My grandmother died in 1918 and though it was in childbirth, a few months before the first signs of the flu, in my mind it’s always been connected to the ‘18 flu. After 1918 nothing like the World Flu Pandemic has afflicted us for over 100 years and then the COVID-19 pandemic struck. We learned we are just as vulnerable today as the world was in 1918.
In December, 2019, there were reports of lock downs and quarantines in Wuhan China, a city most of us never heard of. In 2020 the news was full of the novel coronavirus but but like Ebola and other outbreaks it was a virus far away and didn’t seem relevant to the United States.
In 2019 my sister in Iowa began having seizures and we made a couple of trips to see her. Our second trip was in February 2020. In January the virus had broken out from China and isolated cases were showing up all over the world including the United States. At first outbreaks were traceable back to China. A cruise ship was quarantined in Yokohama. But by January there were cases of “community spread” on the West Coast. The first case in the Bay Area was January 31st related to China and then the first “community spread” in the Bay Area was February 28th.
On February 23rd, when Adam and I went through O’Hare Airport in Chicago a few people were wearing surgical masks, mostly Asian. In Asia masks are common during cold and flu seasons and Asian ethnic communities here, but it always seemed a little neurotic to me. I wasn’t worried about the novel coronavirus yet, but in the Chicago airport some people were.
As March began it became obvious that the novel coronavirus was loose in the United States. By mid-March cases were multiplying each day, 4 became 8, became 16. Trump was incompetent as a national leader. In the first week in March a cruise ship in the Eastern Pacific with hundreds of infections was looking for a safe port. Trump said, “he didn’t want to bring the Grand Princess’s passengers back to land because doing so would increase the critical count of US coronavirus cases. I don’t need to have the numbers double of one ship that wasn’t our fault. I’d rather have them stay on, personally.” The ship parked outside in International Waters outside of the San Francisco Bay March 4th and finally March 10th docked in Oakland.
By March 15 Alameda had community transmission unrelated to travelers. It was in the Bay Area and infections were multiplying exponentially. A few cases in February had become hundreds of cases by mid-March. Adam’s school canceled classes for March 15 and said they would consider what to do after the weekend.
Saturday I went to the supermarket to pick up a few things The atmosphere at the Nob Hill in Alameda was tense and there were people with full carts, some with two carts. The shelves where there had been toilet paper and sanitizer were empty. Sunday we went to Shop Rite in our neighborhood. It was crowded but less tense. Monday, a free day, it was announced the school would close indefinitely and school would be by distant learning online. On Tuesday March 17, the six county Bay Area declared a regional Shelter in Place order, closing schools and all but essential businesses. On Thursday March 19 Governor Newsom issued a statewide Stay at Home order.
It seemed like we were under siege. When I bicycled in the East Bay Shoreline Regional Park on Wednesday, the maintenance worker wasn’t sure I could be there, it was still being argued. Not until the next week was the order altered to allow outdoor exercise. Similar orders in Europe and Asia were being enforced by cops writing citations and making arrests of anyone outside their apartment for anything but essential trips.
On May 28th twelve cases of COVID-19 were reported at Cardenas Supermercado in our neighborhood. My brother-in-law Alan Bruemmer, Kate’s brother, had Multiple Sclerosis. His MS required frequent hospital visits. He was infected and died in December, 2020. Alan’s death was the only one of two of someone I knew. An elderly neighbor Mrs. Smith lived two doors down from us. Her house was a gathering place for her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. At first the family stayed away but after a couple of weeks the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren returned. Some wore masks but younger people in our town were less careful. Mrs. Smith died of covid during the summer.
A high school classmate, a gentleman with whom I had reconnected 15 years before, had gone full Q-Anon on rumors and paranoia. In our last phone conversation in November 2020 according to Bill the pandemic was a plot and a hoax and the vaccine was dangerous. I was shocked that he believed it all. I knew he was a Republican, but he had always seemed rational to me. He died of covid in August 2021 unvaccinated. Until today, March 31, 2023, Suzette, Adam and I have been uninfected. We took precautions and when vaccines were available we got vaccinated.
In the first days we wondered when things would return to normal. They never have. Early in the pandemic I heard a radio host respond to the question, “How are you?” with the answer, “Under the new normal I’m doing pretty good.”
I’d been baking our bread for over ten years. I buy active dry yeast by the pound and it lasts a year or more. In the beginning of the pandemic my supply of dry yeast was running out. Baking at home had become a national past time and yeast and flour were hard to find. I found a 25 pound bag of flour at Shop Rite. I made a sour dough starter at home and three years later I’m still using it.
The year before the pandemic I had gotten interested in specialty coffee. In November before the pandemic I bought an espresso machine. And so in the pandemic I indulged my interest in coffee, exploring the Peerless offerings at their roastery buying from a table in the doorway and then online at Amazon. My coffee obsession reached a new level. We began doing weekly shopping trips online at Amazon. In April we went to Starbucks in San Leandro and waited 45 minutes in a long line of cars to buy our drinks at a drive-up window. It was a real treat.
In the beginning of the pandemic I thought if we could take the proper precautions we might eradicate the virus. We watched the various indexes, the Worldometer, the CDC maps, the New York Times maps, the State Data sites, the County Data Site. Reading charts like baseball statistics, trying to parse out infection rates R(t)s, deaths, infections, testing and ICU capacity. We watched the transmission rate closely, wishing it below 1.00 where maybe the virus would die out. Or a vaccine, only vaccines take years and that wasn’t going to happen soon.
