Memories of the Plague: A Covid 19 Reminiscence thread

Now that we're approaching the four year anniversary, I thought we could have repository of our early days memories
Those first Zoom calls.. people crossing the street to avoid each other... wiping down groceries with alcohol... meeting friends in the park but sitting in a giant circle.. coyotes howling in the Financial District

I was just putting toilet paper away, and I still have a roll of this really awful stuff that I bought four years ago.. made in vietman, visible wood chips in the paper, and it cost nine dollars for four rolls at a convenience store

Anyway, this is where we can share the good, the bad, the sad

Funny, I never suffered a toilet paper shortage -- I was usually the guy who brought my parents toilet paper from the store and leave it early in the morning outside their door.

The first week felt like a vacation: we were supposed to come back in April, remember? But on a vacation things are open and you can hang out with friends. The psychological toll didn't become apparent until early or mid April. It sucked.

Yeah, I remember when they warned that this 'could last as long as six weeks'(!)

I started my last in-office job on March 16, 2020. (My previous full-time in-office job had ended in May 2017; I'd been freelancing and doing contract work from home since then.) On Wednesday, March 18, we were told we would be working from home for the time being. My initial 90-day contract was not renewed at the end of June, because the job was doing social media for a medical school and there was basically no activity to share, other than media hits by professors being interviewed about Covid.

I remember going to the store for the first time when we had to stand outside in line because only a certain amount of people were allowed inside the store at one time. I felt extremely maudlin and dissociated.

I also remember another grocery trip to a large international market where the store music started playing the Sufjan Stevens song "Chicago." At first I thought I might be dead bc this was all too surreal to be real, and then I realized I wasn't dead and this was reality and I started crying in the frozen food aisle near the pierogi/dumpling area.

i remember lots of walks in the phoenix park, which we were lucky to have on our doorstep at the time.

On April 20 we celebrated a good friend's birthday -- my first contact with people outside my family -- in his backyard. Just four of us. We had three tables set up about twenty feet apart. Masks to use the bathroom.

I remember going to the store for the first time when we had to stand outside in line because only a certain amount of people were allowed inside the store at one time. I felt extremely maudlin and dissociated.

Yeah, my wife and I were standing in line outside Target and the woman ahead of us felt like we were too close; she looked back at us and exclaimed, "Six feet! Six feet!" We took a step backwards and she visibly relaxed.

Trying to remember when we switched from just wearing bandanas over our faces to actual masks. It was probably only a few days but it seemed like longer.

Hardly anyone was driving so the air smelled so clean for months. I wish it could have lasted forever.

oh god i just remembered teaching online the first few weeks and one of my students had her autistic 12 year old son at home too (because obvs he wasn't going to school either) and he was giving her a very hard time and screaming "I fucking hate you" so loud that she had to mute. But she didn't know how so we all heard it :(

i remember finding some solace in the truth that no one knew what they were doing and we were all just doing our best, whatever that means.

I was just in a grocery store last weekend that had faded strips of red tape on the floor, six feet apart leading up to the cash register

We'll probably be seeing these reminders for years to come

I had a bag of surgical masks from, like, 2011 left over from a bad cold. I used them and whatever shitty fabric masks you could buy on Amazon before they became available. To think that KN95 masks didn't become easily available until mid '21!

Trying to remember when we switched from just wearing bandanas over our faces to actual masks. It was probably only a few days but it seemed like longer.

I remember the first few days when we'd all been sent home, taking long walks around our neighborhood with bandanas and balaclavas around our noses and mouths. A few days into it (though in retrospect it feels much longer), my mom had handmade some masks she sent out to the whole family. Obviously those turned out to not be "safe" masks anyway, but it's a strong memory of the second half of March 2020 for me. Those were the days of the "flatten the curve" signs in some houses, while things were quiet just before the sirens became near constant to the nearby hospital.

I specifically remember the day we turned the corner and saw the field tent in the hospital parking lot that had been constructed, literally, overnight. That was really a "holy shit" moment for me.

I went to a local shop that first weekend and it was decimated, ransacked even. That afternoon, I drove to a farm shop (not quite as posho as it sounds, but not far off) and there was this apocalyptic atmosphere: huge queues, the stink of slurry in the air, everyone wild-eyed and frantic. At one point, a white van pulled up, driving aggressively close to the queue; three huge blokes got out and pushed their way to the front. I remember thinking 'fuuuck, this could escalate quickly'.

I had a bag of surgical masks from, like, 2011 left over from a bad cold. I used them and whatever shitty fabric masks you could buy on Amazon before they became available. To think that KN95 masks didn't become easily available until mid '21!

― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, March 12, 2024 2:52 PM (six seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

I had a pack of n95s in my desk from about a decade earlier as well. A colleague came to work sick - coughing, sneezing, etc. - and I marched down the street to CVS because damned if I was going to catch this guy's cold. But when I got back to my desk, I was too embarrassed to wear them, so I just caught his cold anyway. I found them in my desk when I snuck back to the office in May 2020 to nab my monitors and docking station, and was like "score!"

also everyone was sewing masks and giving them to friends. i gave an erstwhile ilxor (carl agatha) an old vintage dress that she turned into masks, and my sis in law (who has since contracted and died of cancer) made a bunch of masks for the family too.

I specifically remember the day we turned the corner and saw the field tent in the hospital parking lot that had been constructed, literally, overnight. That was really a "holy shit" moment for me.

same! same hospital too iirc

Good topic. Out and about right now, but will jot down some thoughts later.

The period in February 2020 just before the formal UK Lockdown was really scary: I work in the UK public sector and rumours were abounding that Ministers had just been briefed that tens of thousands of people were expected to die, and were shocked and 'scared shitless', and that government was exploring requisitioning football stadiums to store the bodies.

My "Holy Shit" moment was walking through Camden Market on the afternoon of 13 March 2020 after a work event and it was apocalyptically deserted.

same! same hospital too iirc

ha, yep! assuming it is indeed.

It was April. All the restaurants were closed and most of them hadn't figured out how to convert to take-out, yet. We would walk through our neighborhood streets around suppertime smelling hamburgers being grilled everywhere we went. It became a joke.

We have always cooked our own meals at home, so our diet was far more varied than hamburgers. otoh, I recall the challenge of making one grocery shopping trip to buy 15 to 17 days worth of fresh food for two and not having any food spoil before it was eaten, shuffling along in the line of people waiting to be admitted to the store, six feet apart, wearing a homemade cloth mask. People were always polite, but we didn't converse.

The public library closed and stayed that way for many months. We're big readers, but luckily I always have at least 30 books waiting on the shelf. The main problem became finding reading material that could be enjoyed when everything in life was skewed and depressing. We ran through a lot of our old DVDs on nights we would normally have read books.

I was sent home from work right around March 16th or 17th, with a laptop.. I didn't even have home internet! But my quick-thinking girlfriend called the library and I borrowed a wifi hotspot for three weeks until I could get something more permanent through work

key memories

- wearing an N-95 for the first time at the farmers market: couldn’t breathe right, felt so panicked, felt like I was in a horror movie, all i could see were masks everywhere & scared eyes, got back to the car & had a massive panic attack

- going to the supermarket: checkout attendants looking so scared behind perspex barriers; toilet paper shelves completely empty; watching couples double up on TP and join separate checkout lines & feeling RAGE

- our office went remote by march 20th iirc and we stayed permanently remote to this day. thought i would hate it, did at first, but love it now wouldnt trade it for anything

We were very lucky: our public libraries resumed curbside service the first week of May! You'd reserve the book online, then pick it up.

The second week of June the libraries reopened to the public with limited occupancy and face masks required (and a security guard enforcing the rules). THAT was my lifeline. I'd spent hours at my laptop and browsing the shelves for stuff I'd never usually read.

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...

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

I got an email from the SBA saying "you've got a new notice in the MySBA loan portal, please log in to see it," which is pretty funny* since I got an email in April 2022 saying I repaid the loan in full, no other action required. And then got several emails in June 2022 saying "account disabled due to activity" which, yeah, inactivity because I repaid the loan and no other action was required. So I can't log in to see the new notice because the account was disabled. I called the EIDL number and the message included "if you got an email saying you have a new notice but have paid the loan, no action is needed." So: 1. incompetence combined with 2. an active phishing attempt by my own govt.

*not funny at all really

congrats on getting them paid off

wasn't there like rampant fraud with that program?

I think that was the one I got mistakenly thinking it could/would be forgiven. When it turned out not to be the case, I paid it right back. The funds were in my acct for just a few weeks and never used. xp

And don't you know something?
I sent it right back

to Sallie Mae, Sallie Mae

Defrauding the government is kinda cool, actually

recently found an old, scrunched-up cloth mask in the pocket of a jacket that I rarely wear.. I think someone made it for me but can't remember who

An indefinite amount of time without bars to go to was frankly terrifying
Did a lot of improvisational public drinking
Like bringing six packs to the park and sneaking sips
Or filling a couple of thermoses full of beer and standing around when they finally opened for take out

