I asked my friends on FB some Covid questions.
I want to collect people's Covid experiences for my future posterity. My plan is to ask a series of Covid related questions and then collect the answers. Ideally, I would get experiences from all walks of life from all around the world. Everyone's experiences with Covid are so vastly personal to each unique situation, and it fascinates me.
So, if you are willing to answer, here's my first question:
When did you realize that Covid was here and was going to change everything?
Early January. Mid January we stocked up on N95s.I had been following the information that was coming out from the WHO and knew that this was potentially going to be a big deal. Stuff built through January. I got terribly sick the end of January (all but two of my family got sick but I was the worst) and took 6+ weeks to feel reasonably normal. In retrospect I am fairly sure that it was Covid.
My son had a big choir trip at the end of March and mid February I started prepping him for the possibility that it might get canceled, despite his choir teacher being adamant that it would happen regardless of some illness on the news.
My mom was moving out of state with a mid to late March timeline and at the beginning of March we pressed her to move it up and go quickly just in case interstate travel was restricted. Early March the Governor and Health Department started putting out coronavirus information. March 3rd brought the first school letter about the virus.
We prepared our kids during the second week of March for a likely school closure of some sort and I told my teen that I was certain his trip was getting canceled. March 12 brought a school letter canceling field trips (our charter is an expeditionary school, so lots of field trips) and implementing a bunch of rules. I had been telling my husband for 2 or 3 weeks that they would likely have to work remotely, he agreed, but still didn't prep his office for it.
My kids knew going to school on March 13th that they likely wouldn't return the following week. One of their teachers who was high risk had already called in a sub a couple of days before. On March 13th the governor closed the state "just for two weeks" and that evening we got a school closure email.
On March 14th my mom moved and elbow bumped me good bye out of fear because word was already spreading that we should keep our distance. That was the weekend that the world stopped turning.
For Ben, it was March 17th when he went to work and they said, "you aren't supposed to be here. Go home and work from there."
For me, it was at Claire and Camille's gymnastics class on Thursday, March 12th. There were lots of teachers there, and as moms we were watching real time as emails and news was being broken about schools not going back after spring break. Then, I looked at CNN and these were the top two headlines:
"Disneyworld Closes"
"Mormons Cancel Church Worldwide"
I wish I'd taken a screenshot!
Both Ben and I thought it would be back to normal by April.
Heard about it on the news in early January, knew that we had a lot of international students from China returning to the UW after the holidays. I told J it would be here before we knew it. And it was. Sometime in February, hand sanitizer sold out, and TP started selling out late in February. I remember being at Costco at the end of February and the line was completely insane. Everyone was looking around at everyone else kind of going "oh. It's starting..."
I learned about the first death when I was on a quick layover in San Jose on my way to visit my grandparents in Arizona for a few days.
The last thing I did before I got back on the plane 3 days later was hug my grandpa and it turns out that was the last hug I gave outside my immediate family since then. I flew home to a VERY different Seattle than I had flown out of. Palpable fear. It took a little more than a week after that before school was canceled.
I'm so glad I took that trip. That hug from my grandpa meant a lot to me through those first few months of quarantine.
Also of note: my sister actually lives RIGHT across the street from the Life Care Center where that initial outbreak was first discovered.
I brought everyone and Cici’s equipment from school home that Thursday and knew we wouldn’t go back.
March 13th. Casey's birthday is March 15th and we still have not celebrated. The poor kid missed out on the 10th birthday celebration we wanted for him and we postponed it...we are finally doing it next week.
Similarly for us, it was when my daughter's March birthday was coming up and a shutdown was imminent, so I asked kind people to stage a drive-by celebration.
I was aware and started assessing my food storage in January. On Feb 28th I posted on an LDS homeschool group asking what people were doing to prepare. The vast majority weren’t concerned at all. I was shocked! I’ll have you read the responses sometime - pretty interesting knowing what we know now. While people were out panic buying, I was relaxing at home. Although we didn’t have nearly enough masks - only a short-term supply. Hindsight.
We took it pretty seriously from the beginning just because we didn’t want to get sick while I was pregnant. Canceled some travel plans, made sure our food supply was in order. Jon started working from home on March 11, before most people. But the moment it really hit me how MUCH it was going to change everything was when I started getting calls from my doctor and the hospital changing all their protocols. That was end of March. We never panicked and stocked up on toilet paper and have been fine but I’d be lying if it didn’t severely impact my pregnancy both logistically and emotionally starting in March.
Started watching what was happening in Italy in Feb and knew it wasn’t going to be good
I remember reading about COVID starting in January and was concerned, but definitely didn't know how much it would change everything.I knew things had the potential to be bad when Italy had problems in February, but I still hoped the US could prevent that type of dire situation. It all got real that second week in March when everything started getting cancelled. NBA and Church and Disney. School was closed a little bit after that, but it was the same time as spring break so that didn't really settle in at first. At some point in early-April a friend in Kansas posted that their school was closed for the rest of the school year and that just seemed preposterous to me.
