Hindsight is 20/20. Looking at the threads here. Looks like the first post about the coronavirus was on March 1st about a ship breaking quarantine. March 11th, the day that the WHO announced it was officially a pandemic.
2 Likes
I beat the author of the article to the start of the race to prepare for the worst-case scenario by a week & a half. He started Feb. 2, I started Jan 26th. The turning point for me was Chinese New Year, Jan 24th. We had diner with a family of Chinese nationals who have been in the US for about 6 years. The husband/dad is a college professor/researcher & his daughter is a classmate with our daughter & best friends. They ordered fish for all of us because they said eating fish on New Years Day will bring good luck all year. They are very serious adults, somewhat pro-China & no where near being a couple of “cling to your Bibles & guns” preppers. But with a few sentences they changed my mind about the coronavirus. They told us not to believe anything from the Chinese media about the crisis. I started looking for masks, hand sanitizer & other staples a month before the thought of doing so arose in the mass US media. I recently found out that was the last time they ate at a set down restaurant. It was the second from last time for us.
Financially planning speaking, the turning point was the night/morning before the markets fell 20% indicating a beginning of Bear Markets. That was easily predicted because all futures indexes showed big market falls & overseas were already in the dumps. Not hard to miss that if you read financial news.
The turning point for me when I realized the country was going to shut down was when NCAA Basketball canceled March Madness. I was onboarding on a temp job & didn’t realize things ashore was so bad until then. That was a big deal. There was no turning point for me for shutting down international travel because that was a no-brainer for me. I was amazed the WHO, the Chinese Government & anti-Trump’ers fought against the travel shutdowns & demanded that we wait for more research. Shutting down international travel was obvious IMO.
My latest turning point was in Mid-April when I went to Lowes for the first time after missing the worst of the panics offshore. The workers & shoppers at Lowes were going about their business the best they could. A pandemic couldn’t stop them from wanting to improve their homes, spend money & continue with their pursuit of happiness. In the following weeks I seen people become braver, calmer & more determined to go back to the way things were before. They wear masks & stand 6ft apart from each other but they are still determined. The hiking & running trails are crammed packed around me. Those who survive will shake it off & be stronger than before. Things are getting more back to normal every day. 2 months into the national crisis & many states have had fewer total deaths than what NYC was having every day at its peak. IMO, even if the total number of deaths quadruple in 1 day in these places I believe people will still strive to get back to their business of pursuing their happiness.
Below is my first comment about the coronavirus. Jan 30th, I was the second commenter.
Hmmmm. Late February I attempted to wear a mask on a flight out of Anchorage and a very nice flight attendant politely asked me to remove it as it was scaring the other passengers. I figured it would become endemic at that point.
After I got home I started running the numbers on the enplanements out of the Wuhan area and that was How I Stopped Worrying And Learned To Love The Coronavirus.
There seems to be a pretty stark difference in how people are reacting based on when they started paying attention. There has been a TON of good news since late January. It’s hard to realize what good news is if you don’t have a baseline.
2 Likes
Late January early February after getting a call from a friend in the Bethesda DOD infectious disease research bubble. A short time later when we heard about the Washington State case, we decided to stock up and to set up our annual hurricane kit early just in case. It got to the point that I accused my wife of being a hoarder when storage space overflowed but she made the right call.
I was offshore when the peak of the crisis hit. Being a mariner used to being away & worried for my family I went on a shopping binge before I left. Things were normal before I left so my wife thought I went overboard with the stocking up. I told her that we would have a big barbecue when I got back if she didn’t need the stuff & she could invite all her friends that she knows aren’t my favorite but she still thought I was nuts. She wasn’t a happy camper.
When the panic hit she didn’t have to leave the house for a month but did once to get fresh bread & to see the devastation for herself. What she saw was shocking. She cried a few times & gave scores of “I’m sorry & thank you”. Even a broken clock is right twice a day?
After this crisis I think tin foil hat wearers will get a little bit more respect & have a little bit more company.
3 Likes
Standing in line at the store and the GF bumps into one of her other RN buddy’s, that was friday when Cuomo started the shutdown of “non essential” for Sunday, they got talking how the larger hospitals here where in a panic for extra equipment, even Cooperstown only had 8-10 beds in the ICU. Nursing homes up here are over run with it, my neighbor has had it, local emt down the road has it. People from NYC who have weekend homes up here cleaned out a few of the local stores, food, ammo, gas cans, typical shit. We still have a few familys who are ordering their grocerys thru us every week, 1x guy gets out of the truck in a tyvek suit, full 3M respirator.
There is 1 slight upside to all this, beer sales are up, we got almost 260 cases for our 2wk order and with all the bars closed the brewerys couldn’t just stop production, distributors are unloading beer, bar packs of 24 bottles for 13 bucks, hey if you cant work or go out ? 
1 Like
Late Feb, wife (who has a degree in statistics and worked for epidemiologists) and monitors the news closely says with great force “Cat 5 shit storm coming.” (Well, she’s far too ladylike to say that, but that was the message.) Loaded up at Costco first couple of days in March. I went to ground March 5 and haven’t left the house since except to take walks in our closed little neighborhood.
Turning point was the first Presidential news conference. We now keep a rolling inventory of 4 weeks of essentials.
Earl
When I read about the South Korean church where hundreds were infected I figured it would spread. If it spreads in church that quick it’d spread everywhere.
I began my prepping on 20 February. My first prepper order to Amazon was submitted 21 February. By then I’d stocked the kitchen and pantry, bought ammo from the MCX and tried to convince my buddies to stock up - they thought I was nuts.
One friend said I was scaring his wife. A few weeks later I gave him toilet paper because they were out and the stores were empty. I know how to squat and clean in the South East Asian way but she doesn’t seem like the type…
1 Like
That’s a link I won’t be clicking on.
1 Like
In early March, our close neighbor who is a high level nurse told us in so many words"The shit is hitting the fan". We walk our mutts at a distance. She is a sweethart. Sad it has to be this way.
This article appeared in the Atlantic on 10 Mar.
Interesting article about two similar neighborhoods with very different outcomes. One with connections to Asia and one Latino.
1 Like