Americans in communities across the country have found new ways to keep in touch and keep their distance at the same time. In Texas, Austin High School seniors Brooke Peterman, 17, Maddy McCutchin, 18, Lucia Saenz, 17, Reese Simek, 18, and Lily Tickle, 18, visit in the school parking lot April 5. Jay Janner, Austin American-Statesman

As our country makes its way through the coronavirus pandemic, history is happening fast. Generations from now, these days will make up whole chapters in the story of America. In this ongoing series, titled An Uncertain Distance, USA TODAY NETWORK photographers document the faces, the families, the playing fields, the farms, the factories – most of them in surreal states of being.

We found kindness, grief, boredom, puzzlement. We saw togetherness, aloneness, helpfulness, alienation. We captured scenes reflecting a common yet alien experience, where everything we see takes on a different shape, a new color, a newfound dimension. One overarching question looms: What will our “new normal” look like?

An insidious outbreak

The novel coronavirus, unknown to Americans earlier this year, has thrown every aspect of our society into turmoil. The strains on all corners of the economy have evoked comparisons to the Great Depression, as five years of employment growth and stock market gains were wiped away in days. Nearly every student in the country is out of school. Parks, roads and beaches are empty – often by order of local or state authorities. Most of what people so recently took for granted now hangs in question.



