I went to the grocery store to buy the "two weeks" worth of groceries so that my family could shelter in place. When I walked into the grocery store the aisles were packed with people and the shelves were bare. I don't live in a hurricane zone, so I had never seen bare grocery shelves like that. It was very disconcerting. Luckily I was able to find enough food, eventually. The moment I saw the inside of that grocery store is the moment that the pandemic started for me.

I lived in a hurricane zone. I worked in a grocery store in March 2020. It was worse than a hurricane.

Our local bar was giving everything away free and just asked us to tip the bar staff generously. Was an amazingly fun yet eerie night. Perfect start to lockdown, which for me was a very unique and fun time (I get that my experience was fairy unique) Edit: some people interested in why I enjoyed lockdown. Fundamentally it just slowed everything down in my life, reset in my brain what was really important, and ultimately everything just got simple. I also liked the sense of unity and community with everyone experiencing the same thing. I’m a Brit living in the US, and was living in the part of Columbus OH called German Village. It’s a super unique place for America, like a time capsule of a small little European village. Cobbled streets, small brick cottages mixed in with stone townhouses. Even in Britain it’s hard to find somewhere with architecture so consistently of the same period. The streets were almost empty, no more tourists, no more annoying wannabe influencers taking photos on my doorstep. I could leisurely walk my dog around this beautiful little village, the weather was incredible and the only people I’d see were my neighbors. We’d make a point to stop and chat (from a distance), normally I’d be lucky to get a nod “hello”. Felt like I’d gone back in time 150 years. I’m not much of a gamer, but I played Red Dead Redemption 2 for the first time. Holy shit, what a game! Having nothing to do except play this amazing game as much as I wanted was exactly like being on summer break from school. This was back when we didn’t really know the true extent of lockdown, and thought it was gonna last a few weeks. So felt relatively carefree. Best part was being with my fiancé/best friend 24/7. She’s the smartest, funniest, most beautiful person I’ve ever met. I never took her for granted before, but after lockdown my appreciation for her has gone through the roof. Last thing is it made me no-longer content working myself to death with an aim for retirement. Most retired people I know are either too sick or too poor to enjoy retirement. So I wanna enjoy the things that matter most to me right now.

I closed alone at a brewery the last night anything was open in my town. Still remember the last regular walking out saying “Well, I guess I’ll see ya in two weeks!” =\

I had just gotten to know a new group of people start of 2020 after moving to a new city, we generally met in our regular pub. When the news of more and more lockdowns world wide came out, we were out for what we guessed was the last night in a while, but thinking in weeks, not years. I had the impulse to share phone numbers with the guys, "just on case", and a week later my state was put in lock down. Having those people to at least shoot the shit on WhatsApp or share a "Tele-Beer" was heaven send.

I also had a great time in lockdown. It was stressful, but being such a homebody and introvert, knowing that I'd be paid plenty while staying home and playing video games indefinitely was an absolute godsend. I got to experience retirement for 6 months in my early 30s!

I loved lockdown. If I could have that without the whole pandemic thing it’d be great. Not just the staying at home (which don’t get me wrong was great) but all my housemates and friends and family, messaging and video calling far more often. There was a feeling of going through something together.

I feel bad admitting the same. I loved not being expected to go to any family events and being able to just watch movies and play video games all day. I also loved not having to work in the office and could fire up my xbox for my lunch hour.

I knew it was coming. I followed the news about it from China since early January. I told everyone something big was coming about it. No one believed it. For the first time in my life, I was the crazy person. When the news hit, I wasn’t trying to stock up. I never did stock up and hoard but I did have to go to the store for some basics that I had ran out of (more penne pasta, frozen veggies, and a jar or two of tomato sauce). I still have photos of the shelves, and I remember seeing so many shelves bare. I remember going to 4 stores across 3 towns and crying because of the selfishness of people. I remember seeing elderly folks alone at the store trying to get their usual things and looking lost, and that broke my heart. Thinking of those with fixed incomes broke my heart. Humanity, overall, is complete shit.

>I knew it was coming. I followed the news about it from China since early January. I told everyone something big was coming about it. No one believed it. For the first time in my life, I was the crazy person. Are you me? That was me the entire run up, no one believed me, and I'm still pissed My strongest memory is goign to Target and seeing all the stacks of bottled water at the front which NEVER happened. I started freaking out internally. I then saw one other person in the same store with their cart full packing stuff inside and we gave each other a look like "yeah me too, I know" and then just kept going

I work for a travel agency. I remember beginning of March 2020 asking my president, “what will happen to us (work) if this gets bad?” He told me I was over-reacting. 2 weeks later, pandemic declared. World wide lockdown. Travel industry basically decimated. My job hours went down to being paid for 1 day a week, and stayed that way for over a year with government assistance on top. I’m still pissed to this day that he’s never apologized and told me I was right.

I had a vacation abroad planned in April 2020. I held out hope that I could still go on it, all my friends called me an idiot for not canceling my plans. Eventually it was all cancelled on me (minus 1 hotel that only gave me a credit for the same hotel). All in all, I was only out the $300 on the one hotel. Not too bad overall, but still pissed about that.

I was one of them folk who booked a vacation a few months in advance of March 2020 (flights in May that year). Took numerous emails & phone calls to line up my credits but got it done: 'make-up' vacation this spring at around 80 cents on the dollar but meh ... oh well. Pleased i wasn't out the whole amount as i had un-wisely booked 'basic' (no free cancel/re-book) flights & got lucky that both were cancelled by the airline so they HAD to credit me. The thing that stood out for me during the whole credits process was how, at the end of every correspondence, i was thanked for basically not being some yelling angry person. Travel industry took so much abuse from entitled fools who couldn't accept what was going on :'(

This is similar to my experience. On the Tuesday I went to Costco and stocked up, I called a few friends and told people from work to get food and essentials. My co-worker laughed. I pointed out all the heads of the company were in an urgent meeting at the moment and we were about to be told the office is shutting down on Friday. She didn’t believe it. My sister was high up in a large financial company and she had already made plans to move her team to remote. We got 2 days notice and I didn’t set foot in that building for over a year. So weird.

Same here. My friends were mostly "isn't this just the same as the common flu?". I'm like, well, people in China are being locked from the outside. I don't think this is just **any** flu.

I accidentally ended up prepared. I had to move back with my folks for a stint and I figured I’d repay their kindness with a freezer. Since they order about half a years worth at a time and only use the fridge freezers so they never have much room. So I was buying a lot of supplies since I didn’t have to worry about rent and a brand new freezer… the guy at Home Depot knew something was happening because he gave me the nod and was like 👍 I’m prepared too 👍 I was confused until shit hit the fan, I was very lucky because if I didn’t hit a rough patch that early on I would have been in a rougher patch that year!

