The weirdest seven days of my life in Coronaland

The lines between fact and fantasy blur for Carl Cederström as he comes face to face with the reality of the outbreak of Covid-19 on the abandoned streets of Florence

Florence's Basilica di Santa Croce looms over the abandoned Piazza as virus fears keep tourists away (Carl Cederström)

On the evening flight from Amsterdam to Florence, the passengers are sitting far apart and breathing in masks and rubbing their hands with disinfectant. The cabin is quiet and there is something sinister in the air. I am gripped by a strange feeling that we are travelling backwards through the night.

When I book the trip, only a few cases of the coronavirus have been reported in Italy On the day I travel, several hundred people have fallen ill and the first deaths have been confirmed.

“Florence is far from the affected areas,” I say when people of the worrying kind ask if I really should go. Before we leave the airport, two men in space suits are taking our temp. On the way to the hotel, the taxi driver explains that all talk about the coronavirus is exaggerated: “Do you know how many people die from the flu every year?”

I mumble that I do not know, but he doesn’t seem to know either, and we continue our journey through a darkened Florence.

Never before have we enjoyed the same degree of personal security as we do today and yet we are more afraid than ever, writes sociology professor Frank Furedi in his book Culture of Fear from 1997. He says we instil fear in each other, because that is what we’re supposed to do if we want to pass as responsible citizens. As a result, we have been caught in a culture of fear where we can no longer distinguish between reality and science fiction.

I spend my days in the library writing, and the evenings in bars and restaurants, socialising with people I don’t know. One evening I meet Hanna, 33, who has long braided hair and black glasses. She is from Ethiopia, but has lived in Beijing for two years. When the virus started to spread in China, she was on vacation in Kazakhstan. Since then, she has travelled around Europe with the suitcase she packed for a short vacation. All her other belongings are left at home, in her Beijing apartment, which is empty and costs money.

Hanna left Kazakhstan at the end of January and flew to her older sister’s place in Brussels. She wore a face mask on the plane and went to the hospital the day after she arrived, but the doctors say she doesn’t need to be tested. She should get in touch, though, if she starts coughing and gets fever and difficulties breathing.

Hanna has been on the road for over a month when I first meet her, and she has no idea for how long she will continue to drift around, fleeing the virus that follows in her footsteps. Right now, she is staying with her younger sister, who lives in Florence, but she will soon return to Brussels, the same day as I, and on the same plane. She will wear a mask then, and if I want she can bring one for me. They are sold out in the shops.

Ferudi writes that the real threat is not terrorist acts or climate crises or epidemics. The real threat is our own fear and our inability to slow down and think reasonably, to learn to distinguish between facts and fantasies

The first alarm came on New Year’s Eve from the Chinese city of Wuhan and within two months 80,000 have been infected and 3,000 have died in China alone.

Hanna’s friend, Enrico, comes from one of the areas around Florence. He is 35 and has lived in China for almost a year. On New Year’s Day, he woke up in his Beijing apartment with a high fever. While at home, isolating himself, he hears the news of a virus spreading violently across China. He lives in a one-room studio and can only open one small window. For the next month and a half, he only leaves his flat a few times, to run out to get food.

On 15 February, he boards a plane to Italy. He does not remove his mask and puts the food he gets on the flight in his backpack. While waiting for his connecting flight at Moscow airport, he runs far away from everyone else, and sits by himself to eat.

His plan was to isolate himself at a bed and breakfast, but something went wrong with the booking, which means when he arrives in Italy he has to go straight home to his parents. They are old and his mother has diabetes and Enrico is terrified he might infect her. Until he receives his test results three days later, he keeps his mask on, eats at different times to his parents, and avoids staying in the same room as them. He is the first to be tested for the virus in Florence. The result is negative.

They are old and his mother has diabetes and Enrico is terrified he might infect her.  Until he receives his test results, he keeps his mask on, eats at different times to his parents, and avoids staying in the same room as them

We are sitting under the awnings of an outdoor terrace opposite the cathedral when Enrico comes along with his suitcase. He is tall, with a trimmed beard, his hair parted to the right. In the suitcase is Hanna’s computer and important documents that he’s picked up from her apartment. Two months have passed since Enrico was last outdoors, free to walk around. He looks pale.

I ask how he coped and he says that the work saved him. He is an ecologist researching cave animals and days and nights floated into each other while he worked.

Halfway through my stay, on Sunday 1 March, I read that Turkey stops all passenger planes to and from Italy. The library is closed so I decide to go and see Michelangelo’s David statue. I buy a ticket online to avoid the queues, but when I come to the museum there are no queues, and David stands alone at the end of the corridor that echoes empty.

Michelangelo’s David stands alone at the end of a corridor that echoes empty (Carl Cederström)

I sleep longer than usual on Monday. I stay in bed and listen to the rain pouring down the window shutters, and it feels like time and space are suspended, as though it’s all a film. I’m at the library as dusk falls over Florence, I see the headlines flicker by on the computer:

Washington Post: “Italy now has more than 1,600 confirmed cases.” CNN: “Italy reports a 50 per cent increase in confirmed coronavirus cases.” The Local Italy: “Coronavirus cases in Italy nearly doubled in 48 hours as death toll hits 34.” CNBC: “Next seven days seen as decisive for Italy as coronavirus cases surges.”

