Memories of the Plague: A Covid 19 Reminiscence thread

I live in Wisconsin where the Tavern League has an insane amount of influence over local law for whatever reason. All the businesses and restaurants were closed but many of the bars were still open. It was so surreal to drive around at night and see the whole town dead except these little corner bars which were still all lit up.

Mid-March 2020 and maybe like a day or two before we learned that a case had been reported in our office and on our floor (and, like, not shared publicly with the employees who were about to walk out in droves if we hadn't gone fully WFH the next day), but numbers were slowly increasing in Chicago and everyone was understandably on edge. I was walking down the street and saw two business dudes approach one another and automatically shake hands as business dudes do, and both of their faces just immediately melted into expressions of dread at the realization of the deadly plague that they had so casually passed on to one another (RIP, business dudes).

The weather in the first six weeks was incredible, particularly for the UK in April. We were only supposed to take an hour of exercise, but the countryside was so deserted that I was doing longer and longer loops from my house. One of my main memories is of opening farm gates with my elbows, and, if I absolutely had to use my hands, sanitising immediately. It was irrational but somehow the idea of infection pervaded everything.

Same in South Florida -- the mildest of springs.

I remember flying from LA to Atlanta just after Garcetti's stay at home order came out. The crew took an extra hour to clean the plane before we got on. It was surreal, I felt like I was in a movie.

Remember the NYC morgue trucks? Such grim imagery, I kept thinking of The Andromeda Strain or some dystopian sci-fi movie

https://ei.marketwatch.com/Multimedia/2020/04/01/Photos/ZH/MW-ID515_NYCtru_20200401095435_ZH.jpg

Definitely a time. My running assumption is that baking sourdough and watching Tiger King consumes a lot of memories then. In SF it was more this sense of a slow motion build that was in the air for weeks, thanks in part to regular flights between East Asia and here in particular. I remember seeing my first maskers in public in early February, then of course there was that cruise ship docked in the bay itself. The real tell was the slow reduction in gathering size over the final three weeks before lockdown — I went to a slew of shows then and was on the verge of another when hours beforehand the mayor basically said “That’s it.” It was a Friday so I locked up the library and I believe a day later told my supervisors that according to city regulations (my library is essentially a split between the city and my campus) we had to stay closed. Didn’t go back even quickly for an equipment overview for surely months; location didn’t reopen until last May.

My one on-point comment at the time to Kate was that we were about to see who could actually live with themselves if they had to stay put and chill for a bit. I still think that the very idea of it drove people beyond a boundary that they have never recrossed; I get human connection and its need and all but the sense of a slew of extroverts who absolutely had no idea what to do was pretty clear.

i remember putting a lot of effort into cooking new things, planning movie nights, reading up on pieces of info on jobs that could be done around the place.

got very productive for a burst of the first six months or so

(may not have lasted)

xp my ex and I actually drove out to see the cruise ship at the Port of Oakland... we actually got pretty close, there were no security staff and we just walked right up to it; a lot of ambulances coming and going

One of the first recorded deaths (maybe THE first recorded death in the U.S.) was a woman in Santa Clara, thought with hindsight there were probably many more - they just didn't know the cause of death at the time

My one on-point comment at the time to Kate was that we were about to see who could actually live with themselves if they had to stay put and chill for a bit. I still think that the very idea of it drove people beyond a boundary that they have never recrossed;

*raises hand* I learned a few things that spring and summer. I'm an introvert but not shy. Except for an outdoor visit to my parents' on Fridays I was on my own seven days a week for weeks. It crushed me.

I'd do it again if I had to, only this time I'd insist on moving in with a friend.

My brother lives by himself. The isolation was not good for him at all. He became absolutely convinced he had stomach cancer. (He didn't."

I routinely met a couple buddies for beers down by the lake, starting almost immediately... I think we had a somewhat fatalist idea of our meetups because we didn't necessarily social distance as diligently as we should have

But those hangs helped save my sanity

In retrospect, to keep from dredging up painful memories of how bad my mental health got some months, I try to hold onto the undeniable good (and there was, actually!) to come out of it. Which isn't to say I want to minimize the very real suffering or imply it was a good time, but I remain ever thankful that I was able to have a lot more time with my school age kid than I would have through those first 18 months or so.