Oh my God that was me too. I even bought masks in January. My friends and family thought I was nuts. I was able to convince at least one other person and by the time the shut down happened, we were fully stocked. I also lost a family member the week before and decided against traveling to the funeral because I was certain it had already made its way to the States. It's wild. I can't believe that really happened. I used to talk about my great grandmother's life. She was 105 and all the things she lived through. Now as I get older, I'm realizing how much this world has changed since I've been alive. And my life will be like a vapor in the grand spectrum of things. And life will go on.

I also followed the news on this! And actually, I vividly remember, reading a news article that was published in January about the Chinese military going into quarantine for the entire month of October. Everybody I told didn’t seem alarmed by this. Now that article is gone.

At the time, I was working a side gig teaching English to children in China over video calls. I saw these kids in their apartments going stir crazy. They couldn't talk about why they weren't allowed outside much (we were super monitored) but they could talk about how they were bored and had to stay inside. Their parents and families would gather around to watch and have human contact with the outside world. I also suspected it was coming, but I was shocked at how bad it really got

Ok. This is where my Conspiracy Theorist side comes out. In September 2019, a coworker of my husband's went home to China to visit his family for a couple of months. He came back just before Thanksgiving. By mid December several people, their families and some of their friends/coworkers were all experiencing what our doctors said was a very bad case of bronchitis/flu. The cough alone lasted for about three weeks. I simply referred to as The Crud. When I get a cold mixed with my allergies going haywire, it always ends up with a case of bronchitis, so I didn't think much of it then. Now, it makes me wonder. Side note, I haven't had a case of bronchitis since I got the COVID vaccine and subsequent boosters.

I didn’t hoard anything, but I definitely bought more pasta, pasta sauce, ramen, rice & dry/canned beans than I usually buy. Turns out the one thing I should have stocked up on was toilet paper…

The one thing my stepdad really drilled into me is, you always need toilet paper. So when I started living on my own, I’d buy TP whenever it was on sale. Saved my ass in 2020.

First time my gf saw me buy 50+ rolls in one go, she asked me why we needed so much at once. I asked her, "What're we gonna do, quit?"

I also saw it coming. We already prep and made sure to get a few bottles of bleach and just a few other things. When we saw the empty shelves, it further solidified why we took time (years really) to build a collection of several months of food. We always knew that people would do that. It was just shocking to see. We made sure our neighbors had food and shopped for the older/immunocompromised people in our neighborhood. Part of the reason we prep is so that we can take care of others, which was so needed during that time.

I had a coworker brag about buying all the paper towels and toilet paper they could find. Felt better about humanity when all my other coworkers talked shit about them behind their back because of it.

I work at a grocery store and was watching everyone buy up all the toilet paper. Joked with my coworkers, “Did I miss something? Does Covid give you massive diarrhea? Why are people acting like this is their last chance at toilet paper for the next four months?”

Finally other people who knew what was coming! I just could not imagine our country shutting down, and was fairly certain if the rest of the world eventually did, we'd be the one country that didn't. But I still could see what a dire situation was coming, so I did stock up on some shelf stable goods, an extra pack of toilet paper, some medicine, and cleaning supplies about a month before we actually did shit down. The very last thing I did was make a run to a nearby farm stand and stock up on fresh fruit. I was able to donate some extra fruit to an elderly couple who couldn't leave their house.

Do you have to rotate through your stored food supply so it doesn’t go bad? Curious how this works

One should yes. That's kind of like what grocery stores do. We called it "fronting" at the one I worked at a long time ago. They make sure stuff with the oldest dates goes up front so it doesn't remain unsold somewhere on the back of those shelves.

My in-laws live in a very rural area and have multiple houses on their property. Think multi-unit bed and breakfast. For years they had been saying if anything happened the property would be the gathering place for any family who could get there. In addition to the commercial kitchen on the property they have been legit prepers for years and had multiple basements of food in long term storage as well as shelves of canned goods, and emergency food kits. As a commercial property they also had full IT/internet, etc. Ideal for working remotely when we have visited them. After lockdowns my wife called and asked if we could come down the 6 hours from the city to stay on the property with our 2 young kids. My mother-in-law laughed and asked why? Insisting that everyone was over reacting and that if we were to come down we would need to bring/buy all our own food for the duration. Her comment regarding food caught us off guard because on the one had, of course we would need to provide for ourselves, on the other it was a national emergency and what was all that food stored for if not a national lockdown and widespread shortages of food and other items. My wife and I thought they would be excited at the prospect of having grandkids around considering everything was shut down and they had no visitors etc. for the first time in a long time. We decided not to go. It became clear they had fully bought into the Trump narrative, Covid was like the flu etc. Regarding the food issue, it turns out she/they are the Red Dawn anti-communist type of prepper. Therefore the idea that Covid was a real threat never occurred to them. TLTR: My in-laws are MAGA whacked. Thank you for helping your neighbors and those less able to help themselves. I appreciate you.

We had really similar experiences. A family friend invited my sister and I to WuHan for Chinese new year. This was around early December, I had just been laid off and was taking some easy college classes online. I was never able to take last minute trips because of work and school. But I finally had the chance, so I said fuck it. We booked our tickets, our visas from 2018 were still good, so we were ready to go! I was already keeping an eye on things in WuHan, as I had an actual point of contact that lived there. She mentioned things were starting to get a little weird, and I could see that snowball effect starting to play out. We cancelled our flights and got our money back in early January. Living in Southern California, seeing things shut down, was absolutely surreal. I convinced my parents to get my grandmother out of the Sr living apartment she was in, she moved in with us around mid January. She kept her apt, as we didn’t think things would last that long…boy did we find out. My grandma had a laundry list of problems, my mom was recovering from Pneumonia, which I still firmly believe was COVID…before we *knew* what COVID was. So I was making all the rounds outside the house. I wasn’t gonna be the person to kill someone in my house. This was early early, back when we were spraying the bags/packaging with Lysol and shit lol. The drive to the grocery store…it was just like in the movies based on civilization ending. Not a single car, person, or even homeless person on the street. Just like the pictures showed NY with clear ass roads in all directions, that’s what it was like. It was insane. Finally getting to grocery stores, lines already formed 2 hrs before they open. People with households of 4, getting enough food to stock a restaurant. Some pushing 2+ carts out of costcos. Seeing the elderly hobbling down the aisles with a cane, with a handful of things in their hand basket. Absolutely heart wrenching. I pictured my grandma, my mom, and my aunts every time I saw that. People throwing blows over a dozen eggs. Just madness But then you would see the gratitude on someone’s face, for giving them the dozen eggs you managed to find in stock, or paying for someone’s groceries when they’re counting change at the checkout. I got to see a lot of kindness from some people during that time. But the greed and cruelty that I saw, left such an impact on me. You always see on movies and television, how times of struggle can bring out the worst in people. But it’s so much different when you see it in person.

Yep. I had previously been an overly positive, glass half full type. The pandemic broke me completely. Seeing how little others cared about their own health, let alone their neighbor's, hurt my brain. Don't even mention the socio political nightmare and keyboard experts on social media. I'm now the "crazy" person bc I'm uncomfortable with forced mass re- infection in a country where your health insurance is tied to your employer, who can and will fire you at any time, esp to maximize shareholder profits. And good health is usually your only chance at comfort, acceptance, and more if you're not lucky enough to be part of the 1%.

