What day did the coronavirus pandemic take over your life? What day did it really start to feel real?
For most people in the US, it was March 11, 2020. By that night, COVID-19 had transformed from a blurry threat to a divorce from normal life. Schools and entertainment began to close. Then-president Donald Trump addressed the nation, announcing a suspension of travel from Europe. The National Basketball Association halted its season. Tom Hanks got it.
So many forces of history years in the making converged on March 11 and were all subsumed by something few thought possible just weeks earlier. Suddenly there was no escape. The sentencing of Harvey Weinstein and the last moments of Bernie Sanders' failing campaign against Joe Biden — huge milestones for the #MeToo movement and American politics — were abruptly overtaken. Even the experts at the World Health Organization would agree March 11 was a turning point — that was the date they officially declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic.
As I noted at the beginning of March, things were already starting to feel pretty real for us. I had been working from home exclusively for about a week, which only meant that the kids would inevitably be going remote soon, too.
Still, it wasn't until all that shit above hit the fan, and I finally got the expected email from our school district, that It All Changed. And right now, nothing is different here: I'm still working from home, and I opted to NOT have the kids join the limited, hybrid class model that started this month.
We still get groceries delivered. I can't recall the last time the kids and I traveled beyond our mailbox, meaning we've been on a 300-foot tether probably at least since August.
Quite honestly, it would've been a shitty year even without COVID. We were already going through a lot of bad stuff, and in a weird way the lockdown made it all a little quieter and easier to endure (thanks to our privilege).
At least today we have competency and compassion back in the White House. Perhaps the light we see at the end of the tunnel is NOT an oncoming train...
Comments