A year ago, the corona crisis broke out. L1 looks back on that period with a number of people. At the time, pharmacist Ellen Willemsen from Maastricht was suddenly through all the mouth caps, to her own surprise. They were all bought by Chinese students.
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The Chinese took the masks with them en masse to Asia, where a relatively unknown virus was raging at that time. One year later, in 2021, the pharmacist knows better. “I don’t think there has been a year in my life when so much has changed.”
2020
It is more than a month before the corona outbreak in the Netherlands when reporter Frank Moonen visits pharmacist Ellen Willemsen to ask about the sale of mouth masks. The corona virus has not yet reached the Dutch border at this point. Somewhat uncomfortably, the pharmacist is standing with an old box in her hands, hundreds of which are suddenly sold to Chinese students. “Normally we only sell them sporadically during carnival, to someone who dresses up as a surgeon,” she laughs.
2021
A year later, a lot has changed in the pharmacy upon arrival. Jolly about mouth masks is no longer an option. The mudguards have been installed, walking lines pasted and disinfection poles placed. Not long after the interview with Willemsen in January 2020, covid-19 also reached the Limburg border. “I think they were better informed than we were about what was to come.”
Naive
“Then the world looked very different,” says Willemsen when she looks back at the images from 2020. “Gosh, how naive we were all then. We even joked about it.”
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