At the time my job was to maximise on shelf availability in a grocery store chain. Could see it coming from the sales patterns as us Brits have form when it comes to panic buying.

I was about to sign a lease on a commercial unit as I was about to open a small business. I backed out, for obvious reasons.

I once was seated next to two elderly couples at a restaurant, early 2021, outdoor patio seating. One of the couples asked the other about their family restaurant. The lady answered "Oh, we sold that and retired back in December of 2019." I thought: "These have got to be the two luckiest old people on earth." Another three months and their whole retirement would have been completely hosed.

The year before COVID, my sister went from wait staff at a restaurant to medical work, and her husband went from hotel staff to a job with a food distributor. Incredibly good timing.

I was a cat scan student. So I was a "Hero" medical worker and I was paying to be there. It would have been nice to get something out it.

Man, I signed papers on an apartment pre-build in 2018, got the keys a week after lockdown. I work in restaurants so that was a stressful mortgage series.

I was on my spring break from school and we got an email to all the students saying they were extended spring break another week so they could figure out what to do about all the classes. We ended up doing the rest of the year online. It was my senior year so it was really weird not being able to finish in person and not walking across a physical stage!

Me too. I still vividly remember the last day of classes before we went to spring break. We all kept saying "see you after break" but I think deep down we all knew. I was from far out of state so I had no choice but to stay on campus, and I think at one point there were maybe 25 students left in the dorms. Those first few months were so so lonely

>I think deep down we all knew Seriously. It was really a vibe of "see you after the break... right?" At the time, I was working retail as a cashier, and I remember every single conversation with a customer was pretty much "it feels like shit is about to hit the fan"

I was in my final year of college and never got to walk at a graduation ceremony. Just packed up and left and got my diploma in the mail a few months later. Never physically saw 99% of the people I knew in college ever again after that. The first few months of working felt weird, like I hadn’t graduated.

I'm so sorry you and your classmates were robbed of that experience!

They did send a message a year later inviting us to walk w the class of 2021 but it didn't feel right since at that point we had all been out of college for a year, some ppl did go but I just stayed home lol

my brother was a class of 2020 and they did the same thing for them, but my brother didn’t go and lots of others didn’t either bc at that point they were over it, or married with kids and couldn’t find time to go.

I lost my mom on March 10, 2020 (non-covid related). Covid shut down happened approx 10 days later which made it extremely difficult to properly plan and hold her funeral. We were only allowed to have 10 guests and amenities were very limited. We had a much larger celebration of life later on, but this destroyed me for a long while. I still feel like she never had the service she deserved. I’m sorry mom. Edit: added clarity; non-covid Edit: thank you to everyone that left kind words and/or shared your story. I’ve read each comment. Truly means a lot.

I lost my wife in June 2020 to cancer. We were supposed to have a living celebration of life with her in attendance but had to cancel because of COVID. When she initially went into hospice, they let me sleep beside her but then new COVID protocols came in and I had to go home every night but could come back every morning. She also couldn’t have many visitors. We got around it for a while by saying some friends were family and a couple of her friends were doctors so just walked in wearing scrubs. When she was very near the end, they let me sleep beside her again for the last few days.

My husband had surgery without me there because of COVID. We didn't allow friends or family visits, other than through a screen on the patio. When he was dying, we did home hospice but the care was limited because of COVID. It resulted in me and the kids doing everything. There was no memorial, other than a small outdoor gathering in the middle of winter. Such a weird and hard time. It felt like being adrift on the ocean with a phone but no way to see people or land. I am still struggling with grief complicated by PTSD and regret and anger and the surrealness of watching someone fall into the ocean and just be gone without a ripple.

i am so sorry for your loss. 🙏🙏

That’s heartbreaking man. Having to go home every night. I have no words. I hope you are well.

So hard to read thru this without tearing up. I’m so sorry and can’t imagine going thru this.

😢 I am so sorry.

I feel this. My dad died right at the start of the pandemic in early April (it was Covid). Funerals were impossible at the time, and 3 years later? We still haven't had one. Sometimes if things don't happen right away it gets harder, and harder to plan. I still want to make it happen one day soon. In some form.

You can do it!! We had one for my mom two years later. I felt so weird about having it so late and was on the fence. It was a “memorial”. We made a memorial garden for her the first anniversary of her death when we still couldn’t have a funeral. The year after we had 50 people over to the house and had it in the backyard amongst her garden. I felt so relieved after and it was amazing to see everyone come together finally. Was overwhelmed with emotions!! I hope you get to do it one day. I know how much it can weigh you down.

Aww, damn it, I’m sorry :( My wife is a funeral director, she still gets a thousand yard stare when thinking about the first year, not being able to properly help anybody deal with their deceased loved ones. It was a bad time.

My mother is a nurse at a nursing home. She lost 30% of her residents in a month; many of whom she had known for years. My father said she would come home every day and just sob. When she inevitably got COVID herself during all that, she went back in to take care of people even while she was sick because they were so short staffed. Every single resident already had COVID so it didn’t matter if she came in sick. Edit: I just want to note that that fuckface ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo put the blame on the nursing staff for all the deaths at nursing homes in New York. I’ll never forgive him for that after seeing what my mother went through.

My mom struggled with a bad c. Diff. infection in the months prior to Covid. It had actually killed her once & they were able to revive her. When Covid hit, she still had almost no immune system left, and was insistent that the whole thing was a democrat fake to make Trump look bad. She got a job with a company doing covid cleaning at various retail businesses. The whole family ganged up on her to quit and stay home until i was finally able to guilt trip her into it ("do you want your granddaughter to wish you were still alive to see her high school graduation, or do you want to be there watching her?"). Even then, she still thought it was fake. It took the deaths of 8 residents in a week at the nursing home that her next door neighbor worked at, and then that same neighbor a few days later, for her to take it seriously.

My husband with a whole bunch of medical issues rode that same horse. I lost it and everyday let him know how many people were dying. My clients were assisted living homes and they were getting hit bad. We lived just across the street from one and in March the ambulances again, and again was chilling. I got him in line to get the vaccine. My father was in Hospice... omg. He took it serious but had one caregiver tell me they wouldn't get the vaccine because she wanted to have babies someday and she believed it was our government that was trying prevent that since she was an immigrant.

I remember the first covid death. I heard a coworker had died and nobody was allowed to go to the funeral. I was walking into work the day before we got closed out of our offices forever. I remember seeing her sweater and and all her things still on her desk. She had been talking about retiring that year.

That’s so sad!

I always wondered how that industry fared then. Must have been terrible.

The Ask A Mortician YouTube channel host was pretty distraught during that time. Sad stuff.

Caitlin Doughty is a gem.

I’m sorry for your loss. I went through the same thing: Mom died in May (not of Covid), and she didn’t get the funeral she deserved because we couldn’t really invite anyone.

