Here is an interesting article giving us a vision of the future, about three weeks’ time:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-27/fled-new-york-for-sydney-my-coronavirus-warning/12092882
“I have a grim message for you from the future. About three weeks into the future, to be precise. My wife, our two daughters and I stepped off the plane in Los Angeles earlier this week as if emerging from a dream — or was it entering one? The reality we walked into seemed nothing like the one we had left in New York a few hours earlier. In our home neighbourhood in Brooklyn, friends had become strangers, and strangers had become threats. Our usual Sesame Street existence — in which a life of shared outdoor space turned every walk along the brownstones into a string of impromptu conversations with neighbours, crossing guards and shopkeepers — had descended into a lonely and menacing dash for essential supplies. People would cross the street as they saw you approaching. Regulars at our local cafe, when it was still open, would shout at others in line to keep their distance; parents in the park would usher their kids away from you with surgical-gloved hands. Everyone was a threat. Anyone could kill. After a string of cancellations and last minute re-bookings, we finally made it onto one of the last flights out — a hasty emigration brought forward by circumstance, all of our belongings left behind indefinitely. The plane was empty. When an airport worker at LAX started yelling at us to bunch closer together, two by two instead of single-file, I realised the coronavirus did not seem to represent the threat it did in Brooklyn. Fifteen hours later, as we disembarked in Sydney, it did not seem to exist at all. It's too late for New York, but not for Sydney. Like the background noise of an airplane safety demonstration, we were given vague instructions by quarantine officers to self-isolate for two weeks, handed a Department of Health fact sheet, then released into the wild. We stepped outside to be transported back in time, to New York three weeks ago. Schools and businesses were still open, beaches were packed (later that day Bondi closed and further shutdowns were announced), and people mingled — perhaps in denial of the new reality headed their way.”