Yeah, as the relative safety of outdoor activity became clear, I used to go to a friend's for an outdoor happy hour a couple times a week. She wouldn't even let me in the house: I'd go around the back and she'd bring a drink out to me. She wouldn't let me tip.

After waking up at 5:30 a.m. every workday and commuting two hours each way for 14 1/2 years, I felt peace! It helped that remote work technology had caught up by then. As an introvert it was great (I lived with my brother though, and had two cats, so not alone. The cats loved us being home all the time.). For the first several months also I didn't have any sick family or friends, until a close friend maybe had a medical emergency that was ostensibly not COVID but I still wonder.

A good friend lost his mom to Covid.. I knew her pretty well. She got it at a rehabilitation hospital that was neglecting safe practices.. he's still pretty bitter about it

We moved out of the city in the middle of the pandemic, first to a rental and then bought a house. I will probably get rotten eggs with "check your privilege" written on them thrown at me for saying it, but I have a lot of good memories from that time. It was scary and strange, but we were very lucky to be able to do what we did. I got to watch a lot more of a crucial time in my kids' growing up than I would otherwise. I have really sweet memories like watching them learn to roller skate on the driveway, the fake "day camp" my wife invented for them where they learned about different countries, nice BBQs, long walks and hikes (and my kids learning to actually enjoy hikes), all kinds of absurd imaginary games and stories we invented, funny songs they made up, doing a puzzle late at night with my then 5yo when she couldn't sleep, seeing fox and groundhog in the yard and the kids giving them names, simple pleasures like pizza delivery seeming extra enjoyable, etc. I got really attached to an orb weaver spider I found in our yard spinning its web. I remember one night sitting in the back yard and I heard jazz, like actually surprisingly good modern jazz, wafting from the distance, and I just went walking and followed the sound until I found a very tiny outdoor socially distanced concert in someone's yard and watched from across the street.

It all sounds very corny and NPR and oblivious I know, but it was part of my experience. There was of course stress and isolation and worry too, but the feeling of the nicer parts of it is unlike anything I've experienced at any other time in my life.

I wouldn't say the pandemic was a root cause of our moving from urban New Jersey to rural Montana, but the pandemic — and specifically seeing how many industries shifted to remote work much more seamlessly than one might expect, and how much people seemed to like that and refuse to "return to the office" later — definitely planted the seed in our heads that hey, we can live anywhere, there's no financial/professional reason we have to stay where we are.

we bought our home during covid, moved in in july 21

wouldnt have happened without covid savings and remote working

I got to watch a lot more of a crucial time in my kids' growing up than I would otherwise.

Yeah, this is what I was getting at.

and specifically seeing how many industries shifted to remote work much more seamlessly than one might expect

And yet, so many of those very same industries (or at least companies) were already by 2023 furiously backtracking that, actually, "remote doesn't work". *insert all of the eyerolls here*

yeah, our CEO was writing things about how 'we can't wait to get everybody back into the office!' Then she bought a house in Florida and hasn't brought that shit up again

My one on-point comment at the time to Kate was that we were about to see who could actually live with themselves if they had to stay put and chill for a bit. I still think that the very idea of it drove people beyond a boundary that they have never recrossed; I get human connection and its need and all but the sense of a slew of extroverts who absolutely had no idea what to do was pretty clear.