Later that evening, I meet up with Enrico and Hanna at a restaurant. In just a few hours the death toll has risen to 2,000. “The safest thing right now is probably to go back to China,” Enrico says. “The problem is that if I travel back from Italy, I have to quarantine myself for another two weeks.”

“Would you be able to cope with that?”

He laughs and shakes his head and takes a big sip of beer. “I go out every night now. In case I will have to sit inside again.”

Florence is quiet and dark and the rain falls slowly as we walk along the river. Hanna talks about her short stay in Kazakhstan. She was invited to meet a friend’s family and her younger siblings. The father in the family turns to Hanna and says that if she has the virus then they will get it too. That thought had already gnawed at her, but when he uttered the words, something happened and she panicked and just wanted to disappear.

The octagonal Florence Baptistery amid a wet and empty Piazza del Duomo (Carl Cederström)

Stefano is behind the reception as usual when I return to the hotel late that night. He looks worried: “Not good. Cancel, cancel, cancel.”

He says the hotel was fully booked from January to June but now the guests are disappearing, one after the other. I ask how many are still left. He looks at the computer: “Thirty-one.” He tells me that, just a week ago, there were 168 guests. Stefano’s friend works at the Savoy, a five-star hotel. “Do you know how many guests they have?” he asks. I shake my head. “Seven! Seven guests in the entire hotel.”

I feel stupid and confused, and start imagining I will return home and infect my children and my parents and I think of the friends who could die if they became infected

Next morning, I sit alone in the hotel restaurant and drink my coffee. Vivaldi plays over the speakers. The black and white chequered marble floor is shining, the white-clothed tables are set up, and the buffet is untouched. I receive a message from a friend, whom I will meet the day after I return to Sweden. She wonders if it really is wise for us to meet, because she has a chronic illness. I write back that I really don’t know, that everything feels unreal, that we have to wait and see. Then I realise I’ve made plans to meet another on my return, who has diabetes.

The day before I go back, Tuscany is added to the list of high-risk regions and Scandinavian airlines cancel all flights to northern Italy, but I’m booked in with another company. At this point, I am struggling to recall why it was so important for me to travel here in the first place. I feel stupid and confused, and start imagining that I will return home and infect my children and my parents; and I think of the friends who could die if they become infected.

The street surrounding the Basilica di San Lorenzo, one of the largest churches of Florence, is virtually empty (Carl Cederström)

Furedi writes that the real threat is not terrorist acts or climate crises or epidemics. The real threat is our own fear and our inability to slow down and think reasonably, to learn to distinguish between facts and fantasies. But for me, the facts and fantasies have merged. When I walk up the wide stone stairs to Piazzale Michelangelo during my last evening to look out over Florence one last time, I no longer know what’s real and what’s not. Hanna seems equally lost and when I ask what’s next for her, she shrugs her shoulders and shakes her head:

“I brought the mask for you,” she says instead.

At the airport, the queue for the check-in is long. American exchange students with enormous suitcases are chit-chatting about their time in Italy that has just come to an abrupt end. I put on my mask to take a selfie but I then take it off again. No one else wears masks and the dark melancholic cloud that has been hanging over me throughout the week is inexplicably evaporating. Hanna does not wear the mask either. It feels like we’ve ended up in the middle of a school trip. When we land, one of the American teenagers starts joking with their friends.

An empty church in Florence amid the outbreak. In Italy tourism accounts for 13 per cent of the GDP (Carl Cederström)

“If I have the virus, you have it, and you and you and you.”

She points at her friends, one by one, and laughs out loud and everyone else laughs too.

I say goodbye to Hanna and walk towards my gate to catch the connecting flight home to Stockholm. The sun is burning through the big windows and the aircraft are rolling around on the runway and men in leather shoes are talking business on their phones. The melancholy I have had throughout the week is gone. An unreal feeling turns into something even more unreal. Like when you leave a cinema out into the street and suddenly, the street feels more cinematic than the movie you just watched.

Late in the evening, when I finally get back home to the apartment, I call the Public Health Agency and tell them that I’ve been to Florence and met people living in China and ask if they have any special advice or recommendations or if I can perhaps take a test.

But they have no tests to offer and no specific advice to give, and it's up to me to make my own decisions. I say that they are free to get back to me if they want to change their statement, as I'm going to put it in print.

The next morning they call me again, but they say the same thing: that it is the individual’s responsibility to make their own wise judgments.

But I still remain in that film, at the intersection between the real and the fictional, unable to make any rational decisions. I do not want to be hysterical, but neither negligent. I just want to know what to do, and I wish someone could tell me. If I have to stay at home, without the children, then that could be arranged. It’s only a matter of weeks, after all.

Meanwhile, cases continue to increase in both Italy and Sweden. Before hanging up, the man calling from the Public Health Authority says that I should keep myself informed because the advice could change at any time.

On Friday, I’m supposed to pick up my children from the school, but I’ve been told that other parents want to know if there are parents like me, who’ve been to one of the “danger zones”, and as I see the panic grow around me, I arrange for someone else to go and pick up the kids. I decide to stay inside, isolated from everyone else, at least over the weekend.

This article first appeared in Svenska Dagbladet