christopher Suzanne, an American who teaches English in Wuhan, China, took me

on a tour of the city where the novel coronavirus originated, where the rst
lockdown was implemented, and where restrictions are now being eased as the
outbreak ebbs.
On a video call, as he ran an errand around 11 p.m. on a weeknight, Suzanne

showed me a largely lifeless street that would typically be bustling at that hour. He
walked past dark, boarded-up storefronts; one lit-up restaurant with three empty
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/05/life-after-coronavirus-china-denmark-south-korea/611011/ 1/10
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.
is was not normal. “If you’re familiar with Spanish culture, they [have] the siesta
during the daytime, and then they’ll come back out at night full force. at’s
Wuhan culture, just without the siesta,” he explained, his voice muffled by an N95
mask.
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.
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. Suzanne carried a card, a kind of pass to the outside world, that listed his
temperature each time he left the compound. “It’s not just for taxis. It’s to leave
your community. It’s to go into the hospital. It’s to go to even those small
restaurants that I just showed you. If I wanted to buy something from that kebab
place, I would have [had] to scan a code or show them my paperwork,” he said.
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.
[ Read: Should you get an antibody test? ]
As 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 atten, their social-distancing restrictions abate, and they
venture out into life again. 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.
Here are some of the common themes:
ere are two kinds of post-lockdown people.
Zak Dychtwald, who runs Young China Group, a consultancy focused on Chinese
Millennials, noted in an email to subscribers that the coronavirus crisis has sown
“fear that the careful balance of our lives—personal, nancial, or otherwise—can be
broken at a moment’s notice.” Dychtwald has observed two types of responses to
that fear, based on interviews he’s done with Chinese contacts over WeChat and his
reading of Chinese sources.
Some people, who skew younger, are taking the “YOLO” approach of enjoying life
while they can because “tomorrow isn’t promised.” ey’re eating out, hanging out,
“revenge shopping,” traveling. “In the last few days Chinese friends in Beijing,
Shanghai, and Chengdu have sent video[s] of dense crowds drinking and partying
hard on club dance oors,” he wrote. But others, especially those walloped by the
economic toll of the lockdown, have resolved to “live cautiously” because “life is
fragile.”
People wearing masks walk over a bridge near the Yeouido district of Seoul. (Ed Jones / AFP / Getty)
Sujin Chun, a staff writer who covers global affairs for the South Korean newspaper
JoongAng Ilbo, told me that bars, restaurants, and public transportation are lling
up again in the country, which has one of the world’s best test-and-trace systems for
COVID-19 and never had to go into full lockdown. Still, she added, “We are very
well aware that it is not time to relax and [think], ings are normal now; let’s party.
It’s not like that.”
[ Read: Georgia’s experiment in human sacri ce ]
In Austria, many companies are continuing to urge employees to work remotely if

they can, even though nothing prohibits them from returning to the office, omas
Czypionka, a health-policy expert at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna,
told me. When restrictions rst eased, many people headed to big home-
improvement stores—suggesting they were still contemplating spending a lot of
time at home—rather than to newly reopened smaller shops where avoiding close
contact with others is difficult.
Gradual reopenings can send unintended signals.
When the Danish government recently reopened day cares, kindergartens, and
primary schools after its lockdown, Séamus Power and Merlin Schaeffer, both
professors at the University of Copenhagen, noticed something interesting. e
government had made the move in part because Denmark has the highest share of
working mothers among developed nations, and keeping young kids at home with
two parents working full-time was exacting too high a cost on productivity. But
many Danes seemed to see the move as a sign that the public-health threat posed by
the coronavirus was subsiding. ey ocked outdoors on the subsequent weekend
to enjoy the spring weather, jogging and gathering in small groups in parks and
public spaces.
“It’s full sunshine, some people have shorts … e parks are blooming …
Everything feels like a new beginning. It’s not. We all know it’s not,” said Schaeffer,
who is working with Power and other colleagues on a study of the impact of social-
distancing policies on everyday routines, mental health, and family life. eir
preliminary survey results suggest that people are gradually shedding practices such
as frequent hand-washing, keeping social distance, and staying at home. Yet
Schaeffer noted that COVID-19 cases in the country have increased from hundreds
before lockdown to thousands today, “so the probability to get it is much higher
now than it has ever been.” Nevertheless, people are latching onto any opportunity
to extrapolate normalcy from the reopening of schools, hair salons, massage parlors,
and small shops. Just “because the schools open, doesn’t mean you should stop
washing your hands,” Schaeffer told me.
“People are going to keep interpreting this tiptoe back to normality in a more
extreme way than it’s intended by the government,” Power said. “is has to be one
of the next big challenges of the unfolding crisis around the world: when things
start to open, how people are subjectively understanding this.”
Life returns in dribs and drabs, and the new normal is not the old normal.
Many of the people I spoke with described returning to a slippery sense of

normalcy, a post-lockdown life that looked like the life they used to lead but failed
that test upon closer inspection.
Parents and children wait to get inside Stengaard School north of Copenhagen, Denmark. (Ólafur Steinar
Gestsson / Ritzau Scanpix / AFP / Getty)
Yes, schools are now open again in Denmark. But Power and Schaeffer described an
alien, atomized environment of outdoor classes, hourly hand-washing, and fewer
teachers. “e kids are not allowed to touch each other, to play together, to
embrace each other, to do high ves, things like that,” Schaeffer said. “ere’s only
one child per table, because normally you have two kids sitting [at] one, two-person
table.”
Chun, in Seoul, said she’s now taking public transportation again. But when she
once forgot to wear a mask on the bus, she got aggressive stares. “I sort of get it
myself. Because this is a time to be extra careful,” she said. Chun is back at the
newsroom, but with guards at the entrances to take people’s temperature and hand
sanitizer everywhere. She is receiving fewer emergency text messages from the
government than she did at the height of the outbreak in South Korea, but they’re
still a presence in her life: She’d recently received one con rming another COVID-
19 case in her neighborhood and alerting her to which restaurants in the area he
had visited. She had “mixed feelings” about the messages, which provided helpful
information but also had an unnerving “Big Brother” feel to them. Some people say
“now is [the] time for Big Brother, for protection,” she said.
[ Graeme Wood: ere’s no simple way to reopen universities ]
Justin Lovett, an American freelance videographer and photographer in South