― Ned Raggett

i'm managing to live with myself better than i used to. my ex-wife, on the other hand...

it's hard to sort the memories out. i'm glad i have a journal for it. it all blends together in my mind. transition, COVID, Trump's invasion of Portland, the slow collapse of my marriage. looking at my journal i talk about there being what i termed at the time a "phony war". it was serious and not at the same time. there were all these random product shortages. everything seemed like a harbinger to me then. it seemed like everything was going to fall apart. so much of a sense of personal disappointment. i'd just socially transitioned a little over three months before, i was just on HRT. after a lifetime of isolating, of avoiding people, i wanted to get _out_, i wanted to be _social_, i wanted to be _me_. i wanted people to see who i really was. for a lot of people, covid isolation allowed them... to see who they really were, without being judged by other people. it helped a lot of people to transition. the wave of COVID transitions, i think of that as a new generation, a separate generation. i felt differently.

looking back i see what i remember. a lot of fear. a lot of panic. when the smog hit that august i pretty much lost it completely. i think i quit ilx at some point because i couldn't handle communicating with other people like that.

All I did was practice viola, play video games, cook my way through Marcella Hazan and drink too much every night. It was a weird year. I didn't want to reach out to friends over text or call them because I had nothing to talk about, nothing was happening, which was weird.

I remember the 4th Feb 2020, my son's 18th birthday and the last time I travelled on a train and also the last time I visited a public swimming pool. iirc it was a few days after the first UK cases and I was nervy + pulling my t-shirt over my mouth on the train and my son was getting annoyed with me and pulling it back down, he does the same if I pull it over my face when he does a disgusting fart in my proximity! I was convinced my mum and stepdad would soon contract it because he goes in Wetherspoons and casinos every evening and she was dismissing it as nothing to worry about when I told her to try and minimise the time she spends in supermarkets and shops. As it turned out neither of them or myself have ever contracted it yet.

What sticks in my memory is about a week before lockdown and buying milk and bread was a struggle, walking past this 50-something bloke with a bag of clinking bottles that looked like a random hodgepodge of just any booze that was left on the shelf. And he had a really grave look on his face and said good luck to you, lad.

And more ominously I was nervously queueing in the Co-op, and it was panic buying season. There was a very scared looking woman in front of me who was the only mask wearing person in the shop and she had half a dozen bottles of white wine in her basket. In front of her was a loudmouthed high-viz bloke having some banter with the tiller about how he was an essential worker and it wasn't right there was no milk or bread left for him. Tiller replied, you only water daffodils in the park, what's so essential about that m8. Then the whole queue went momentarily frozen when he said: no the council have moved me from Parks, they want me to dig graves now.

wow, I just went momentarily frozen...

my wife died in February 2020 so after her memorial at the end of the month I basically had to deal with that completely isolated for 5 months, I knew nobody where I lived at the time. I don't really know how I managed to get through that but somehow I did. I think the first person that I actually knew that I saw in person after things opened up was mark s as he was in town visiting his sister (my mum came down for my birthday a couple of weeks later)

I was in my last semester of graduate school, already writing my thesis, teaching one course and taking another one. I got basically zero instruction on how to take my course online, thankfully it was only a twice-a-week meeting and largely based on video instruction from the start, so I started recording talks for one meeting and basically having open hours for the second meeting. The course I was taking was a disaster, the instructor was totally inept at anything online and the whole thing devolved into chaos. Everyone got As and we didn't produce anything (it was an art course, to be clear.) I defended my thesis via Zoom a week after the riots following George Floyd's murder cooled down (I went to UMN in Minneapolis.)

Outside of school things I spent a lot of time taking the dog to the park, meeting people there but being cautious about distance. Had a few backyard hangs but March in Minnesota isn't great, weather-wise, so most of that didn't kick in for a couple more months.

Some of the big things I remember from March/April of that time was how quiet the city was, how gas prices kept falling, getting good at planning our food menus for two weeks at a time (learning to appreciate, even love, frozen vegetables), my wife learning to work from home—four years later and she's still remote, and drinking way, way too much. Eventually we hauled ass to Michigan where I bought as much legal weed as I could (it wasn't legal in MN yet) and sweating a lot while bringing it back to the city.

