Beginning on September 1, 2020, a group of fourteen of us at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey -- comprised of graduate students, undergraduate honors college students, and a history professor -- began to journal about our experiences of living through the COVID-19 pandemic. We will continue to journal into December 2020. Some of us are located in Newark during this period, but more of us are located elsewhere in New Jersey; a few are in other places in the United States and the world. We represent a wide range of backgrounds, ethnicities, and life experiences and range in age from late teens / early twenties into our forties. Each week, one student will curate excerpts from some of our journals, and we will share them publicly. Our goal is to offer a window into our subjective experiences of life during the pandemic in near real-time. We also aim to create a usable archive for future historians.

Because journaling is a personal activity, many of us elected to be identified by pseudonyms, initials, or first name. A few chose to use their full real name.

Archival versions of all linked material is available (or will be shortly) in the collection Pandemic Life: Fragments of Our Stories.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 coronavirus led to the shutdown of many worldwide operations in attempts to stop the spread through human contact. This had the unfortunate effect of depressing the economy of many countries due to many people staying at home in quarantine. Businesses lost a lot of money, causing unemployment to reach levels that were unheard of before. 

This exhibit shows, through news articles and documented video, the effect that COVID has had on the world at large. It also depicts how the virus has affected some of the largest countries in the world, as well as smaller countries who handled the pandemic in different ways. 

The exhibit is divided into different sections. The first section deals with how the pandemic has made an impact on a worldwide scale. In the beginning of the pandemic, stocks plummetted as countries were going under lockdown and trade came to a halt. Now, many economies have suffered stagnation as they try to recover from months of minimized trade.

The second section deals with the economic impact that COVID-19 has had on the United States. Due to large amounts of cases in the U.S., combined with limited intervention by the government, the American economy has struggled with dealing with the effects of the virus. As a result, both businesses and hospitals lost millions and could potentially lose more before the virus is over.

The third section deals with the impact that the coronavirus has had on China. Since the coronavirus first emerged in Wuhan, China has been able to stabilize the economy through various means; however, more damage could occur if consumer spending does not improve. It has also affected their hospitals, many of which had been working at max capacity.

The last section deals with the economic impact that the coronavirus has had on the continent of Europe. Multiple European countries have struggled with reversing the damage the virus caused at the beginning of the outbreak. Each country had a different strategy for dealing with COVID-19, with varying successes depending on the country.