If the sort of things that most of us are seeing on social media and in our favorite publications is any indication, life under lockdown or shelter-in-place or whatever we are now calling the unilateral suspension of civilization across roughly half the globe is some kind of secular retreat. Here, finally, we are told, is a chance to read all those books gathering dust on the shelves — but not for long: we're cleaning, you see — and learn how to sew and make orange macaroons and play German board games with 450-page instruction manuals. Do things, we keep telling each other. Go on Zoom with Grandma, start a Proust club or host a virtual craft beer tasting. Play a video game with your dog.
There is nothing wrong with these serial inducements to government-approved indoor activity. Making the best of a bad situation is a universal human impulse and a more or less wholesome one. But it is important to recognize that for every person bent on using the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to brush up on Urdu or figure out what to do with a fridge full of ricotta and lemons, there are just as many others for whom no amount of buck-up self improvement will make this experience better than miserable.
Let's start with people who have no choice but to be in close quarters with those from whom they would be better off far away. Already there are reports both in the United States and abroad of increased domestic violence under lockdown conditions. As usual, the people on the receiving end of most of this are children and women, who are running into pharmacies shouting codewords. The French government is booking hotel rooms for thousands of women fleeing violent men with whom they would otherwise be stuck for weeks or months. This situation is only going to get worse. READ MORE
