I'm @SofiyaVoznaya, Coda's visual artist. Right now, my two girls, my journalist husband and I can't leave our flat in Moscow. So I am taking over Coda's Twitter account to share what #Covid19 quarantine is like with Big Brother watching.
Sunday, we flew home from Berlin to surprising news: Moscow put all travelers from Germany on a #Covid19 quarantine list. So here we are, headed for a 14-day confinement. 
As we arrived, officials in hazmat suits were only checking passengers from Italy in the middle of the airport crowd. We grabbed our luggage and dashed out. We were ordered to self-isolate. But here's a weird thing: there was no one stopping people from taking public transport.
We learned from Moscow’s hotline the terms of our bizarre “imprisonment”: don’t go out under any circumstances, except to take the trash out. Break the rules, and you face supervised quarantine, fines and prison.
How would authorities know? Moscow has a network of facial recognition cameras (our reporting: codastory.com/authoritarian-…)
Friends say police have banged on people's doors for not registering their arrival. About 100 Chinese students got deported for violating self-quarantine rules
Friends say police have banged on people's doors for not registering their arrival. About 100 Chinese students got deported for violating self-quarantine rules
Thankfully, Russia’s online shopping sites are in full-bloom and we could fill our fridge and cupboards with 80kilos worth of food, drinks and cat litter. But...NO! I forgot milk and coffee!
Working from home isn’t easy with stir-crazy kids. My husband @alfalf normally works with a big team of journalists. Now, he has two small girls on his lap. Here he is, trying to write about Russian constitutional reforms that will keep Vladimir Putin in power until 2036.
Self-confinement changes everything. Take trash: far from a chore now. We toss a coin on who gets to go on a 20 meter walk. Rules are tight: has to be at night, in a mask. Moscow's cameras are watching.
Plus side: without distractions of the outside world, I've been doing more exercise than usual. Beyond our four walls, authorities cancelled flights, warned people against taking the metro and banned large gatherings.
But as it so often happens in this country, it feels like we don't really know what’s going on. Officially there are a handful of cases in Russia. But is the government lying to us, Chernobyl style? So many questions…
What is your quarantine experience?
Share it with us in the comments or a DM, and we may animate your story, too!
Share it with us in the comments or a DM, and we may animate your story, too!
P.S. oops! My husband’s twitter handle is @alfafp. I promise I’m not tired of him, even though we’re in close quarters!
