She’s embarrassed to admit it, but there were moments over the summer when Adriana Kaplan almost forgot about the pandemic. In the beginning, the Philadelphia native had taken the coronavirus very seriously: She had all her groceries delivered and worked her software engineering job from her South Philly home. For the first two months of the pandemic, she barely left the house.
By the end of May though, she was starting to get restless. “I’m not good at just sitting at home,” says Kaplan, 29. “I felt trapped.”
Slowly, she began inching her way out of the house, first buying groceries at the corner store during off hours, when she expected fewer shoppers. She started hanging out with her neighbors again — first with masks, but then, increasingly, without. She went to the office a few times, and before long was heading in most days. She traveled home to visit her parents. She went on dates. It started to feel like maybe the pandemic wasn’t as serious as she’d thought.
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