I actually got covid watching the first Dune movie, but that was late 2021 so things were a lot more 'known' by that point... I spent my birthday alone with a 12 pack of beer a buddy dropped by lol

Dan- should there have been another dash after 'remote' ? lol

memories include

my wife and I had been separated, but I had not moved out of the house we owned together, at her suggestion when the lockdowns hit in mid-March I moved back in and eventually we rebuilt our relationship <3

started weekly online D&D sessions with user ian and former user 69 plus two other record dorks, sessions continue to this day

not gonna lie, the ILX Slack video meetups really helped, I remember hanging with Colonel Poo in particular as he dealt with all that shit he posted above

started working remotely and have never looked back

I also vividly remember being at a record show in early March where I was selling at a table, this was in the "wipe down everything and wash your hands" times, before masking. I remember bringing an entire roll of paper towels and a bottle of alcohol, and washing my hands a lot. Nobody had masks.

and hearing about the Washington choir practice outbreak, which was a truly terrifying "holy shit it travels through the air and you get it by breathing" moment

Chastening to read this thread, look back, and realise that aside from not having to work for 18 months(an unequivocally good thing) that absolutely nothing about how I lived my life changed aside from masking once a week to grocery shop. Definitely one of the lucky ones.

I had a half-baked idea to go shopping and stock up on tinned goods and stuff, and the local supermarket was the busiest I'd ever seen it. What I remember is that it was bustling and hectic, but not really loud or chaotic, because everyone seemed really focused on what they were doing, and a lot of people were obviously scared shitless. About a week later, my parents got an emergency flight home from a Spanish Island that had gone into lockdown, I went out to run some errands for them and I had never seen the town so quiet - almost no cars, no people.

My workplace eventually let us work from home, but it took some time to happen. In the first two months or so, we had to sit over two metres apart, so every second desk could not be used. I usually started my shift later in the afternoon, and because the 9-5 people were still there, I'd spend a farcical amount of time wandering around the whole building, looking for a spot to work (and hoping that spot actually had functioning equipment)

Dan- should there have been another dash after 'remote' ? lol

Ha, probably, but yknow, who cares? :D

There are some really moving posts above and I read through and thought "I should reply to that" but then got overwhelmed.

I remember being in north Norfolk on holiday the week before "we" were sent home from work. Swerving people on sea walls, conscious of people running out of things like Calpol.

I remember reading this and being moved and scared by it: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/27/a-letter-to-the-uk-from-italy-this-is-what-we-know-about-your-future

I have nice memories of (once it was possible) making the most of my social life: walking with one person is probably my ideal!

I remember feeling privileged to order some food (Cheese! Wine!) deliveries from Oxford shops.

I remember loads of horrible, sad things.

oh man i almost forgot: the 2020 norcal wildfires that summer on top of all of the pandemic craziness really spun things out for me, and i think everyone in the region

i really started getting cabin fever then

yeah, the fires added a visually apocalyptic element to the weirdness

super fucking scary

Chastening to read this thread, look back, and realise that aside from not having to work for 18 months(an unequivocally good thing) that absolutely nothing about how I lived my life changed aside from masking once a week to grocery shop. Definitely one of the lucky ones.

Kinda true for me, too. The only person I knew personally who died was my landlord, whom I thought was an OK guy but wasn't exactly attached to. His widow and sister taking over management of the building we lived in, and being fucking terrible at everything, was another big push to get out of there, though.

I've got a million scattered memories, like lining up outside of stores and being let in one at a time, or spending a lot of time (eventually) volunteering at vaccine clinics and seeing the people ecstatic at getting the shot (especially when their little kids could finally get them), or seeing Opeth with my friend on Valentine's Day 2020 and knowing things were already getting weird, or seeing my friend's cover band do a night of Rush on March 7 and feeling that that show might be it for a while. But one of the foremost things I recall is not quite panicking but definitely considering what supplies I should stock up on, then blanking. Eventually the only two things that came to mind were maraschino cherries and Chemex coffee filters. (Right?) I'm just now on the final jar of cherries, but more amusingly it turns out that Chemex coffee filters *were* in short supply, but I had no idea, because I had stocked up!

Honestly, 2020 through the end of 2022 was all a blur to me. I was not well the entire time, have forgotten much of the details of what happened when, few clear memories. A couple of lost years from my life.

