The incentive for this chapter emerged in the beginning of the pandemic when we collected data for a comparative research project in three countries whose strategies to combat the COVID-19 virus were strikingly different and often debated: Sweden, Italy, and the United States. Trying to make sense of our subjective feelings as well as the collective feelings we identified in reports and discussions in the media and personal conversations, we found that our efforts were not only therapeutic, but served as illuminating examples of authoritative and public responses that either fragmented or supported emotional communities. The three countries faced the same health hazards, but the authorities’ emotional response and the public’s collective feelings differed. Through individual autoethnographic diaries, observations of press conferences, and joint emotional reflections, we found that our own feelings and our respective countries’ responses were diverse. Employing collaborative autoethnography, and a three-tier analysis strategy, we discuss the observed responses in our respective national contexts during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic and reflect on how public and private experiences coalesce into experiences of both a shared sense of emotional community as well as feelings of emotional estrangement.