2020, Part 1
Let me spin you a yarn... There was a time when people were only barely concious of "the coronavirus". In early Winter of 2019. I put that in quotes because that was the beginning, that was the main name. I always take late showers, so I get to flip on NPR's last program and then BBC World Service to take in passive information as I like to call it.
I remembered hearing about a mysterious virus in December, something about it in Wuhan, China. I thought nothing of it, even though the speculation about a new type of SARS had started. Fast forward to January of 2020, information is leaking out faster than the CCP could control, I assume. It gets to the point in February I'm hearing about it even more, as we all are.
Author's note:
I want to say I'm not going to remember this all in the right order, because even I just barely paid attention. To me, I thought it would be another scare like Ebola. I like many other Americans were totally unaware what we would be seeing in another two months.
But as we are stupid Americans, we just keep ignoring the potential danger. This is not to mention that in that month it was confirmed the first of the coronavirus in an American had occurred. Our president at the time, said something to the effect that it was only one man, and that it was under control stressing that China was the origin point.
The origin point wasn't incorrect, however this was probably intended to embarrass or humiliate China. We were having a trade war at that point. There was no insult or pointing out of shortcomings that were off the table. The USA was used to moral low points at that point of the trump regime. February came and at this point, things were starting to get real.
I remember meeting a friend at a downtown IHOP, which was kinda deserted. Not to mention staff were giving more room and any condiments we requested were given in small portion cups that could be disposed of. Which I kind of liked, and I still thought that this was a bit overkill. At the pizzeria we did a similar thing and only allowed people to wait for their pizzas outside, which subsequently pissed them off.
Fuck those people. Anyway, I'm under a lot of stress and micromanaging from Shaun of the shitheads. So I keep on to March arriving. On the 12th we had our first local case of the coronavirus at a mall. It scared the shit out of some people, mall became deserted even after a deep clean of the affected areas. A friend of mine remarked how the food-court there a few days later was so empty.
Come up on the 27th of that month, I'm done, haven't showed up to work in three days. Just in a deep depression. That very weekend, my city decided to lock the fuck down and enact the "shelter in place, work safe" policy. This was to cut down of transmission, even though it was very low. And to amend that last statement, this was when testing wasn't even widely available and was not terribly accurate.
But two days before that policy went into effect, I explored downtown a bit and took some photos just for the fuck of it and it was creepy how dead the town was. This was likened to the film The Day the Earth Stood Still. (post pic here)
So, thus began one of the most interesting times in my American life. Anyways, the way aforementioned policy worked was that workers deemed "essential" would get passes from their employer to go to work in whatever way they commuted. Essential travel was considered too, grocery shopping, going to the gas station, similar but restricted activity.
Grocery shopping was dictated by how many people could go in, masks weren't yet mandated so we only really had social distancing as first measure. Again, people were starting to freak the hell out and hoarding food and water. And for some fucking stupid reason, toilet paper. I was smart, I had wipes, gets your wrecked b-hole cleaner. We live in the future.
So yeah, first the top ramen disappeared, then the bottled water, and everyone went after everything. But getting back to it, that's why there were only so many people allowed in. So after a while My family was stuck at their respective homes. So this would've been a week to two weeks after that mess had hit the fan.
At that point Italy and New York City, USA were seeing insane numbers of cases and people were dying en masse. In China it was much the same, but not as reported. China had the harshest lockdown measures, but again, under reported infections and deaths. Back to Italy, some people even died in the place they were walking. Collapsing, dying on side walk. This was the first time we'd seen a pandemic in this intensity since 1918.
People were scared, but a lot of people were skeptical. They wrote it off as "the flu" or "the cold". As it had been reported by ABC in those days before we saw and heard of that gruesome reality in Italy, it was being said that it was mild by a few interviewees. I think that really did a diservice to how different people react to illness, and it may have contributed to people's complacency.
Anyhow. After during the horrors of the coronavirus in Italy, our country had our own epicenter of tragedy unfolding day to day in NYC. It was essentially out of control. That isn't to say they weren't following measures, but that the virus had infiltrated before they had locked down. We had heard on the news that this virus could take anywhere from a few days to two weeks to manifest into the symptoms.
My world became very small and consisted of time with my mother, Chloe: the best dog ever, and myself. We were there for each other. We all had a role, and we did our best to maintain morale and stay productive, even if it was simply watching a movie or doing repair and small renovations in our home. This was a time of loss and new beginnings in America.
