ABSTRACT
The emergence of the infectious disease known as Covid-19 has caused widespread death and illness, economic unrest, and global uncertainty, the impact and extent of which remains presently unknown. Throughout this, there has also been an expediential growth in anxiety across different populations. Yet the anxiety produced by Covid-19 is not only an affective state experienced by individuals, it is also something that is extended in the everyday world as part of a general atmosphere. This chapter's point of departure is that the concept of an atmosphere can play a powerful role in accounting for (i) how anxiety is distributed through the world and (ii) how anxiety can institute and express itself in specific things without being reducible to those things. The chapter unfolds in three ways. First, the chapter considers the intentional structure of an atmosphere, giving special attention to the way an atmosphere generates a specific affective style. Second, attention is given to one of the salient themes of Covid-19 anxiety; namely, staying at home and leaving home. Finally, the chapter focuses on how the lived body is augmented in and through the lens of coronavirus. The chapter concludes by consolidating the role atmospheres play in synthesising these elements together.
