Thursday, 2 May 2024

The Human Stories of the Coronavirus Pandemic

We can’t all learn Greek and no one needs so much homemade bread. Our collective inactivity has created the “Quarantine Routine.” In Lives, we are continually updating with ways our world is adapting.

Welcome to Lives, where we document how the world is changing.

What’s your “Quarantine Routine”?

For people without imminent serious health or financial challenges, who are “merely” dealing with the anxieties of a global pandemic, worldwide financial domino effects and the illnesses of friends and co-workers, there’s a lot of time at home. Staying at home is the number one request medical providers are making of those of us privileged enough to not need to travel for work. (And it seems to be working.)

Proponents of the productivity industry would like the healthy homebound of us to learn Greek, advanced baking and sewing and also maybe clean your entire house while home schooling your children and putting in vegetable beds for spring and also maybe washing up our baby lambs.

But here in the real world … there’s a lot of Xbox (as noted by Stan Wawrinka, the tennis champ) and frozen pizzas and Netflix. Hence the “quarantine routine,” a joke format about how we’re spending our days at home. There’s a lot of sincere suggestions for daily at-home routines out there — we think the “quarantine routine” started in sincerity here, as a way of helping people think about how to manage their time. Those helpful tips were quickly replaced by something more relatable.

From here it has not gotten more reasonable.

Experts say structure really helps bring meaning to your days! Also you gotta only do what you can.

Now they’re trying to sell you clothing to wear at home.

You’ll be unsurprised to hear that people are buying more things they need, and less things they don’t. Target released a report this week, saying that, in March, it saw a 50 percent jump for essentials and food and beverages, but a downturn in things like accessories.

That’s likely why, earlier today, Macy’s announced it had lost the “majority” of its sales — and was going to furlough around 130,000 workers.

So most “nonessential” retailers, like people who sell you clothes, are viewing their digital businesses as a lifeline. On Instagram, that means you’re seeing a lot of ads for weighted blankets — but also lots of work-from-home styles and designer sweatsuits.

On Monday, Anthropologie’s website asked customers to “invite color inside” by shopping the “cozy-at-home edit.” Macy’s encouraged customers to“recharge in new ways” with its “stay-at-home essentials.” Discounts seem prevalent across sites, though many warn of potential shipping delays based on the virus. Anthropologie also found a “date-night-at-home” outfit for their Instagram.

Statistically speaking, your home is now full of dogs, cats and chickens.

Foster requests at one shelter in Kansas City, Mo., went from an average of 10 a day to 250 a day; in Dallas, foster animal placement was up ten times over last year.

And it’s not just cats and dogs that people are taking in. “People are panic-buying chickens like they did toilet paper,” a president of one chicken hatchery told us, as egg shortfalls were reported in supermarkets.

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