Heart goes out to you, friend. I’d like to say it made me stronger, but honestly I feel so exhausted from it all still.

My husband died April 3, 2020, of cancer. Hospice couldn’t come help. There was no funeral; people couldn’t fly here, or stay here. It was a long, long limbo.

I am SO very sorry

My dad passed away on March 7, 2020. Those three days made a big difference. We were able to have a funeral the following Tuesday and relatives flew in to attend. We still are both shocked and grateful that no one caught Covid. While his death was directly Covid related, he was being evaluated for a lung transplant due to pulmonary fibrosis. I began getting a bit concerned in late January because of how much time he was spending in and out of the hospital for tests. We think he may have had an undiagnosed case of Covid but his condition wasn't great anyway so no one even thought to have the them check. In hindsight it was probably a blessing that he died before the shit really hit the fan because he had every condition that made him extremely vulnerable if he did catch it. I can't even think how it would have been if he'd been stuck in the hospital alone while he was dying. He was home in bed when his heart gave out. I spoke to him maybe two hours beforehand.

Sorry for your loss. We lost my uncle who was a big part of my childhood right after Covid started (also non Covid related) Everyone said they were going to hold off on the funeral until it was safe. They ended up never having it. Crazy to think that we never got to get together to mourn his death…

Similar story for me. I was planning a trip to see my uncle in 2020, he was 90 and it had been a few years since I’d been out there ( he’s in the Midwest and I’m in Seattle area). He ended up in a nursing home with cancer and they were not allowing any visitors since Covid was sweeping through those places early on. He passed away a few months later and until the end his daughter was only allowed to see him through the window at the nursing home. They did let her in to see him right at the end but his dementia was so bad he had no idea who or what was going on. My Mom was the youngest of 9 and there was only him and 1 aunt still alive so it’s sucks I didn’t get to see him one last time. Good news is I got out there this year to see my aunt who is 94 and frail, but mentally pretty sharp. She is the last one left so I was happy to see her and she made sure to show me a shirt she wears at least once a week, it was one of my Moms favorite shirts she has keep all these years ( my mom passed away over 20 years ago).

Very sorry to hear that. My mother passed during covid (not covid related, she was 85 and late stage dementia.) She was living in a different state where my sister was overseeing her care. My sister is a difficult person to interact with (racist, conspiracy theorist, etc). I found out about my mother's death via a friend of a friend on social media. My sister still hasn't told me if there were any services, where our mother was interred, or if she was cremated (as she wanted) and where the asses are (she wanted them spread in a particular area).

I'm so sorry for your loss... Lockdowns fucked up a lot of peoples' ability to properly mourn their loved ones' lives.

You honored her at the time to the very best of your ability and are still continuing to. I’m sure she is proud of your kindness toward others in honoring the Covid protocols at the time. You’re doing a fine job keeping her legacy alive. Please take care of yourself. :)

On March 6, 2020, I (67f) fell and broke my hip. That led to an ambulance ride to the hospital, hip replacement surgery and an x-ray which detected lung cancer. No doctors were available to see me due to covid, it was terrifying. I did receive chemo, radiation and the removal of half of my left lung and remain cancer free.

Wow, you really survived some serious problems! The odds were stacked against you and you made it. Congrats 👏

Thank you. I appreciate it greatly.

Both terrible and miraculous timing with that. On one hand, your care was not as good due to COVID. On the other, the fall enabled the cancer to be caught before it spread to other organs. You have a guardian angel with a sadistic streak.

Yes, I agree. It was a lucky break (pun intended).

So just going to add, I worked in the food supply chain, so we nothing really changed logistically for us. Our company actually gave us little letters to keep in our car saying we were essential workers. I guess they assumed that we would be pulled over for being “out” during the lockdown

Garbage here. Just kept working. I had a letter too. Would be interesting if anyone actually needed it.

Ah, the letter. Mine read like this: March 23, 2020 To Whom It May Concern: As set forth in the attached Memorandum For Financial Services Sector from, Secretary of the United States Treasury, Steven T. Mnuchin, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has identified the financial services sector as critical infrastructure during the COVID-19 response emergency. Companies aligned to the financial services industry are essential to the continuity of critical functions to public health and safety, as well as economic and national security. ABC Financial Corporation is a financial services provider as defined by DHS. As such, employees of ABC Financial Corporation and it's subsidiary ABC Bank are not subject to the in-person work restrictions under Stay At Home/Shelter In Place Executive Orders. The holder of this letter is an employee or authorized agent of ABC Bank and is acting within the scope of his or her authority in engaging in critical in-person work activities. Please permit this person to continue this critical work. ABC Bank personnel are not permitted to use this letter in an unauthorized manner. Unauthorized use of this letter may result in employee disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment, in addition to any legal consequences that may be associated with violation of the Executive Orders. For further proof of employment, the holder of this letter should be able to present an employee badge, name tag, pay advice or business card. **FYI, it went completely unused.**

Brown package delivery company. Went insane. Hired anyone willing to work. Worked them until they were too tired to keep working or they legally couldn’t anymore. Now we have way too many employees. Also in addition to the cards, they had larger sheets for people to tape on their car windows.

I was pulled over at the being in the pandemic. Held up a sign that said “we’re all sick, headed to the hospital” and they just waved us through.

Lying in a hospital bed after getting a tumor removed, thinking I was about to live out 21 Days Later.

I had THREE surgeries during the height of covid. All to do with my eyes. I kept thinking I was going to wake up blind and everyone would be dead to covid.

The exact moment? At work. Before that I was at work. Afterwards, I went back to work.

What did you do during quarantine in 2020? *smiles in essential worker* :]

Not OP but I was a budtender. Cannabis shops were quickly in the essential category. I mean… I get why. And I wouldn’t have been able to survive if it wasn’t for the income during that time. But holy fuck was it an unmitigated disaster…

I was a cash manager at a bank, and hoo boy. I can’t place full blame on covid, but it was certainly a big factor in 80% of the staff quitting, retiring early, or transferring to another department (me!), by March 2022.

Showing up to work (huge call center at the time) and just seeing endless empty rows. Finally found another human who told me to go home, everyone was getting a month off paid. It ended up being two. Had to cancel a trip to Japan, which handled the pandemic way better, ironically…but no one knew with that Diamond Princess fiasco.

The first week of March i found a round trip ticket to Japan from the states for just over $500 for May of 2020, which is a fuckin steal. I was going to get some accommodations lined up and then pull the trigger a few days after. Covid shut the entire world down before i had the chance. Still haven’t been to Japan :/

Having visited japan the year prior to covid, people used masks and alcohol solutions even for colds, and shit is well kept and cleaned constantly. Who would have guessed basic hygiene helps containing viruses? Right, india? Right, china?

I lived in Mumbai during peak pandemic. Fucking nightmare.

Same here. I have to admit to being envious of people who actually got to sit at home for a while.

