Two Week Lockdown

At the beginning of the Coronavirus lockdown back in March of 2020, I remember constantly hearing about quarantine being a “two week lockdown” to flatten the curve. When everyone said this, including doctors and scientists around the country, everyone felt a sense of relief. Now, a year later, we know that this was not a “two week lockdown.” At the start of quarantine everyone was holding out hope that the pandemic would be over with within a few weeks. Everyone said — just stay inside and it will go away. Well, I stayed inside, I wore my mask, I did everything I could, and now we are over a year into this. We are no longer on a complete lockdown but things are very far from normal, and any day we could shift back into a full lockdown. Looking back at how everyone called this a “two week lockdown” I realize just how ironic that was. Everyone was so naive to the severity of Covid, no one expected what was about to come. Following Linda Hutcheon’s “function of irony” diagram I’d call this structural irony. When multiple public figures spoke out last year they were all so confident Coronavirus would be over before we knew it. All these people claimed to be experts when really, none of us knew this was going to happen. Maybe this will turn into a two year lockdown, but I sure hope not.