It’s Time to Hunker Down

Zeynep Tufekci:

There is a Turkish saying for times like these, when we can see a light at the end of the tunnel: “Time passes quickly if we can count the days until the end.” We are no longer in the open-ended, dreadful period of spring 2020, when we did not know if we’d even have a vaccine, whether any therapeutics would work, and whether we’d ever emerge from the shadow of this pandemic. We can see the cavalry coming, but until it’s here, we need to lock ourselves down once again.

This Thanksgiving will be the first I ever spend alone. Every close friend in SF has left, I’m not talking to the cool goth lady I’m in love with, and my family is locked 5300 miles away across an ocean. And I certainly don’t say this to bemoan my situation. It’s just a peculiar feeling, knowing that we’re in the middle of a howling storm we cannot see, our comrades are in terrible pain, but there are visible signs of progress, of hope. We’re nearing the end of this thing.

But this last stretch of self-imposed isolation is vital to shelter us all from the storm. This is what I tell myself when the loneliness kicks and bites.