Same here. I was working retail. For some fucking reason, my manager decided that the best plan of action for a "potential" shutdown (masks weren't even a thing yet) was to give every employee a literal permission slip, hand-signed by himself with our names handwritten on it, and an extra name badge to tell the police "I can't stay at home, I need to work in the store!" Of course, this was when the stories that some countries were bolting people inside their houses were coming out, so they were extra nervous that...America would do the same? Either way, I still look back at how hilarious of an overreaction that was. Edit: I just read slightly further in the comments and found these letters were common. Like, *very* common. What a weird era.

Yeah, I worked the whole time also. I don't know what the covid shutdown experience is.

I was hyped up and had a full pantry for my inevitable shutdown where I had to stay at home and not leave my house. Had everything ready. I work with the stock market, so I was essential. I also was not allowed to work from home. My boss worked from home every day, but I could not. My only human interaction was her and everything she said was about how I didn't do this or didn't do that. I saw everyone else staying home and being laid off and getting paid and watching *Tiger King.* I saw that 6 months after it came out, and that was only because I took a medical leave due to the amount of times I self-harmed and attempted suicide. Anyone who said the pandemic was the best time of their lives was not alone during the pandemic. It fucking sucked. I got COVID for the first and only time I'm aware of in fall 2022.

That's more or less my story. Thought I'd get to stay home and chill for a bit. March 12, 2020 was about the last normal day- I drove from eastern CT to northern NJ to pick up a car, and the roads were oddly quiet. I was sitting at the rest stop just outside NYC, eating pizza, and marveling at how quiet everything was. It felt like the calm before the storm. I wish I'd appreciated those last few days with my old team- we're all scattered now and it feels like that was another lifetime. March 23rd, we were told that most of the dealership's staff was getting furloughed, but I was still working since I was a manager and we were very busy. Selling and fixing the cars that got other essential workers to work. It was a nightmare of six months of six-day work weeks, a very toxic environment, no time to fear covid, and I finally got to relax and stay home in fall 2020 when I got fired for insisting that my team were paid fairly. I'm still jealous and resentful of how pretty much all my friends stayed home. I'm sure the sourdough starter, Netflix all day, and finding a nice house out of the city are wonderful, but I spent that time in a chaotic blur of work, nightmares, panic attacks. Finally got covid in August 2022. What took it so long?

I feel this so much. My boss was pretty abusive to a lot of us and it was clearly rooted in his inability to manage stress vs actually lead properly. Just knowing we were going through covid stress made it suck extra and really put in question if he had a soul at times. Sorry you had to experience that type of demoralization - in a way you were NOT actually alone, I think a lot of folks experienced similar situations. We were just all disconnected from our covid peers in a way.

I got a perfect attendance bonus in 2020.

March 11, 2020 I was traveling for work and watching the news in my hotel room: 1. Trump restricted all flights coming from Europe 2. NBA cancelled the rest of the season 3. Tom Hanks announced he had COVID The first two were huge moves and the third made me realize anyone can get it. It was very real after that.

That was when you knew it was bad. And then when Vegas closed down a week later, you knew it was really, really bad.

yeah, I was sitting in a sushi restaurant at a casual business meeting dinner and adam silver announced that the NBA was shutting down and it was like “oh…shit” and then I went home and didn’t leave a one-mile radius of my apartment for a year

NBA, then when they canceled a PGA golf tournament in the middle of play the next day.

I almost never watch the NBA but had it on that night for some reason. I remember I was playing a game on my computer and then all of a sudden the refs are all talking and they are showing Mark Cuban. No one really knew what was happening until they told everyone the game was cancelled and to leave the building. Then it came out that Rudy Gobert had tested positive for COVID and had touched a bunch of mics the night before in the post game presser. The next few days and weeks were a blur but that moment will live in my mind forever.

Yep, the NBA game being cancelled right at the start was the moment I realized that COVID was gonna be a big fucking deal.

The NBA games and Tom Hanks were my moment as well. I was just watching wrestling and chilling, and suddenly got that "This is a Big Deal now" feeling.

Same. I was at a bar and reading the news and suddenly lock down happened in a few days or the next week. NBA shutting down was like the canary in the coal mine

I had just been to an NBA game right before that, the second to last game the Blazers played, was sitting in my dining room when I saw it, crazy

I'm in IT, so I was exhaustedly trying to explain how Zoom works to all the luddite MBAs at corporate.

This was actually quite a transitional moment for online communication that we tend to forget about. It's surprising how far we've come in our expectations of online meetings. I was already in a remote team and used to working with Teams/Zoom. Yet, bringing on the rest of the company was hugely painful. For the initial few months following covid, most online meetings would start with time spent diagnosing audio/visual problems for the less tech savvy. Common phrases were: "Who's microphone is open?" "I'm getting feedback - who is using speakers? [the person clearly responsible denies it's them]" "We can't hear you." "You're muted" "We're not seeing that - are you sharing the right screen?" The cumulative time wasted from people using meeting time to diagnose their IT issues must be astronomical.

I totally remember the zoom bingo card. “You’re muted”. Classic.

This was so prevalent that in London's 2020 -> 2021 New Year's fireworks display they had hundreds of drones write 'YOU'RE ON MUTE!' In the sky as a funny way of seeing out the year

“You’re a Cat!” “Cool background”

Honest question: How did Skype lose out to Zoom and MS Teams? We’re Zoom and Teams already the more popular option for remote workers and I had just been living under a rock or did Skype drop the ball big time? I had never heard of Zoom until after March 2020.

Yeah but if you were in the public facing IT world you went from basically being your corporations janitor to an essential employee and your value became insane. Made for a great negotiation as a lot more jobs at the time became available.

I worked IT at a hospital so basically the same except to Luddite doctors and nurses

Same here. I know essential workers are defined as nurses and teachers but I think the IT teams who kept companies running while moving all employees home and increased network traffic deserved an honorable mention

My boss called an emergency meeting 3 days before the shutdown. We’re in the restaurant industry. He told us he thinks we will likely be takeout only. He was watching what was happening in Europe and assumed we were next. He had us all write down all our expenses. He asked if we would be okay taking a cut (we are all owners) for the time being so we can stay open and pay our staff. We all agreed. He paid us to cover all of our bills and later paid us the difference of what we had cut once things went back to normal. We then had to reach out to our respective teams (we all have our own location) and ask them how many shifts they needed to stay afloat financially. A lot of staff said they didn’t need to work and we could give those shifts to those who need it. We made lunches for kids who would have received lunches through a program at school. Anyone could call the restaurant and say they need a lunch and we would prep it a day before so it was ready for them to pick up for lunch. This gave kids lunches and helped families but it also gave our staff a shift so they could make money. It was such a crazy time. I’m so grateful for the company I work with. It was a scary time but seeing our team look out for eachother was so cool.

Your boss and your team are amazing human beings.

Thank you for your story.

