The Isolation Begins

Yesterday morning I set out to the local drug store to buy some family necessities. When I got there, I went straight to the toilet paper shelves and managed to score a few rolls. Other shoppers were there, wearing latex gloves and masks, grabbing whatever tissue-y products they could. Minutes later, the shelves were empty, despite the two-per-customer limit.

I waited for a mob to finish asking/accosting a worker stocking shelves about when there will be more toilet paper, and asked her where a certain face wash for Kata was located. She seemed so relieved to answer a non-toilet-paper-related question. 

After grabbing a few less in-demand items (nuts, toothpaste, baby food), I joined the queue, where we all maintained a two-meter distance from each other and avoided eye contact. I paid by card and got out of there as quickly as I could.

In just a few days after I posted my previous post, things jumped a few notches in Germany. Our city-administered day care was closed. Our employers sent us to home office. Playgrounds were cordoned off. Border controls went up. Masks are everywhere. The package delivery guys don't ask for signatures anymore. They ring the front doorbell, wait to be buzzed in, slide the package through the door, and practically run back to their truck.

While some things have changed, some small things haven't. I had to wait for a haircut at my local barber, which is still open for business. People still sit on the patio and sip coffee at the cozy kiosk down the street. There are plenty of joggers, dog walkers, and stroller pushers in our nearby park.

Small things seem even larger in importance than ever before. We're collectively stressing about beating the panic buyers to the toilet paper shelf or wondering if we're going to get this virus by standing too close to a stranger a stoplight. Getting a hair cut or reading a book on a park bench on a sunny day might keep us sane in the coming days, weeks, and months.

But those small things might be more dangerous than we realize. In Italy, everyone was sent home from work and school and, because it was Italy, instead of staying at home, they went to the cafes and clubs and stayed out late to enjoy the warm weather. The rate of infection rose, hospitals were overwhelmed, and the government shut down everything and sent the police into the streets to keep people home.

Many of the small things in this crisis are only dangerous when they're abused. Large groups still gather in public, people cough in stores without covering their dirty germ holes, and they're throwing grill parties in the park. 

In Germany, in particular my state of North-Rhine-Westphalia, which is hardest hit by the coronavirus, we'll see in the coming days if this partial shutdown will have an effect on the infection rate. If not, we'll have to forget about enjoying the small things for a while.

The coronavirus comes to Germany

The coronavirus’ spread been a slow burn in my corner of Germany. The first cases were found in Heinsberg, about 60km from the Dorf and a 45-minute drive from Aachen, where my office is located.

New cases pop up in my state of North-Rhine-Westphalia daily, but no town is under lockdown, like in Italy. No mass digital surveillance system – that we know of – is watching our vital signs, like China. And there’s no sick health minister coughing and spreading the virus at news conferences, like Iran.

Life goes on in Germany… just a little differently. I catch a train twice a week to work in the Cologne office and no walk through the train station is complete without seeing a few commuters wearing surgical masks. People go to work. They hit the gym. They go out for beers. Most schools and daycares are still open. For now.

But beneath the business-as-usual attitude, there’s an underlying, repressed panic that’s difficult to hide. Walk into the drug store to buy hand sanitizer and you’ll see an empty shelf. Pasta and canned goods are popular. A local Ramen joint that used have people lined up around the corner is nearly deserted. Kata saw a woman carting away a dozen jumbo packs of diapers, which must be for a do-it-yourself mask that I haven’t heard about yet.

But those COVID-19 push notifications tell us about every new case. And if you only pay attention to the numbers, it might make sense to hoard on canned beans, masks, and shotgun shells. If you paused and thought a bit, you’d realize a better tactic is washing your damn hands and covering your mouth when you cough or sneeze.

To the German government's credit, they’ve been open and honest about new cases and their response to it. Trust in the health authorities here seems high. People are worried, but they’re not hysterical or ignorant of the facts.

With the coronavirus, it seems like we don’t care about it until it’s too late, or we expect governments to fix the problem. But mostly, it’s up to us.

Ten years ago, I was riding a subway in Toronto. A woman was coughing and hacking a few seats behind me. She sounded like she was going to die. As I left the car, I looked back and saw her coughing again, without covering her mouth. That night, I woke up coughing the same cough that woman shared with the entire train. A day later, I visited the doctor, who told me I had pneumonia.

The coronavirus will be around for a while, so we should get used to taking responsibility for ourselves. That doesn’t mean stocking up our doomsday bunkers. It means doing things we should've done more in the past: washing our hands, covering our mouths when we cough, and not being hoarders.