I have a buddy that had just bought a bar right before then, like late 2019

His friends rallied and he was finally able to have some outdoor seating where people could drink mason jars of pre-made cocktails, but it was really a deathblow and he sold the bar just to get out of debt

the fraud one was the PPP Paycheck Protection Program. where is Steve Mnuchin, we need the Mnooch

A couple of my locals still have the vestigial glue marks on the floor by the front door from when they finally opened but enforced strict social distancing protocols by marking Xs in the floor with duct tape

we'll be seeing shit like that for years to come, I imagine

sometimes I'll hear the theme song for a TV show I watched a lot during COVID (Superstore, What We Do in the Shadows) and it will make my heart start racing and give me a fight-or-flight reaction so I have to turn it off and not watch TV for a bit

I had lunch at a pizza place yesterday that still had their branded social distancing line markers on the floor.

Partner ok’ed purchase of ps4
Death stranding for days

when I go to the dentist I have to fill out online forms, and they still have a bunch of questions at the top about whether i have had covid symptoms in the last (x) days

The funniest thing to me is remembering the magic window when nobody had had a haircut in 4+ months. you'd get on a call with like your boss and their boss and all these serious people and they all looked like dennis hopper

... and acted like him.

my dad’s hair got longer than it had ever been, he looked either like a weathered California hippie or a founding father depending on what he was wearing

I like how some people just left it even after barbers reopened. One of my best friends looked like Krusty The Klown.

I got my first real pandemic haircut in October '20. She and the other hairdressers and the customers were masked; she cut my hair but I trimmed my own beard when I got home.

I bought an electric razor and learned to cut my own and haven’t been to a barber since

My beard was absolutely ludicrous during the pandemic, didn't even properly look after it in any way until sometime near the end.

xpost same got a lot better at doing that, tho I go to the barber again in recent times as he does a better job still, plus it's nice as a bald man to visit the barber, haha

I shave my head now but still haven't learned to do it myself lol

I have a bunch of selfies of my wife cutting my hair out on our deck every so often during the pandemic. She got a real kick out of it.

I was having a pretty good life in a quiet country town, spending a lot of time outside in nature and trying to help people by having one foot still in the city, but my relationship was about to go through its most strained period. That would last years until I gave up trying to save it. COVID social phenomena really accelerated my partner's journey into alt-right radicalization though the signs had probably been there in certain ways.

Still cutting my own hair to this day; I've probably saved $1500 by now and I wish I were kidding but women's haircuts are EXPENSIVE YO.

I have shaved my own head for a while, it's p easy however I dislike sweeping up the hair after, even tho it's also easy. Just kind of unpleasant. Also the beard fade is annoying. I can do it well now but it's just a pain.

I dislike sweeping up the hair after

use a hoover

Bizarre that COVID turned out to be a nice, general net positive for my life. Just made an improvement to what was good and got rid of much of the bad.

They would not find me changed from him they knew —
Only more sure of all I thought was true.

-- Robert Frost

Fair point NBS but would have to take it out of closet and plug it in etc.

When did y'all start going to a doctor again? My dentist called me in June 2020 almost begging me to keep my months-booked cleaning appointment. We had to wait in our cars until our appointment time. The fact that she and her staff before 2020 already wore protective non-surgical masks and gloves reassured me; this time they looked dressed as if to sift through plutonium waste.

xxp I bought a cheap razor comb online and that kept going for a year or two... I still use it occasionally to buy a little time between barber visits

When did y'all start going to a doctor again?

I had to look in my medical app for this, and was vaguely surprised I apparently saw my then-regular FNP in June 2020 for some sort of allergy relief? I honestly don't remember what this was about. I assume we were masked as hell and then some -- I know I did one other visit around then to a specialist for a sinus surgery followup (the surgery itself had happened November 2019, thankfully). Looks like I did another visit in late 2020 to schedule a regular scan, then by March 2021 I was definitely back on a regular pattern as that's when I arranged to get my shingles shots. Weird to realize it! Definitely didn't go back to the dentist until December 2020, which was a year out from the previous visit.

As for haircuts, my first was October 2020, having just missed what would have been a regular late March trim by a couple of weeks, so no haircut since December 2019. I was rather shaggy indeed.

I kept up my six month dental cleanings throughout.. I think the office had a little break right at the beginning but then they started dressing all Andromeda Strain like Alfred referenced... oh also, each chair got some incredibly fancy air purifier next to it

Yeah i kept going to the dentist too, and, like alfred said, they had totally over-the-top (in a good way) protection gear.

Its true.

I don’t have anything to add to the covid conversation except this is my favorite image from the era pic.twitter.com/3cJlLWVvvr

— Chris A (@AlsikkanTV) August 24, 2025

footage of the first Bad Brains concert