When virus infected dreams

Covid-19 synchronised our daily lives and emotions, and our dreams mirrored that collective experience

- BY SACHIN JOSE

Masked faces, people in hazmat suits, swarms of bugs, invitations from the dead—if any of these images popped up in your sleep back in 2020, you weren't alone. People across the world had such dreams during the initial phase of the Covid-19 pandemic. The content of our dreams, much like the virus, seemed almost contagious.

Harvard professor and dream researcher Deirdre Barrett was among the first to systematically track these “pandemic dreams”. When terms like 'quarandreams' emerged on social media and hashtags like #covidnightmares and #quarantinedreaming trended online in March-April 2020, she launched a large-scale survey, which was later featured in her book Pandemic Dreams. What she found was a rare glimpse into how “nearly everyone on earth” was immersed in the same waking reality.

“It wasn’t that our psyches were mystically connected; it was that for once, nearly everyone's daily life and emotional tone were synchronised,” Barrett tells THE WEEK. “A dangerous, invisible virus, combined with a shared set of restrictions—lockdowns, masking, social isolation—produced dream themes that were far more globally similar than usual.”