Ghost-town world: Coronavirus and the new abnormal

AS WE confront the velocity of the Wuhan novel coronavirus into modern life, there’s been a timed-release shutdown of the events and gathering places that are sites of our intersectionality as fans and worshippers and citizens — as human beings.

Health-care professionals have issued various pronouncements intended to give people the best possible advice to stay healthy in this time of contagion. Among the advisories is the imprecise advice to maintain “social distancing.”

In general terms, it means to create physical space between you and other people of at least six feet. Specifically, though, it’s meant creating the kind of space that’s forced the closure of any number of public events.

As COVID-19 rampages around the world, social distancing has meant postponement of the NBA and NHL seasons; a pushback to the start of the Major League Baseball season (mid-May at the earliest); a cancellation of the NCAA’s March Madness college hoops tournament; and a cancellation of MLB spring training games. Formula One canceled the Australian Grand Prix, and the Mormon Church has canceled services worldwide, as have mosques and synagogues.

For now there are no activities at landmarks, theme parks, casinos, classrooms, and other wide-scale venues; conferences, symposia and other events rescheduled; the networks have suspended live-studio production, rendering late-night a wasteland; K-12 public schools have been closed in at least 33 states; sports from soccer to golf have ended competitions ... and there’s darkness on Broadway — no live theater in the district that defines theater to the world.

The fact of social distancing is relative. Despite the epidemiological frisson currently surrounding the phrase, the experience behind the phrase is hardly new. ...

Read the full essay at Humans.