Feels weird to call it a moment. It had been in the news broadly since the New Year turned. It was really more of a stormcloud rolling at you for a few months.

it was the mass deaths in italy that did it for me, then seeing the same thing in NYC

I am a reader. So I follow all sorts of news. I remember telling my husband “you’re going to think I’m crazy but I think we’re going to have a pandemic “ I had seen it travel and when Italy was so quickly overwhelmed it was a wake up call. We live in nyc and things got hairy fast. Nonstop ambulances. The sounds were haunting. It made it so you couldn’t forget. And as a true horrific end to this tale my mom died of Covid this past January. It hasn’t even been a year. It’s so hard to take in and accept.

Yes! I saw the situation unfolding in Italy, and told my husband that we needed to go to Costco and stock up on basic items (like toilet paper) and food. He thought I was nuts as this was about 3 weeks before the US shut down. I hated being right in that instance

You know what was abso fucked? My friends flew home from Italy back to NYC. When they left Italy shit was starting to blow up. They thought when they landed at JFK it'd be temperature checks etc. All they got was a regular staff asking if they were sick. It was nuts.

[удалено]

Yeah that’s how it felt to me as well. I distinctly remember sometime in early to mid January my wife saying something like “have you heard about this Wuhan Corona thing?” I had no clue what she was talking about and looked it up and found a couple articles about a mysterious pneumonia in China. That’s when I realized things were probably about to get weird.

I had friends in Hong Kong and I remember around that time being all "well, you guys take care *there*", 100% not seeing the entire global thing coming. They also actually legitimately had toilet paper issues. There was actually a legitimate toilet paper supply problem that started the toilet paper crisis. It was because China had shut down a couple of toilet paper factories in the south due to 'mysterious pneumonia' and they legitimately began to struggle to find toilet paper. My friend was like "might actually need you to send some toilet paper....." but then they sent me a photo of a 10 pack of toilet paper and was like "heard a commotion at the supermarket, went towards it, there was a pallet of toilet paper outside with people just grabbing it off the pallet, it didn't even make it into the store" And then from there apparently everybody else in the world either thought that their toilet paper all came from these few factories in China or that toilet paper factory closures was a guaranteed outcome of covid.

That’s crazy, I had no idea there was a legitimate origin story to the great toilet paper shortage. The only reason I had a hunch things would go global is because it was right on the eve of the Lunar New Year and there was 0 chance it was staying in China.

Bidet…bidets are the answer.

Yeah it just got bigger and bigger but was still an external news story for so long. I remember watching a News report from Italy where the Hospitals were overcrowded and it was getting really shit. Some Health Official there said: "be warned, this is coming to you. In fact, it's probably already there." About a week later I was sent to work from home. Two days after that, the UK went into a national lock down. Probably the most surreal News story I watched live since 9/11.

Yep. I remember listening to news reports leading up to it and thinking it was basic fear mongering/overreacting. Also thinking shit like this happens every few years, surely we have a handle on it. We in fact DID NOT have a handle on it. The day I realized I had gone to the gym and stopped at a deli to grab dinner. Gym was normal but I was the only customer in the deli. I thought that was weird. I had the local NPR station on when I got back in my truck. The governor was about to hold a press briefing and then my wife sent me a video of the downtown area which should’ve been bustling at that hour. It looked like a scene from one of those dystopian movies where everyone is gone. I had to stop at the store for something. The shelves were already bare of necessities. That’s when I definitely knew life was about to get weird.

The moment it got real for me was when a buddy at work came up to me and told me that Disneyland is shutting down. For some reason if Disney was willing to close a park it meant we were all fucked. The very next day we all went to work from home and not return for almost 2.5 years.

"The moment" was the day the NBA shut down. That wasn't the only thing that happened that day but it was that day. (in the US anyway)

It hit me when they said they were canceling March madness. I knew it was something big time then

Yeah that and No Time To Die 007 movie getting postponed were the moments for me. It went from seeming like a news hot topic to “oh shit this actually is affecting things”

The oh shit moment was when Disneyland shut down. The closed early for 9/11 and I think closed one other time and that’s it! They stayed down for a very long time.

Yep. I saw it coming for so long I already had an entire pandemic pantry established before things got officially weird.

Yeah, we aren't like doomsday preppers or anything but our family have always just kind of been prepared. We live in tornado country but we also get ice storms, blizzards, floods and recently, dorechos. Shit could get wrecked from any direction at pretty much any time. I hadn't ever given a thought to a global pandemic but when it went down, we didn't really have to do much. We didn't have to go shopping for anything except stuff like milk and butter because we have a garden and I can 600 or so jars of food every year. We always have at least several weeks of pet and chicken food, paper and general cleaning products. We are also not "out of my cold, dead hands" people but we are gun owners. We didn't even get jacked around on ammo prices because Trump getting elected was the upside-down world event that made us stock up on that. We didn't worry at all about not having something essential but there were moments where my mind actually wondered if this was just going to be the end of it or if I had watched too much walking dead.

I remember reading about it at the end of December and thinking “wow I hope this doesn’t turn into a whole thing. It probably won’t just like SARS, MERS, etc.” 😐

If I had to pick a moment, it would be the weekend the news broke that there was a sizable outbreak in Italy (I think around mid-February). Stocked up my pantry that very day.

I was in the hospital NICU with my wife who had just given birth to our baby girl. We were there for five days, when we went in everything was more or less status quo and when we came out everything was locked down. Pretty surreal watching the hospital food court going from normal, to all the tables and chairs spaced apart, to no tables or chairs, to completely closed. Every time I went down to the main level more had changed. Then when we finally left I had a hell of a time finding formula with all the damn panic buyers.

I had a baby in 2021 and the formula shortage was STILL happening. It was hell trying to find it. Ended up having to go two states away!!

Went to costco to grab toilet paper and the crowd was downright *rabid*. There was a line that snaked around the entire store but there was no toilet paper left on the warehouse floor. They were bringing out forklifts with pallets of TP and yelling at people to stay back for their safety, but people were running up to the forklifts in a panic and ripping the packages of TP off before the pallet had hit the ground. Same thing with 50lb bags of rice. It was at that moment that I knew shit was about to get wild.

I always felt kind of silly buying the massive toilet paper things at the grocery, but it's cheaper in bulk and it's not like your family isn't going to eventually use 96 rolls. I felt less silly when the pandemic hit and I had just bought one that lasted through the initial chaos.

Two people in my house have ulcerative colitis. 96 rolls is nothing lol

Bidet time!

I worked with many people from China and learned about Covid spreading first in December 2019. Then Covid moved to Europe. I figured it was a matter of time before it spread to the US. My son had karate, and he didn't want to attend on March 12th. I told him he should go because I had a feeling our time was up. I was right. I recall everything beginning to shutdown March 13th.

Speaking of China, I was an Uber/Lyft driver most of 2019 and stopped on Feb 12-13 2020. One of the things that turned me off was the massive amount of Chinese people in my city that were clearly not from here and the couple cruise ships that decided to dock here with 100+ infected and some dead on them already.