Korea, worries that people are more suspicious of him in public now because the
main remaining transmission pathway for the virus in the country is through
foreigners traveling there. He’s back to being shoulder to shoulder with people on
the subway, but he makes sure to wear a mask and avoids coughing or sneezing,
“because I know everyone’s noticed me already.”
Children wear masks while playing at the zoo in Wuhan, China. (Getty)
In Wuhan, the city is coming alive again, Suzanne told me when I checked in with
him this week. Trains, highways, and buses are humming anew and people venture
out more. Yet many businesses have not reopened, many people (including Suzanne
and his wife) are still working from home, many restaurants are still open only for
takeout, and the local economy is still a shadow of its former self. “ere’s a lot of
traffic, but looking around, I just don’t know where these people are going,” he said.
"I don’t want people to think Wuhan is this booming city again, and everyone’s
ready to go, and the economy is roaring,” he added. “No, it’s 20–30 percent open
for business. Maybe 70 percent of people are outside."
Living in the shadow of another wave is scary.
To ease restrictions, at least for some time, is to y blind. Once lockdowns are
loosened, the coronavirus’s long incubation period means governments won’t detect
any resultant increase in infection rates for many days, Czypionka explained. at’s
why the Austrian government is lifting its lockdown in phases. “Until we have
substantial immunity, either through infection or vaccination, social distancing and
masks on some occasions will accompany us for a year or more,” he told me.
On the Friday afternoon after schools reopened in Denmark, Power sat on a park
bench with a colleague and had a beer. “We talked about everything except
coronavirus,” and it gave him “a sense of hope that things are opening and maybe a
model of how things might look. But if I think about it intellectually, I’m more
cautious.” Schaeffer interjected. It could be “a false sense of hope,” he noted. After
all, the Danish government has indicated that some social-distancing measures will
stay in place until the end of the year and that life might shut down again if
infection rates increase. “We will not reach pre-corona life” in 2020, he said.
[ Read: Why the coronavirus is so confusing ]
As Dychtwald sees it, both the carefree and cautious responses to post-lockdown
life in China are informed by the specter of a second wave of the virus. “e rst
are having fun in what feels like [it] could be the eye of the storm. e second are
battening down the hatches,” he wrote.
A couple lies on the grass in the garden of Schoenbrunn Palace in Vienna, Austria. (Getty)
Suzanne said that although he’s still fearful of the virus, he “can’t be inside locked
up” for long. Nevertheless, he’s not spending time with friends, in part because
there are few places to meet, but also because everyone knows this ordeal isn’t over.
e government is still sending texts with messages such as “‘wash your hands, be
afraid, the second wave may be coming,’ so everyone is kind of expecting this
second wave. And we de nitely don’t want to be a part of it,” he explained.
[ Read: We are living in a failed state ]
“In the very beginning of the lockdown you start thinking, Oh, this is just a quick
thing; it’s just like a hurricane; it’ll be done in a couple of days,” Suzanne continued.
“And then a couple of weeks into it, you start reading into conspiracy theories and
rabbit holes, and then you get past that point, and you’re talking with your group-
chat buddies and they’re sharing their cooking videos, and how they’re using beer
and ketchup to cook food, just to make jokes. And then it gets to this point like,
okay, this is getting old … when is it going to go back” to normal?
If Suzanne, in Wuhan, is asking that question, then what does it mean for those of
us on the other side of the world still very much in the midst of our outbreaks?
More than four months into the worst pandemic in a century, no one can predict
whether we’ll ever return to something like the life we used to know.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write
to letters@theatlantic.com.
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5/3/2020 What Life Looks Like on the Other Side of the Coronavirus - The Atlantic

CORONAVIRUS: COVID -19

SONGJOON CHO / BLOOMBERG / GETTY

Christopher Suzanne, an American who teaches English in Wuhan, China, took me

On a video call, as he ran an errand around 11 p.m. on a weeknight, Suzanne

[ Read: Should you get an antibody test? ]

Here are some of the common themes:

ere are two kinds of post-lockdown people.

[ Read: Georgia’s experiment in human sacri ce ]

In Austria, many companies are continuing to urge employees to work remotely if

Gradual reopenings can send unintended signals.

Many of the people I spoke with described returning to a slippery sense of

[ Graeme Wood: ere’s no simple way to reopen universities ]

Justin Lovett, an American freelance videographer and photographer in South

Living in the shadow of another wave is scary.

[ Read: Why the coronavirus is so confusing ]

[ Read: We are living in a failed state ]

Make your inbox more interesting.

Enter your email Sign Up

Ideas that matter. Since 1857.

Privacy Policy Do Not Sell My Personal Information Advertising Guidelines Terms Conditions Responsible Disclosure Site Map

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