Oh, and celebrating New Year's Eve (or some sort of Christmas thing?) outside in the sub-zero weather with our good friends where it was so cold the shrimp literally froze, and we had to thaw them out to eat them under the heat lamp (which was also a covid thing).

This was late July 2020, so the furor over masking had already begun, dividing the nation along the usual polarizing political lines, with Trump egging on his supporters about Freedom! and ivermectin.

I was backpacking in a very remote wilderness area, about 9 miles from the trailhead. A solo woman backpacker was coming up the trail toward me wearing a bandana for a mask. There was plenty of room to step off the trail, so I stepped aside about 20 feet to let her pass. Seeing me, she stopped and asked me to put on a mask. I said sorry, but I didn't have one with me. She then stood about 100 feet from me and spent the next five minutes vehemently berating me as an irresponsible lout and public menace. Once she slowed enough that I could respond, I asked her if she'd feel more comfortable if I moved even further off the trail so she could pass. Very reluctantly, she assented to this solution. So I did. And she walked by and was gone.

Afterwards I realized I was wearing a bandana on my head during all this, but I didn't think of it because it wasn't "a mask". It was also visible to her, but she evidently didn't realize it, either. It was a strange time.

I've told this story before. Exactly four years ago I left Chapel Hill after a Destroyer concert for NYC to meet a guy I was seeing. I kept hearing that line by Treebeard: "It's likely we march to our doom." The Raleigh-LaGuardia flight was the emptiest I've ever seen; both airports were deserted. In NYC cabbies and Uber drivers had already put up plastic sheets b/w them and us. I met a friend for cocktails who said that two weeks earlier he'd been so sick he couldn't even think; he thought it was COVID. Cleaning crews were scrubbing subways. Arriving on a Thursday, I was already in a panic on Friday -- I thought Cuomo would shut the airports down, requiring me to drive down, as if it were 9-11 again. I was supposed to stay through Monday but changed my flight for Saturday morning (I rode those airline credits well into 2022).

Quick memories/thoughts:

* In February 2020, I kept refreshing a Guardian Covid Q&A webpage that included the question "Should we be worried?" and the answer "No." Sometime in early March that question disappeared and I finally accepted we were fucked.

* For a while, if I left the house, I would shampoo when I got home, in case I caught Covid off my own hair.

* Our daughter was born in September 2019 and I quit my job in December 2019, so I could spend six months as a stay-at-home parent. It turned out to be two years! Finding a new job was fucking impossible, but the extra time with my daughter was priceless so it was certainly worth it.

* It was incredibly sunny in the UK in 2020 and I spent a lot time reading books outside with a beer while my daughter slept inside, and that was pretty good really.

* I feel like I hallucinated watching a whole season of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier

* We started seeing my parents inside again (we saw them quite a lot outside) around June 2021 once we'd all been double vaccinated. And then my dad died in December 2021 (not of Covid). So because of covid, I missed way too much grandad-dad-grandaughter time, which fucking sucked.

there were some people a couple streets over from me doing the evening pot-banging thing, which somehow was supposed to show support for medical staff and essential personnel. They kept at it for a couple months, and then there was just this one young girl, about 10 or so, and she kept at it for a LONG time, still out there in the evening, banging on a saucepan. I'm sure the neighbors were glad when she finally retired her slotted spoon

My overarching memory is being very, very sacred and convincing myself if I got it I was going to be on a ventilator. I was more determined than anyone I knew not to put myself in a situation where I might catch it.

I could see which way the wind was blowing way before anyone else I knew. Several friends and my partner thought I had lost my mind as I locked myself down 2 weeks before the country was told to. I was all stocked up on all required supplies long before any panic buying had begun. I was a very early adopter of washing my shopping and pivoting to having everything delivered.

I can laugh about some of my behaviour now but even though a whole load of positives eventually came out of it - eg I got very fit, my partner proposed to me and I had a wildly creative period post summer 2020, I do think that initial level of heightened anxiety slightly changed me forever.

