The Dawn of a New Common

On Thursday, February 27, 2020, during a live broadcast on television, Minister Bruno Bruin is handed a note saying that it has just been confirmed that a patient with the coronavirus has been identified in the Netherlands. Allegedly, it concerns a man who is placed in isolation in the Elisabeth-Tweesteden hospital in Tilburg. This is where the story of our book starts. The hospital mentioned by the minister is hardly a kilometer away from our university, Tilburg University. Things now start to develop quickly. During several weeks, the region of Tilburg becomes the “Corona Capital” of the Netherlands in terms of the number of people infected. On March 18, Minister Bruno Bruins collapses due to exhaustion during a debate in the Government’s House of Representatives. The following day, he resigns and soon after is temporarily replaced by a politician of a party that is not part of the current political coalition. Two days earlier, the country had gone into a lockdown after a historical speech of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.