The other aspect that helped us to get through this lockdown was fear. There were the balcony concerts, the children’s drawings taped to windows, and the nightly rounds of applause for the healthcare workers. But people figured out ways to lift each other’s spirits. This was one of the most depressing aspects of the situation. Admittedly, it was difficult to show solidarity in any normal way, since we could not be physically close to one another. I had heard stories of the solidarity that arises during times of crisis, but this was the first time I experienced it. This time, I was painfully aware, and yet equally powerless to do anything about it. The closest thing I could remember were the attacks of September the 11th, but I was just a kid then, and I did not really understand what was going on.

This was the first time that I was living through a world-historical crisis as an adult. And slowly, the truth dawned on me-the hard truth that this emergency was going to last a long time. I read books by experts in public health and infectious disease, by historians and novelists, and by investigative journalists. But now that I had so much extra time, I decided to read a little about pandemics. No way this would still be going on in June, I thought. I encouraged my mom to buy tickets for a trip to Ireland in June. I really believed that it would just be for two weeks. Two days later, restaurants had to shut down and the next day we were shut up in our houses.

Yet two weeks after I got back to Madrid, the schools were closed. The virus would go away and we would move on.

Maybe Italy was bad, and maybe China was bad, but we didn’t live in Italy or China. By that I mean that we were thinking of this virus like some other kind of natural disaster, a flood or a fire-one that is localized in space and time. All this was just our instinctual fear of the unknown.īy the first of March, most people were still in denial. I was still quite sure that this virus business would blow over. Even so, we did not even consider changing our flight. By that time Italy was in bad shape, and parts of the country were already on lockdown. But our flight back to Madrid took us through Milan, just for a short layover. I went on vacation in late February with my brother-to Poland-and, for the most part, life was still completely normal. And still, stories of coronavirus infections started popping up all over the place. The city of Wuhan was shut down completely. The news coming out of China seemed increasingly dire. So I went to the Chinese New Year Parade, and I didn’t get sick (though my camera was stolen), and I pushed coronavirus back to the peripheries of my awareness. Besides, I figured the media had such a strong financial incentive to frighten people that they would play up any potential danger, however remote. Every other year there seemed to be some new virus ready to destroy the world-avian flu, swine flu, zika, SARS, Ebola-and every year it amounted to very little, at least in my life. Long before that, I had written off the periodic media frenzies about foreign diseases. I was stunned that someone in my life-and someone I considered sensible-was willing to change their behavior because of this virus on the news. “Lots of people coming from Wuhan.” Wuhan? I did not understand. “Doesn’t seem like a good idea,” he said. I was going to see the celebratory parade in Usera, Madrid’s Chinese barrio, and I asked a friend of mine if he wanted to come. The first time the coronavirus entered my consciousness as anything more than a blip was around Chinese New Year, in late January. Specifically, I want to put into words for myself this strange and unsettling feeling that, of late, comes over me at least once a day, the feeling we call pandemic fatigue. But this essay seeks to focus on another kind of loss: the loss of patience. Even the luckiest among us have lost something, if only time. Others have lost members of their family, and still others have lost their lives. Many have lost jobs, businesses, or homes. If there is a common thread to this pandemic, it is loss. Lesley A brett on Review: Ghosts of Spain Review: Miles, the A… on Two NY Cemeteries: Green-Wood…

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