Day 5 of the COVID-19 lockdown in Denmark

Day 5 of the COVID-19 lockdown in Denmark. A student of mine calls up to say he won't be able to participate in on-line classes. He has to mind his two children, six and nine, while his wife is at work -- not every private firm has closed its doors. He's finding it difficult to focus on English exam preparation. Three other students have shared similar concerns with me. They are in their 30s, of foreign background, are raring to continue their education in Danish schools once they have their Cambridge and TOEFL exam certificates to prove their English skills.

I spend most of the afternoon teleconferencing, one of these meetings being with my English department colleagues as we learn a new program for reaching students online.
Around the country, 670,000 young people begin their first day of remote teaching; from time to time overloaded systems inevitably break down.
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The entirety of Europe is to close its borders, except for the transport of goods, food, medicines, essentials.
In the newspaper Politiken, a cartoon of two right-wing politicians rejoicing: the coronavirus has succeeded where they failed.
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In the morning I go for a walk. Our street is silent, as it generally is at 10:30 a.m. I head for a stand of trees that rings a large pond, snapping pictures of the bare branches in the spring light. I meet only one person, a little girl in a pink hat. This is not unusual for Denmark. Social distancing is the norm here; in my opinion people tend to lead rather somber, introverted lives, focused on job and family, content in their minimalist, expensively-furnished homes. We were not prepared for the lockdown when it was announced on Wednesday night, but to a great extent we seem to have accepted it, probably because it was not far different from the way we live -- winter-storm habits all year round.
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I monitor the news from the Philippines -- not those wretched press conferences that drag on longer than it would take to fly to a foreign country -- but the eyewitness testimonies of my friends and their connections. A lockdown in Manila apparently borrowed direct from the Chinese playbook, but more of a lock-out really, beginning with the urban poor, who need to take to the streets to get some space, and for whom their cramped shared quarters pose the greatest risk of coronavirus infection.