Isolation Is Changing How You Look

As the coronavirus pandemic shut down cities and cloistered people indoors around the world, images began to circulate online of what appeared to be nature retaking territory it had previously ceded to humans. In Japan, deer wandered into transit stations looking for food. In Venice, another post claimed, swans alighted on the normally traffic-clogged canals, the waters of which were clear enough to spy fish below the surface.

Some of the photos were hoaxes—the deer were real; the clear canal waters, less so. Nonetheless, people seemed fascinated with the idea that the world humans have created for themselves could begin to fade so quickly. But many of us don’t need to look to faraway cities on social media for proof that our grip on the natural world is faltering. We can simply look in the mirror.

Quarantine cuts people