Step into a time machine set for December 2019. Not the very end — the knives of COVID were still hidden. But pick any day earlier that year, and you’ll find a world both achingly familiar and strangely innocent.
On that “yesterday” in 2019, people crowded into movie theaters to watch Avengers: Endgame for the third time, mourning Iron Man without knowing real grief was coming. They squeezed into budget flights to Barcelona or Bangkok without a mask in sight, let alone a thought about PCR tests. Office workers shook hands in meetings. Kids shared lunch, trading soggy sandwiches and laughter, no six-foot rules. Hand sanitizer was a quirky desk accessory, not a lifeline. yesterday 2019
Social media hummed with memes about awkward Thanksgiving dinners, not case counts. The word “lockdown” meant prison drills. “Social distancing” wasn’t a phrase. No one had uttered “Pfizer” or “Moderna” in daily conversation. Step into a time machine set for December 2019
Now, looking into that yesterday feels like watching home movies of a house before the fire. We see ourselves hugging strangers at concerts, touching elevator buttons without a second thought, coughing in public without a moral panic. On that “yesterday” in 2019, people crowded into