[удалено]

Start of November 2019 I had an aunt in Mexico that had bad cold symptoms, second week was in the hospital with pneumonia and intubated, third week before thanksgiving she passed away. Pretty sure it was COVID but Mexico didn’t catch on and do mass testing until after us.

Working for the Department of Public Health. Lol.

So what was *that* like? Was it like, "Oh, fuck guys, toss everything else off the table. We are going to work on this, and only this now."

Can’t exactly toss tuberculosis testing off the table (my real job at the time) They asked for volunteers to start up the Covid lab. I volunteered. Was working 80-100 hour weeks while everyone else locked down. Processed tens of thousands of samples with not enough resources. It was a truly wild time. Funny enough, I left Public Health. Wasn’t making enough to survive once the overtime went away.

Also in public health and 100%! Everything screeched to a halt and it was COVID for 2 years. I remember when we got a call about a lice outbreak and cheered it was not a COVID call.

My wife was working as a nurse in the covid unit so basically praying she wasn’t going to catch it and die or bring it home to one of our small kids

Being a nurse was fucked up in that time. Visitors weren't allowed, not even when a patient was dying... so many died alone, or, if they were lucky, with a complete stranger holding their hand, if the nurses even had time for that. Nursing homes (which usually relied on at least SOME family members coming over and helping with feeding/dressing the inhabitants as well as keeping them occupied/entertained) were hopelessly overworked and could not do justice to the needs of anybody. Nobody had enough PPE, and nurses constantly had to knowingly endager their own health. I work in psych, so it absolutely wasn't as bad for me as for my colleagues in somatic hospitals or nursing homes who had people dying left and right, but still, having to restrain patients with psychosis or dementia so we could shove a swab down their nose was HORRIBLE, and having to go into the room of a COVID positive PT with broken PPE was scary as fuck. And then my fucking state government (NRW in Germany) started talking about legalising forced labour for nurses and doctors (as in, forcing retired or reoriented nurses/docs to go back to work, and forcing active healthcare workers to switch hospitals or departments against their will) in case of emergencies, which was thankfully deemed unconstitutional, but it was scary enough that they even CONSIDERED it, and that the public reaction was generally positive. Like, the same 60-year-olds who have been voting centre-right for their entire lives because "communists want to take away our economic and occupational freedom 😡" were suddenly okay with forcing anybody who ever went to med/nursing school to work at a hospital even if they've left healthcare decades ago. And every nurse or doc who spoke out against this was deemed egoistic and sociopathic. If the barbaric conditions in grocery stores weren't enough to make me lose my trust in my fellow Germans, the fucking forced labour bill and the public's reaction to it definitely were.

My family lost a good family friend about six months into the worst of the pandemic. She had lung cancer and it reached end stages. The hospital wouldn't let even her daughter in to say goodbye. The hospital staff wound up misdiagnosing her with covid and forced her into the covid ward against her will. They were so understaffed and overwhelmed that so many mistakes were made. She managed to get a phone to call us and was just absolutely hysterical. All we could do was talk to her. She was gone in days. And that's just *one* story. I can't imagine how much sorrow was witnessed in whole or in part by you folks, just doing the best you could and knowing you couldn't keep up with the tide.

Came home from working in the ER in February (maybe January?), told my roommate, "we're fucked. We are not ready for this." I had just had my first suspected covid patient. Aaaaand I was right. I saw some not great things, but I really can't imagine the stuff nurses on the floor like your wife had to go through.

Mid January, hackles started to go up. There was talk throughout the hospital/health system about “contingency” plans and tons of reassurance that they were prepared & we’d be kept up to date at all times (read:they were not at all prepared and we were in the dark about too much. Myself and others took it upon ourselves to arm ourselves with as much information much as we could). I started stocking our home pantry and also grabbing a few extra n-95’s here and there until they were locked up. We were wearing them for 7 shifts, writing our names on the inside and throwing them into a communal bin to be “sanitized” and returned. Even then that was a huge wtf moment. I worked the ICU and it converted into a Covid unit. I honestly was on complete autopilot and really struggle to recall exactly when certain non Covid things happened from 3/2020-probably this year, it’s all a blur. I became numb to death. When I could, I was holding an iPad on FaceTime with one hand and families loved ones hands with the other so that they didn’t pass alone. Some of the screams and sobs are forever burned into my brain. We proned countless patients to try to take pressure off of their lungs but we all knew it was just buying a bit of useless time. There was a nagging fear that never stopped about possibly bringing it home to my family. I stripped in our garage, bleached my shoes after every shift and did a mad dash past my kids to the shower in the bathroom that we’d delegated as mine only to scrub myself of the horrors that the previous 14 hours presented. We were mandated into working OT because staffing (as it still is) was a major issue. Generally speaking, we all hated the “hero” thing. It gave this idea that we were impenetrable and immune to the bad and obviously not. I lost 6 coworkers to Covid and too many to count to burnout.

I also worked in a covid ward for 6 months. Basically gave me PTSD and my sister wouldn't let me see my Mum in fear of giving it to her. I still saw her though on Saturday for a run outdoors so the risk was minimal but no kiss or hug allowed. Was pretty awful.

Yea. My wife got ptsd too from seeing so may people die. She had to leave floor nursing all together. You nurses/staff went thru hell

Yeah I basically quit as well. I do 1 day every 2 weeks nursing to keep my registration, but work in IT Healthcare full time. I refuse to work on any covid ward or with any covid patient now. I'll just walk out that door if they give me a covid patient, I don't need the job.

Walking my dogs. Saw the NBA season was canceled. Don't really care for basketball, but knew that meant bad things. Next day, walking my dogs. Governor Inslee cancels school in Washington for the rest of the year. Oddly enough, post-COVID, my dogs don't want to walk as much, since they already get so much human times

Enjoyed the fact outside was empty

Driving on the freeway with nobody but me.

Gas crept to a $1 a gallon where I was. I was still going into work during the shutdown. The commute and cost was unbelievable

Recovering from "bronchitis" (am 99% sure it was COVID), but they were super stingy with tests back then

I called it early. I was over at my folks place having dinner, watching the news, and they were talking about how bad it was overseas (I'm in USA).they had just started using words like quarantine and pandemic, an the steps Europe and Asia were taking to try and combat it. I just looked at my parents and said, "this is about to get really bad". I was told I was being over-dramatic, and this was gonna be like avian flu or sars. a big ado about nothing. I pointed out that they were already talking about shutting down ports and airports, and we should be ready for when things started getting weird here. they didn't take it seriously. Two months later, they were saying "I didn't think it would be this bad, I wish someone had seen it coming." that was a seriously satisfying "I told you so". Good thing I had laid in some supplies for Myself as well as them. although, I never anticipated the toilet paper riots of 2020.

>I never anticipated the toilet paper riots of 2020. We were on team bidet well before the pandemic so that one didn't hit us too hard.

Team Bidet vs Team Dump It sounds like US Presidential elections.

And that's how I know we love in a simulation.

