I Have Seen the Future—And It’s Not the Life We Knew

One of the strangest things about this pandemic is that while it’s afflicting the entire world, it’s doing so asynchronously, transforming countries into cautionary tales and object lessons, ghosts of outbreaks past, present, and yet to come.

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As the United States engages in its own agonizing debate about how far to go in easing lockdown measures, I’ve spoken with people in China, South Korea, Austria, and Denmark to get a sense of what they’re witnessing as their countries’ respective coronavirus curves flatten, their social-distancing restrictions abate, and they venture out into life again. And although that life doesn’t look like the present nightmare those still locked in coronavirus limbo are experiencing, it doesn’t look like the pre-COVID-19 past either.

Here are some of the common themes:

There are two kinds of post-lockdown people.

Zak Dychtwald, who runs Young China Group, a consultancy focused on Chinese Millennials, noted in an email to subscribers that the coronavirus crisis has sown “fear that the careful balance of our lives—personal, financial, or otherwise—can be broken at a moment’s notice.” Dychtwald has observed two types of responses to that fear, based on interviews he’s done with Chinese contacts over WeChat and his reading of Chinese sources.

Some people, who skew younger, are taking the “YOLO” approach of enjoying life while they can because “tomorrow isn’t promised.” They’re eating out, hanging out, “revenge shopping,” traveling. “In the last few days Chinese friends in Beijing, Shanghai, and Chengdu have sent video[s] of dense crowds drinking and partying hard on club dance floors,” he wrote. But others, especially those walloped by the economic toll of the lockdown, have resolved to “live cautiously” because “life is fragile.”

Sujin Chun, a staff writer who covers global affairs for the South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo, told me that bars, restaurants, and public transportation are filling up again in the country, which has one of the world’s best test-and-trace systems for COVID-19 and never had to go into full lockdown. Still, she added, “We are very well aware that it is not time to relax and [think], Things are normal now; let’s party. It’s not like that.”

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In Austria, many companies are continuing to urge employees to work remotely if they can, even though nothing prohibits them from returning to the office, Thomas Czypionka, a health-policy expert at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, told me. When restrictions first eased, many people headed to big home-improvement stores—suggesting they were still contemplating spending a lot of time at home—rather than to newly reopened smaller shops where avoiding close contact with others is difficult.