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.