(like, the reverse of io's story)

I remember having just had COVID and done the two-week isolation, the rule in the UK back then, and going to the shops to buy stuff without a mask and it definitely was weird to see people gawping at you as part of the weird surveillance/righteousness many adopted at the time. Tho of course seeing people not wearing masks sometimes made that an easy way to think about others.

xxp Socially Distanced, with Jennifer Anniston and Channing Tatum

LG they shoulda given you a lanyard or something

"NOT INFECTED"

I remember calling out some guy in the 7-11 for not wearing a mask at the peak of that. he responded "I'm vaccinated", to which I said "thank you for that, but you can still transmit it"

has there been a movie about Major Tom or whatever his name was? Probably Anthony Hopkins or Gary Oldman trudging around the garden path, maybe not the most compelling cinema

We had this period in the States b/w April and July, ending with the Delta wave, when as people got vaccinated the CDC didn't provide further guidance. OK, you got the jab, do you go back to isolating? What now? Then they said, OK, go live your life. Then Delta hit.

I was losing my mind and he was having unvaccinated people over as house guests.

When things started to open up again here, the medical advice was to limit social activities, be careful, continue social distancing, etc. Sewing club resumed in the craft shop in town, and I agreed to go even though I really didn't want to, because I didn't want the shop to go bust. Everyone agreed to mask and we would keep all the doors and windows open and be respectful of each other. We show up and one woman lets us know that she's been out and about with her family in restaurants and bars, no masks, and that they've all been visiting each other's houses regularly. She refuses to wear a mask while we're at sewing club because IT AGGRAVATES HER ASTHMA, and I just got so mad at her that I got up and left. Never went back. Never spoke to any of the other women in that club again.

It’s a little strange to think that my partner and I were both resigned to getting it because of his job, and then neither of us got it until after he left that job (in an emergency room, he left partly because he acquired PTSD from watching so many people die).

That's awful. I hope he is doing better.

five years out, should we expect some movie or TV show about the early days? Or is it too soon?

Ari Aster's next movie, Eddington, is supposedly set during the pandemic.

I've seen more than a few movies that show characters masked and/or addressing COVID.

Ari Aster's next movie, Eddington, is supposedly set during the pandemic.

Oh, hope the pandemic doesn't interfere with his love of marmalade sandwiches.

The height of the COVID crisis is a significant factor in The Pitt

I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but I think the only film I've seen that mentions it is Glass Onion, which sidesteps it in a great way.

The last few episodes of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s ‘Mr. Corman’ tv series addresses COVID but not in any way that would make you want to watchw

I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but I think the only film I've seen that mentions it is Glass Onion

Bad Luck Banging Or Loony Porn, Three Thousand Years Of Longing, Kimi, Magic Mike's Last Dance (Mike's furniture business tanked), Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Sick (Kevin Williamson / John Hyams slasher)... Wheatley's In The Earth?

Hamaguchi's last couple films too iirc.

I think the only one of those I've seen is Three Thousand Years of Longing - which rings a bell as regards some mention of masks. I suppose there's a distinction between "this is being used as a time setting", like brick phones for the 80s; "this is a force applied to the characters / the setting", like 'this is set during the Great Depression'; "the characters' reactions to this tell them something about them" (Glass Onion fits here); and Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, which I hadn't looked up the plot of before, and holy fucking shit.

The really good Starz series Counterpart with JK Simmons eerily predicted a very covid-like outbreak, complete with masking and PSA's... in 2017

(It's too bad this show didn't get better distribution)

Really recommend reading Masque Of The Red Death post-COVID, if you haven't already.

COVID was also a major plot point in the second season of The Morning Show.

Wasn't there a movie about a movie being made during COVID? I think it was a comedy, with an ensemble cast featuring Pedro Pascal, among many others. Then again, he's in everything. I bailed after about 10 minutes of it when it was on Netflix.

Yeah, the most recent Judd Apatow: The Bubble

Discussion of that kind of stuff: Rolling Covid in Pop Culture Thread