Coronavirus will impact parts of your life you never even imagined – including the luxury of switching off

I hope we don't get to the stage that Italy or Wuhan have, but if we do, we will have to be prepared to live in this new empty city and crowded house reality, writes Ahmed Aboudouh

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That's it. The bomb has been dropped on us. Last week seemed to be the last week of normality. Now that we are on unofficial lockdown, the signs we should have paid attention to are glaring.

At the beginning of the week, Boris Johnson confirmed that London is weeks ahead of the rest of the UK in terms of how rapidly coronavirus has spread. By that point, London was already ahead of the government and didn't wait long to establish its own playbook on how to "flatten the curve".

Since then, the capital has rushed to put itself under lockdown. Apart from what this reveals about the public's trust in the government's "herd immunity" plan, by Monday morning, the streets looked prepped for a drag race. The "herd" had realised that its shepherd seemed to be giving it mixed messages and decided to take the lead.

And way before the prime minister's gesture about the powers to ban handshaking, British people adapted a stringent hello-only policy.

For many, the virus means suffering a cough and high temperature, but others will suffer equally, as their lives will change, maybe for a long time. It looks like Chris Whitty's "marathon, not a sprint" approach to the crisis has already been put into play.

Big businesses are already a step ahead and are asking their employees to ignore the government's previous take-it-easy plan, opting to work from home instead.

This decision, together with the social distancing saga, means drastic adjustments to people's daily life will follow.

Home will cease to solely be a place for living; it will have to do much more. The kitchen table will function as an office desk, a studying board and a pub bench. For those who suspect they might have coronavirus symptoms and contemplate self-isolation for 14 days, the bedroom will be the new A&E unit.

Suspending the Premier League and Rugby matches will leave most with no choice but to pass their days playing video games, helping Netflix double its profits for this year, or watching the news and reading more and more pieces like this one about the pandemic. I tend to believe more in the latter scenario, given the spike in the number of readers who have turned to The Independent in the last few days to follow the daily chronicle of the coronavirus.

As we all revert to a more simplistic way of life, it seems nature is punishing us collectively. One of the first victims will be small and local businesses. When this is all over, many will go back to work and realise how much our lunch hour contributes to driving the British economy. Many restaurants, cafes and pubs around their workplace may vanish for good if the government has no plan to reimburse them.

But despite the explicit, indiscriminate brutality, this punishment might have a silver lining. Family gatherings will mean something again. Millennials and students who are stranded in contract cities like London are coming home. Family members may enjoy more quality time this year. For them, and others, social distancing, the new term that no one would ever have imagined being possible a month ago, will be the new norm anyway.

And the new measures Johnson and Donald Trump announced on Monday will likely move our lives from the phase of social distancing to a new era of virtual relationships, whether it will be love, friendship or business. We may even shift from the real-world to a world of tech, wherein our existence is reduced to our online presence.

I hope we don't get to the stage that Italy or Wuhan have, but if we do, we will have to be prepared to live in this new “empty city and crowded house” reality.

We may even also get to a point where schools are eventually forced to close, making home situations more complicated than they already are.

In this age of boredom, when work is where people socialise with others, the coronavirus comes with more loneliness and less real connection.

All we will have to do now is trust science and work, learn, recover, stay in touch with friends and who knows? Perhaps even go on a date from home.