An examination of the societal effects of 2020's pandemic crisis, and most importantly, what that says about us and our future. With his grandfather in failing health in a nursing home outside of Beijing, journalist Ethan Lou had decided to travel to China to be with him, and then to take a long overdue holiday, from Asia to Europe, the Middle East, and the United States, before coming back to Toronto. He landed In China on January 23, two days before Chinese New Year. What was only just emerging as a "virus" story in the media had escalated while he was in the air. The Chinese government had quarantined the entire epicentre of the virus, the central city of Wuhan; 11 million were unprecedentedly locked in, the healthy along with the sick. Lou had no idea at the time how the land of his birth that had seen so much development over the past decades could so quickly turn unearthly and thick with fear, and that he had picked the worst possible time to go to China. Upon arrival, scanning the mask-hidden faces of those waiting in the terminal, he almost didn't recognize his own parents. Travelling from China to Singapore to a small town in Germany in the earliest days of the pandemic, it was as if the author was barely a step ahead of the spread of COVID-19, reliving the lockdown, disruption, and panic as the world changed with alarming speed.