At first we didn’t go anywhere unnecessarily. We stopped seeing friends. Gary, our neighbor four doors down and I began meeting for morning coffee on his porch on Tuesdays. We sat and discussed the pandemic and politics for an hour and a more. We met like that for 2 ½ years.
By May, 2020, I realized masks could make a major difference. Experts were not recommending masks. I think it was more they were in short supply and they didn’t want to start a run on masks that would worsen the shortage for health care workers. I wore a bandana over my face and slowly China was able to ramp up their masks production and we could all get masks. In June California mandated masks in indoor settings and the pandemic prevailed. I ordered 50 surgical masks from Amazon. There was no longer any hope of stopping it before it became widespread.
In June I talked to a friend in Redondo Beach who had gone inside a restaurant to eat. Restrictions were easier there and I was jealous. We hadn’t been to a restaurant for months. At first delivery had been fun and then it was boring Then we went for a drive to Inverness and went to a deli where after we ordered our food we could eat outside at a picnic table. It seemed such a special treat that day in June. I remember the first time we went to a restaurant with outdoor dining at Jack London Square. We had to have our temperature taken and wear masks except at our table. After that we returned to the restaurant scene outdoors as often as we could.
The pandemic deaths in the United States were in the thousands each day. The vaccine was rolled out with a limited supply in December, 2020, an incredible accomplishment by the scientific and medical community. The pandemic peaked in January, 2021 with over 4,000 deaths per week in California alone.
There was a scramble by people to get the vaccine. At first you had to be 75. I was 74. Then there were loopholes and cracks and people I knew spent hours on the phone were able to get in for a vaccine. By the end of February I got my vaccination and in March Suzette got hers. The worst spread had been among the elderly decreasing with age and children mostly were unscathed.
There was this sense of new freedom. By June, 2021, fewer than 100 people a week were dying and it seemed the dying were the unvaccinated. There was another surge in February of 2021 at a third of the death rate of 2020 and since then the virus has been with us, many people infected but fewer deaths. A few vaccinated people died but overall it was at a rate 50 times less than the unvaccinated. Death was no longer a strong possibility but more like the flu a remote possibility. After my vaccination I never worried much about dying of covid. And then the variants started infecting vaccinated people, but like flu, a couple of weeks of being sick for most people staying at home, not hospitalizations. Today there are antivirals that are very effective if used early.
In the first flush of enthusiasm and relief I made plane reservations for a vacation in Puerto Rico. I was feeling protected. Later we changed to Chiapas Mexico when Adam’s close friend made plans with her father to return to where they had spent a year before. And we went to Chiapas. Chiapas had experienced low infection rates at the worst of it in Mexico and the vaccine was generally available by the time we arrived in July. We were careful on the plane. Mexico was much easier than the United States. There was no political divide. Mexican society has much more social cohesion and most Mexicans were careful about protecting themselves and their neighbors. Stores and nearly everywhere else required you to put a hand up for a temperature check and wear a mask. An attendant at the door enforced the rules.
There was no worry about scofflaws or skeptics. And the rates of infection showed it. For a month in Chiapas we were aware of covid but didn’t see any infections. The locals were concerned and acted so and the covid they had they blamed on International tourists like us but there wasn’t active animosity. Leaving for the United States we had to have an antigen test within a few days of our departure. It was hard to find, the demand was very high and the availability limited, but finally at a pharmacy we were able to make an appointment and it was an easy process.
Back in the States the politics were poisoned. Areas like the coast of California and liberal regions were safer but even here compliance wasn’t universal, the possibility of non-compliance, the lack of will was obvious, unlike Mexico. In Mexico everyone paid attention. In coastal California most people did wear masks indoors and in Eastern California it seemed to be a statement of patriotic independence to ignore it. We went to Yucca Valley where many people were defiantly unmasked and many gave us the fisheye when they saw our masks.
The Omicron variant came while we were in Mexico and at home there was renewed caution with people more careful about mask wearing. The Zocalo, a favorite cafe in San Leandro, allowed people inside but only after showing proof of vaccination, washing your hands, and wearing a mask. The whole staff was masked of course.
Vaccines were approved for 12 and up in 2021 and Adam got theirs when they turned 12 in October.
I went to Iowa in November, 2021, my sister was in hospice. In Iowa people wearing masks were in the minority. The politics were that lock downs and closings limited our freedom and was bad for business. The Republicans apparently were practicing Social Darwinism. After all the worst effected by the pandemic were the elderly, the poor and people of color. It was so amazing that it was clearly a political issue for Republicans, Trump at first had been on the side of prevention and caution, but when the Populists angrily denied acts of empathy and thoughtfulness as infringing on their freedom Trump followed.
Slowly the pandemic waned, less transmission. The politics continued toxic. The Democrats won back the Presidency.
This is the new normal. Life doesn’t seem constricted. We do what we want, go to restaurants, shop, travel, and visit with friends. Some people are more cautious than others. Here in the Bay Area most people seem respectful, putting on masks when asked to. Our Unitarian Church started in person services again in March 2022. We were more conservative than most churches. There had been some intense discussions about requiring vaccinations or not. We are still required to wear masks indoors except when eating.
Hugs and closeness, not everyone is comfortable riding in the same car with other people, sharing an elevator, inviting people into their homes. One friend still won’t eat indoors with other people.
There is this feeling of unease that’s always there, mostly unconscious. It’s a constant we’ve all learned to live with. We’re never going back to what we called normal but things today are normalish. Nature has shown us our own fragility. Life is a gift.
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