One of my lasting memories about everything getting shut down was about Parent Teacher Conferences. On March 9th I'd spent probably 30 minutes signing myself up for conferences with my kids' 4 teachers. I was so proud of myself for getting times that lined up so perfectly with only a few minutes between each conference. Usually we have to got back to the elementary school at least twice to see all the teachers. But this time I had it perfect. By the end of the week the conferences had been moved to be phone conferences. And by the next week they were cancelled all together. This is when I realized that the things I'd thought were super important maybe weren't going to matter so much going forward.
I was substitute teaching long term at our elementary school in the special ed preschool program. The students don’t come in on Fridays and I felt I needed to stock up my pantry Friday February 28th in the morning. I had a strong impression to do this. I am not an alarmist but felt a strong feeling to go. No one was concerned too much at this point. That evening our local high school in Mill Creek Washington (3 miles away from my house)is ground zero for one of the first cases in the country and they shut down the high school for a few days to clean it and then everything went crazy at the grocery stores in western Washington for about three weeks. I was grateful to get to the stores before the crazy hit. All my little students had upper respiratory infections during the month of February and Many of us teachers in the program were getting sick. I wish we had better testing because I think we were all spreading COVID before we knew what was happening. This is all conjecture however. I need an antibody test. March 8th Church Area authorities order home church in Everett. Everett School district shuts down on the 14th of March. 17th Tom Hanks is sick and NBA cancelled and it gets real. My mom was traveling in Peru at Machu Pichu and barely made it back to the country on March 18. A day later and 200 tourists were stuck in Peru for a bit. At first I baked bread and cookies and read a lot. Later in the Spring I biked a lot with my kids to find geocaches, later this summer we looked for hikes and camped. I have continued homeschool through the summer switched from neck gator masks to more sturdy cotton masks I am retaking AP US government courses on Khan Academy, memorized the Gettysburg Address and will be voting for Biden/Harris with all my heart in November.
I have 3 kids in 3 different schools in 2 different school districts. All 3 schools cancelled within minutes of each other as the Governor closed the ski resorts. That’s when I knew it was gonna be a while.
Here’s a horribly uncomfortable story. We were driving 7 hours straight from Denver on a Friday to Karen Grish Burnside’s house in Utah to visit and stay the weekend to ski Utah. With 38 minutes to go before we get to her house, my daughter’s middle school and the CDC sends a flood of emails stating that the first suspected COVID case In Colorado was a student at my daughter’s school who had traveled to China and testing that student would take 3 days! We didn’t know what to do. We arrived and on the porch said that we could go get a hotel but we all decided right then and there that exposure was improbable and everything was getting crazy and all would be just fine. It was. Nobody got sick and that student tested negative. But geez Louise! Talk about being the epicenter of an event with the worst timing!
Thursday, March 12. Jonas and I got up early to go on a field trip with his class to the Griffith Observatory in LA. We got on the bus, drove a block and turned around. At the school, the principal got on the bus and said that it had been cancelled because the governor had just limited public gatherings. None of our kids have been back to school since that day.
When my supervisor at work (Medical facility) said, “you have a hairdresser license, right? And you can shop at the professional beauty supply store? Will you go there and buy as many gloves, masks, and cleaning supplies you can get?” (Because we were unable to get any more from the medical supply places since they were sold out). I jumped in the car immediately and headed to the beauty supply. That’s when it hit me. Like, this is real and this is going to be BAD. I had an anxiety attack on the way to the store, I lost the feeling in my feet and started shaking. I had to call my husband and I was crying and hyperventilating and he had to talk me down so I could finish this task for my work.That was sometime in March.
We knew about it March 3rd. There was not a known case here in Colorado yet but we were going to Disneyland. We couldn’t cancel but knew how careful we needed to be. (Very little was known about it at the time) By the time we got back there were cases in Colorado, Disneyland was considering closing (it closed 4 days after we left) and the school were going to close for “an extra week” after spring break!
I knew about the virus in January, and there were cases in Washington in February, but even though we live 20 miles from all the outbreaks it didn't seem close to home until Makenna and I flew to and from Colorado on empty planes. I went to work the next week and teachers were scrambling to get lesson plans and material done to send the kids home, fulling realizing the 6 weeks at home would probably be for the rest of the year. That was March 13th, my husband's birthday. We went out to dinner that night and haven't had "normal" since.
I got my first inkling when I was at a doctor appointment on February 5th and they talked about people being quarantined in San Francisco. But I think it hit home when the church announced that General Conference would be restricted. It feels like everything was crazy right after that. It’s such a blur though!
In March when my fight out was normal and 4 days later on the return fight the airport was empty.
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