To be continued in Part 2.
I remembered hearing about a mysterious virus in December, something about it in Wuhan, China. I thought nothing of it, even though the speculation about a new type of SARS had started. Fast forward to January of 2020, information is leaking out faster than the CCP could control, I assume. It gets to the point in February I'm hearing about it even more, as we all are.
Author's note:
I want to say I'm not going to remember this all in the right order, because even I just barely paid attention. To me, I thought it would be another scare like Ebola. I like many other Americans were totally unaware what we would be seeing in another two months.
But as we are stupid Americans, we just keep ignoring the potential danger. This is not to mention that in that month it was confirmed the first of the coronavirus in an American had occurred. Our president at the time, said something to the effect that it was only one man, and that it was under control stressing that China was the origin point.
The origin point wasn't incorrect, however this was probably intended to embarrass or humiliate China. We were having a trade war at that point. There was no insult or pointing out of shortcomings that were off the table. The USA was used to moral low points at that point of the trump regime. February came and at this point, things were starting to get real.
I remember meeting a friend at a downtown IHOP, which was kinda deserted. Not to mention staff were giving more room and any condiments we requested were given in small portion cups that could be disposed of. Which I kind of liked, and I still thought that this was a bit overkill. At the pizzeria we did a similar thing and only allowed people to wait for their pizzas outside, which subsequently pissed them off.
Fuck those people. Anyway, I'm under a lot of stress and micromanaging from Shaun of the shitheads. So I keep on to March arriving. On the 12th we had our first local case of the coronavirus at a mall. It scared the shit out of some people, mall became deserted even after a deep clean of the affected areas. A friend of mine remarked how the food-court there a few days later was so empty.
Come up on the 27th of that month, I'm done, haven't showed up to work in three days. Just in a deep depression. That very weekend, my city decided to lock the fuck down and enact the "shelter in place, work safe" policy. This was to cut down of transmission, even though it was very low. And to amend that last statement, this was when testing wasn't even widely available and was not terribly accurate.
But two days before that policy went into effect, I explored downtown a bit and took some photos just for the fuck of it and it was creepy how dead the town was. This was likened to the film The Day the Earth Stood Still. (post pic here)
So, thus began one of the most interesting times in my American life. Anyways, the way aforementioned policy worked was that workers deemed "essential" would get passes from their employer to go to work in whatever way they commuted. Essential travel was considered too, grocery shopping, going to the gas station, similar but restricted activity.
Grocery shopping was dictated by how many people could go in, masks weren't yet mandated so we only really had social distancing as first measure. Again, people were starting to freak the hell out and hoarding food and water. And for some fucking stupid reason, toilet paper. I was smart, I had wipes, gets your wrecked b-hole cleaner. We live in the future.
So yeah, first the top ramen disappeared, then the bottled water, and everyone went after everything. But getting back to it, that's why there were only so many people allowed in. So after a while My family was stuck at their respective homes. So this would've been a week to two weeks after that mess had hit the fan.
At that point Italy and New York City, USA were seeing insane numbers of cases and people were dying en masse. In China it was much the same, but not as reported. China had the harshest lockdown measures, but again, under reported infections and deaths. Back to Italy, some people even died in the place they were walking. Collapsing, dying on side walk. This was the first time we'd seen a pandemic in this intensity since 1918.
People were scared, but a lot of people were skeptical. They wrote it off as "the flu" or "the cold". As it had been reported by ABC in those days before we saw and heard of that gruesome reality in Italy, it was being said that it was mild by a few interviewees. I think that really did a diservice to how different people react to illness, and it may have contributed to people's complacency.
Anyhow. After during the horrors of the coronavirus in Italy, our country had our own epicenter of tragedy unfolding day to day in NYC. It was essentially out of control. That isn't to say they weren't following measures, but that the virus had infiltrated before they had locked down. We had heard on the news that this virus could take anywhere from a few days to two weeks to manifest into the symptoms.
My world became very small and consisted of time with my mother, Chloe: the best dog ever, and myself. We were there for each other. We all had a role, and we did our best to maintain morale and stay productive, even if it was simply watching a movie or doing repair and small renovations in our home. This was a time of loss and new beginnings in America.
To be continued in Part 2.