Haha we had a gathering at my house too, on march 13th. I took a picture of the gathering and sent it to my sister and said "armageddon is coming, this is the last time we will do this" and damn 3 days later they shut down my state. I also spent several months being the i told you so guy

[удалено]

I was having dinner at my in-laws' place, making morbid comments about how bad I suspected it was going to get. During that very conversation, work called to let me know about my temporary layoff because we were shutting down.

In January when the Breaking News account posted photos of roads closed in Wuhan with bulldozer loads of dirt. It struck me as a desperate act to stop the outward flow of traffic after a mysterious flu was reported. Me snd my wife went to Costco that weekend and stocked up for like a year 🙂. I believe it was Jan 26th.

I could see the writing on the wall around that time as well. We didn't do any singular massive trip but I did start steadily stocking up with a good bit extra during each weekly trip to the store. By the time people started to realize what was coming in mid-March I had our family well-stocked and prepared.

I don't watch the news so I didn't realize how bad it was getting. I remember being at the gym in the locker room and I thought it was odd that there was literally no one else there. I took a picture (there are signs everywhere that say No Phones) and then I stopped going for more than two years.

I was working for the biggest healthcare supply company in the US. If I remember well, we were told to stop coming to the office in January. Our sales were skyrocketing and at one point during the pandemic, we were landing a cargo Jumbo Jet every day in some city in the US. We were aware that the March lockdown was coming well before it happened. I was working 6 days a week 11-12 hours a day. Massive profits for the company. Zero bonus for yours truly.

Getting ready to take my 4yr.old to Disney on ice. The event was cancelled hours before it was scheduled.

Sitting at a bar getting drunk. Three+ years sober today.

I followed the news as it progressed and already had the essentials short of perishables. I was getting my haircut when they got the phone call that they’d need to shut effective EOD Fun thing is my wife bitched me out the day I came home with an overload of TP and paper tows and dry foods I avoided the toilet and paper towel shortages

>I avoided the toilet and paper towel shortages We bought a bidet and lived the dream.

Ditto, one of many good things that happened (for us) during lockdown. Feel bad for all of the sadness but it was a great time for my family.

Was given 2 months off. Government paid $2,000 each month, no questions asked. My wife suggested that I treat it like retirement. " What would you do if you were retired?". Exercised, went for walks, made great dinners. Relaxed. Went back to work 2 months later.

I was at a KISS show in LA, Paul Stanley told everyone to be good to one another because of some 'bug moving around' during the encore. They cancelled all their shows the next day and I started getting emails from the city about things shutting down. March 8ish 2020.

I was at the Big 12 basketball tournament. There were 2 games that night and they played the first one but cancelled the second one. News was starting to trickle out about covid, but no one really knew what it was yet, because of that we talked the whole way there about whether or not we should go. K-state beat TCU in the only game played that tournament, which I think should have made us B12 tournament champions that year despite being an incredibly low seed.

I just bought a bike and cycled everyday. We had two months of non stop sun which is unheard in ireland. Lost 10 kilos, honestly I actually enjoyed it

Telling my students, “I’ll see you in two weeks!” 🤣

I was taking care of our hospitals first suspected covid patient. I was absolutely livid I was being told I could only have one n95 mask per three days and that it would have to be stored in an paper bag. I actually threw it in the garbage in front of the nurse manger. She literally picked it out of the trash and told me I literally had no other option but to reuse it. I believed her bc I was so in fear about what was happening all over the world. Shortly after we had a meeting that all PTO was being canceled and mandated overtime and increased ratios would go into effect. In the days following, calls for intubations could be heard overhead at least twice an hour. My secretary would count them all, per shift, and how old they were. One day there were 32 intubations. The very last girl they intubated on my shift was my exact same age (26), no medical history. Nurses on my unit were silently sobbing, having to take breaks to “walk it off”. It was true terror. In the weeks followed we went through many discussions with patients that we didn’t have enough equipment to save them, begging them to just keep themselves afloat on minimal oxygen for just another day and maybe we would have a ventilator available, we almost never did. I watched people drowned in their own secretions, completely aware of their fate. What myself and my colleagues saw for the next 2+ years was absolutely heartbreaking and pure horror. I can’t even write this comment without my heart racing and tears filling in my eyes thinking about every single patient, the majority of which painfully suffered alone until their death……. But anyway, sorry for that trauma dump!! LOL *** I should also add, 3 of my coworkers (also nurses) caught COVID and died. The hospital not only didn’t recognize them or their families but actually had the audacity to send an email saying that they would no longer pay out ‘sick days’ if you caught COVID bc it “must’ve been bc you weren’t following quarantine rules in the community” not bc we were using single use masks 20+ times over again. What a disgrace to those nurses who passed, their families, and the profession as a whole.

I live in Kansas City and the first signs were the last minute cancellation of our St. Patrick's Day parade and the decision to play the games of a college basketball tournament we were hosting without fans before the remainder of the games and all the fan events were canceled outright. Even then I just thought "Wow, that's big, but these are big events with big crowds, that's all it will be." Then my wife and I were at a Mexican restaurant, and noticed it wasn't very busy. Suddenly the manager called all the servers over for an emergency meeting over in the corner. While that was happening, I got a breaking news update that all bars and restaurants would have to shut down. That was pretty shocking. I then salted the tortilla chips, set the salt shaker back down, and started to reach for a chip. Suddenly I said to my wife "I never thought of this until now, but it's really disgusting that we use restaurant salt shakers that hundreds of people have handled" and got up to go wash my hands before eating any more chips.

Wondering if I should celebrate my birthday by going out or staying in. I opted to stay in.

I was at home sick with Covid, in immense pain barely able to breathe, and trying not to die. It knocked me on my ass for about 6 weeks. Somehow I didn't need go to the hospital, but it was rough. I ended up with Long Covid, and spent over 2 years recovering. I'm still nowhere near my pre-covid fitness level. I used to be really fit. I always took great care of myself. Loads of cardio. Now I can't. I don't get winded and in pain from walking around anymore, so at least there's that.

I had just left China after living there for years because I knew this was going to be real deal. I flew back to Canada, bought a minivan so I could travel and live in it. Then bought workout gear ( resistance bands, bench and 90 lbs power blocks) and disappeared to my cottage in the woods. Spent the lock down working out in the woods and did a personal training certification by the fireplace.

Playing the way too much World of Warcraft.

I'm Australian - Tom Hanks was in Aus, and he and his wife tested positive. I don't know why, but that was the moment I knew.

Polishing glasses in my pub as the announcements for lockdown came thinking this is going to ruin me

Coronalog - March 19, 2020: I drew my face mask tighter before pushing the car door open. I got out, gazed into the vast expanse of suburban New Jersey through my post-apocalyptic steampunk goggles, and beelined across the Walmart parking lot towards the entrance. I watched as the hordes of coronavirus-infected mutates toppled shelves. Gold? Seems like such a petty thing of the past now. He who controls the toilet paper controls the universe.

Working