‘Yoga With Adriene’ Is the YouTube Star of the Pandemic

Updated at 11:45 p.m. ET on June 13, 2020.

There is a unique quality to this day-by-day pandemic sadness, this quarantine depression that with the protests is edging into despair. I’m not referring to those adults who seemed, in the early, pre-protest days, to be inexplicably thriving. “I’ve never been so busy!” one friend, a computer consultant, giddily enthused. “With time zones from London to Tokyo to Denver, I’m on Zoom call after Zoom call!” Then there were the professional couples suddenly toiling in their backyard like farmers, growing lettuce so swollen that they could feed brontosauruses and posting explanatory video tours on Facebook: “For our rainwater. See? This is called a ‘swale.’”

Privileged to work from home, I’m luckier than most. That’s what my peers and I have kept murmuring: “We’re lucky.” But the words crumble in our mouths because, who have actually trained for this human-lab-rat experiment, our effort to keep things in perspective goes only so far. We have no goals, no purpose. Short of banging pans at night, we can’t help essential workers. We’re 60ish, so our street protests would be at odds with public health. And my two teens? Quarantined at their dad’s. One is home from college, while the other has been watching a once-magical senior