I figured I should start documenting this since at best, we are living through a global pandemic and at worst... well, I'm not going to go there today. It's too scary.
It's Thursday, March 19th, which means it's been 8 days since the bottom really fell out, but I want to start at the beginning.
I don't watch a lot of news, but we usually turn it on in the early mornings when getting ready for work and then I catch the very beginning of Good Morning America. I can't remember when they started rumbling about the coronavirus in China but I know it was likely beginning of February. I thought about it like "Oh, another SARS, no biggie." When we were in New York City (Feb 13-16th), they had CNN on loop in the hotel lobby and that was when shit was really hitting the fan in China so they talked about it non-stop. Again, I figured it was just like SARS and wouldn't really affect us.
Toward the end of the month, I feel like they started talking about cases in Northern Italy, but again, too far from us to be a big deal. I remember someone saying they canceled their trip to Italy on Facebook near the beginning of March and I remember reacting to it with frustration, thinking it was too soon to panic and man, this was going to suck for the travel industry.
March rolled in and we had a busy month laid out on the calendar. I was anxious about fitting in baseball, swim practice, games, theater, trips, work, all of it. The first week of March, the talk about coronavirus or COVID-19 (the disease caused by the virus) became louder and louder. I saw that someone started a petition to close down the Houston rodeo. We started getting travel related cases here in Houston, but they could all be traced to a cruise ship in Egypt that a big local group went on. We kept going on about our lives but on 3/6 we went to see the musical Come From Away, which is all about 9/11 and the aftermath and the airline industry and I sobbed because so much of it was so personal to me, but also there was so much going on regarding this contagious virus that it felt weird to be in a big room with that many people. The talk was escalating so quickly each day, I had started buying extra groceries and stockpiling a little more than I normally do just in case. Places were running out of hand sanitizer and toilet paper. We had an unexpected day off school/work when a water main broke in Houston and I remember starting to get freaked out about school closures due to the virus - if we were going to close for a water main break across town.
The following day, we went to the Rodeo (I will never not be thankful for this). I remember being kind of surprised there wasn't a ton of hand sanitizer around since everyone had been going so crazy about it. It's so strange to look back, to think that might have been the last time for a long time that we got to do something like that. It was a great day. I am happy I feel like we did everything we wanted to do and I soaked up every minute of the rodeo and the concert. I'll never feel the same way about Maren Morris again.
The next week began and was BUSY. Adam left for a trip (unfortunately not on his normal routine and on Delta Airlines and all over the place with long airport layovers). I took Owen to swim on Monday. The swim teams must have had an off week because the pool was eerily empty. I brought a book to read but I wound up spending the entire time in a COVID Facebook group reading the day's news and reading about people's personal experiences. Things were escalating rapidly. Italy was in crisis and I believe that day was when they went on a nationwide lockdown, instead of just the northern region being a "red zone" lockdown. I think that is when I started aggressively researching the disease and it's pattern around the world.
We started talking about it more in our office the following day, Tuesday, March 10th, but we were still all going about our normal business. My boss caught wind of plans to close Owen's school district for 2 weeks (1 week past our scheduled Spring Break). WHAT? WHY? We still had all of Spring Break ahead of us! Why would they make such a drastic decision so soon? Looking back now, they must have had wind of what was coming from the city and county and chose to make proactive plans, instead of reactive. But in that moment, I was confused, horrified and really freaked out. What would I do with my kid? (HAHAHA JEN.)
I started getting really anxious about Adam still being out of town, he wasn't sure if the clients would even let him in the office for their meeting in Detroit. They kept that portion of their trip just in case and wound up being able to have their meeting. I wish I had known I was soaking up my last few minutes of my Pre-Corona life. I say that because I don't know how I, or really any of us, will ever be the same after this. Seattle was rapidly deteriorating day by day. Cases there seemed to double each day. Cases in the US seemed to more than double each day. Looking at the data periodically in my office was starting to freak me out.
I'll finish with the next day, 8 days ago, March 11th, 2020. We were working away and sometime in the morning, Wayne and Ann called me from the warehouse and said they hated to tell me but the Rodeo was cancelled. Adam and I were supposed to go see Lizzo on Friday night and they knew how much I was looking forward to it. That was the defining moment where this got real and real fast.
There was a case in Montgomery County. A police officer who hadn't traveled abroad or had contact with anyone who had. This meant we had local community spread and even worse, the officer had been to the rodeo cook off, a HUGE event. (We now know several others caught it then.) The city and county made the drastic decision to call off the rodeo, which is a gigantic economic driver. It was becoming more and more apparent to me that this was way bigger of an animal than I was expecting and I was a very early adopter of this reality, as I'd come to see.
More next time...
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