Born Then2020–2022
Life during the COVID-19 pandemic
Be born in a place it hit, a few years before it began, and see what it did to five ordinary lives.
What it meant for ordinary people
A new coronavirus spread worldwide from early 2020, closing schools and borders and leading to lockdowns. Older people died at far higher rates; vaccines from late 2020 reduced deaths.
Deaths: about 7 million reported deaths, and an estimated 15–20 million excess deaths worldwide.
How hard it hits each person in the game (risk of death, of being conscripted, of leaving) comes from scholarly estimates.
Around the same time
- Bracero program and Mexican migration to the United States 1942–2007
- Colombian armed conflict 1964–2016
- Migration to the Gulf 1973–2025
- China's reform and opening 1978–2015
- One-child policy 1980–2015
- HIV/AIDS epidemic in southern and eastern Africa 1985–2015
- Second Congo War 1998–2003
- War in Afghanistan (2001–2021) 2001–2021
- Iraq War 2003–2011
- 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami 2004
- Mexican drug war 2006–2025
- 2008 financial crisis 2008–2010
- Syrian civil war 2011–2024
- 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami 2011
- Rohingya genocide 2016–2017
- COVID-19 pandemic 2020–2022
- Myanmar civil war since the 2021 coup 2021–2025
- Russian invasion of Ukraine 2022–2025