The excuse of excuses no longer works due to corona

Never before has anything been so all-encompassing and omnipresent in our lives as corona. Everyone is affected, no one is spared. Corona doesn't care about status, money, origin, or importance. Prime Minister of England? Corona couldn't care less. In that respect, COVID-19 is very democratic, you have to give it that.

I get goosebumps every day when I hear the death toll. Even if it has flattened, there are still so many people who have lost their loved ones. Who are caught up in the whirlwind of arranging a funeral, writing condolence cards, ordering flowers. I also think of the people in healthcare, who return to the hospital and see that the patient they cared for yesterday has passed away. Or the caregivers in nursing homes. My dear father-in-law lived in a home for elderly people with dementia. No one is allowed in or out anymore. Try explaining that to your residents. And I haven't even mentioned how terrible it must be when corona knocks at the door of your home and you have to say goodbye to your residents. Think of the home in Rotterdam where half of the residents have died.

And then I find it so difficult to make a light-hearted jump to the everyday corona. The corona that also affects us in a completely non-dramatic but still present way. Yet I'm going to do it, because we can. We also need to try to stay light-hearted. So I thought on Sunday about what is really annoyingly irritating about corona in a home, garden, and kitchen way. And that is that you have no excuse anymore to cut something short. You can't end that chat with that annoying neighbor six houses down with a ‘I'm really sorry, I would have loved to talk for hours, but I really have to go to work...’, because she knows just as well as you do that you are homeschooling your children and can't go anywhere, even if you wanted to. You can't jump behind the couch when your aunt is on the doorstep, because hey, it's corona time so where can you be? You're not really allowed to visit, restaurants are closed so open that door. And then you have to stand in that doorframe talking for fifteen minutes while you would really love to finish reading 'Finnish Days' by Herman Koch. Because you have all the time in the world, you have to respond to every message, laugh at every video sent (although I do find most corona videos really intensely funny) and give every conversation ample time.

Or should you just honestly say at some point: ‘If you don't mind too much, I'm going to go back to my book for a bit. I'm really into it.’

The big advantage of corona is immediately there again. You don't have to suffer from FOMO. No one, absolutely no one is doing anything or is somewhere you would have wanted to be. FOMO is on vacation. FOMO indeed...