Lockdown day #001
A week is a very long time in pandemics. I booked an escape room for my son’s birthday last week. Yesterday we cancelled it because the Netherlands went into lockdown (until April 6, but it’s probably going to be longer). Schools, restaurants and cafes shut here at 6pm to counter the spread of coronavirus. And right on cue, international media zoomed in on the best visual reference for all things Dutch — hookers and weed. Long queues of people panic-buying and photos of red lights going out in De Wallen.
I took the kids for a walk on the beach at Castricum where space abounds, a good thing in times of ‘social distancing’. Better spacial awareness is one of the immediate impacts of this unusual week. We got home and planted the kids in front of NOS’s kids news program Jeugdjournal, which the Dutch broadcaster is extending to answer health questions that parents probably shouldn’t have a go at answering, such as “why does coronavirus spare children?” I could also have sent them to the WHO’s website, which has a good Q&A here, but it’s not very kiddy friendly.
I am writing this as work slowly winds down. I expect jobs to start thinning out, after all who needs an independent writer/ former journalist in a pandemic? It was time to revive my Medium activity. It is a strange predicament: for almost three years my wife has been housebound. She suffers quietly from a condition called ME (more about that here) which means her immune system is out of whack, she can’t work and can’t do very much at all. She doesn’t leave the house. So, a lockdown for her changes very little. And indeed, it changes very little for anyone with a chronic illness. Because they don’t go out and visit cafes and restaurants. They are confined to their homes.
A lockdown for a healthy person means contemplating the loss of freedoms and luxuries like a daily coffee at the Aussie cafe Drovers Dog on Heemstedestraat, or (temporarily) cancelling my membership at B Amsterdam (a shared office space nearby). It will mean three weeks spent mostly at home, not socialising, not panic-buying and avoiding groups of people. Yes, the walls will start closing in (he says on day #001). But for my wife and the millions all over the world with chronic conditions, absolutely nothing changes. So when the announcement was made yesterday for The Netherlands to ‘shut up shop’, my wife looked at me and said: “Welcome to my world.”
Rob is a former journalist for the Independent and creative director of Amsterdam-based content studio Balance of Zero. He is part of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s contributor network, focusing on health and education. He has written for the New York Times, Dazed Digital, BBC World Service and more.
