Quarantine Stories

If you would have asked people on New Year's Eve 2020 what 'quarantine' exactly meant, few people would be able to give you a detailed and accurate, personal account as the same question would trigger in May 2020.

The stories that people tell about their experiences with the Coronavirus are immensely important to understand how this pandemic impacts their daily life, their world, their being, and therefore, their choices and their behavior.

Topics... to be added and complemented

This page is dedicated to some stories from the quarantine. It is organized by theme. Feel free to add themes, and to share your observations, where possible with references of the sources. And please feel free to reflect on what this means for future interventions.

Emotional Kaleidoscope

• A Nigerian doctor recalls the experience of being quarantined for 14 days after being on contact with the first COVID19 patient in the country; she called the feeling 'kaleidoscopic':
  • At first, you experience denial. "No, not me". It may last a day or two.
  • "By my third day, it was like a flood gate opened and a dam of emotions hit me smack in my face and gut. I was now unavoidably afraid. This point was where I realized the importance of a support system. "
  • "The psychological trauma was my greatest challenge, just being with my thoughts alone for 14 days, good, bad, ugly. I also had to deal with the accompanying boredom and missing real human contact."
• Intense dreams are reported too:
  • "A California woman in her seventies was dreaming of a grocery store. Her cat had instructed her to buy a specific brand of chicken, but it was too expensive. When she got to the register with her cheaper chicken in tow, the cashier told the woman she’d have to submit the proper paperwork for the chicken later because the system couldn’t find the correct part number. The woman apologized for her stupidity but had to ask: Where was she supposed to find a part number on a chicken carcass?"
  • Dozens of such COVID-dreams, complete with illustrations, live on a website called 'I Dream of Covid'. Twitter hashtags #pandemicdreams and #covidnightmares cover more of these.

Maintaining productivity

• An Italian Cancer Researcher describes the impact that the lockdown has on the scientific work: "Of course, we cannot stay productive like this on lockdown for more than two months, and I really hope that journal editors and granting agencies will understand that this is an emergency and maybe consider that we’ve had to slow down and cannot, for example, present preliminary data."
  • "During this period, I finally have time to write reviews. And I have realized that the right software makes the difference."

• "The trams are empty, but the laboratories in our unit are currently full of young researchers behind masks. They have their experimental animals to follow, their projects to carry on, their patients waiting for answers. 'There is not only COVID-19; all other pathologies cannot wait' — this is what I hear when I invite them to slow down their experiments."

• The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has a webpage full of COVID19 stories related to the impact it has on work.

Missing the inspiration from colleagues around you

• A researcher in Structural Biology misses the inspiration that comes from having colleagues around.
  • "I am working from home, writing two grant proposals and editing theses and an article. I miss the daily chat with colleagues and all of the ideas and stimuli that derive from it."

Boredom

• A great challenge: "just being with my thoughts alone for 14 days, good, bad, ugly. I also had to deal with the accompanying boredom and missing real human contact."
• "By my fifth day in, I learned to dispel my boredom and persistent anxiety with movies and books. I’m a fitness enthusiast and as difficult as it was for me to muster the mental energy to workout, whenever I did eventually work out, it lifted my mood significantly and left me feeling healthier."
• " It’s also important to anticipate boredom, low moods, maybe even depression. Having several means of entertainment would remedy these to an extent. The power of a good support system cannot be overemphasized, but overall maintaining a positive outlook as much as possible is imperative to getting through any quarantine period."

Catching up with quality tasks you never have time for

• "Despite the fact that the research activity in our sector is quite competitive since the lockdown started I have encouraged my lab team to work from home. I hope this period will offer an opportunity to do things we never have time for: finalizing articles, writing reviews, doing bibliographic research, organizing and analyzing the data more carefully, repeating bioinformatics analyses in light of new data."
• "The quarantine period also gave me time to self-develop as much as possible (through online courses) which was also a very welcome form of distraction."

Worrying

• "We are worried —
  • about everyone’s health
  • about the consequences that might come from a long interruption
  • We are facing a delay in supplying purified proteins to some of our ongoing collaborators."

• "The idea of falling behind competitors who are not experiencing the same drama is frustrating. And I am not so sure that grant and peer reviewers will understand."
• "It bugs me to see people ignore the masking rule by pulling their mask down under their chin."

Living on Boats

Based on this YouTube video, we know some stories from families living on the water, such as the Valero family, that has been living on a boat for four years, or Ant & Cid who sent a message from Gaeta (Italy).

Love

• Local love stories have flourished in Gaza in the time of COVID-19, though few people were aware as most were pre-occupied with the epidemic. These true stories bring to mind a passage from “Love in the Time of Cholera,” by Gabriel García Márquez: “Love was always love, anytime and anyplace, but it was more solid the closer it came to death.”
  • “ 'We got engaged on the 19th day of the isolation, after it was confirmed that we were COVID-19 free,' she said. 'it was a double celebration.' The couple got married after leaving quarantine."
  • "My wife has been my best friend since our first date (15 years ago). This isolation with her reminds me how much I still love her."