What do you remember about the start of covid five years ago?

[hownos]

I remember being in the supermarket and the shelves were being cleared especially the toilet paper. Reminded me of the movie Panic In Year Zero.

[beelzebubble]

I remember I had a long cold in February 2019. That was weird because I never get colds. It was probably covid. I am O-. I have heard that people with this blood type have a better immunity to it. I remember Trump talking about a possible shutdown before the end of 2019, so I hit the stores and bought my mother loads of supplies. I was still using the toilet paper I bought her till 2021.
I was lucky as my job was deemed essential. It's not. I drove around with a paper in my car saying I was an essential worker in case I was pulled over by the cops.

[Mesmerized]

I remember having to wear a mask everywhere and my glasses occasionally fogging up. Yeah the toilet paper craze. People were desperate to get toilet paper. I remember being in a dollar store and some guy came in all anxious about wanting to buy toilet paper. Crazy times. Oh and covid itself. I caught that and I couldn't taste food for several days. I was worried that it might be permanent. A depressing experience.

[Yoda]

Lots of different memories, but the first one to come to mind is always this: taking my dog outside, on (I think) March 13th, and just...knowing it was out there. Knowing it was coming, knowing it would inevitably get here but hadn't yet, and how we'd all just sort of have to wait. And two days later, March 15th, was the day the scale tipped over and everything changed all at once.

I also remember maybe a month earlier when an NBA player came in for a press conference and, as a joke, touched or coughed on all the microphones. I think it was just a couple of weeks later, when he realized it was actually serious and not just a news story that made for a topical joke, that he apologized.

[Citizen Rules]

I remember following the news story about the people stuck on a cruise ship and not being able to get off it because they had an infectious disease, aka covid. I remember the streets being empty of traffic, like some post apocalyptic movie, which I liked as it made driving easy.

I remember the wife and I wore masks and safety glasses to the grocery store long before it was being suggested and some asshat in the crowded aisle walked pass me, saying 'this is getting ridiculous' in a mocking tone. I remember wishing I had kicked him in the balls...but then felt sorry for him because he obviously was a stupid and angry person and probably a denier too.

I remember buying a huge box of cheap toilet paper off Amazon for a ridiculous high price because the stores were all out.

And I remember the Covid thread on MoFo which gave us a chance to be together and talk about Covid while we sheltered in place.

[LeBoyWondeur]

I remember that Fox' Empire was cancelled and we never got the finale that was teased at the beginning of season 6.
:mad:

[Nausicaä]

Remembering being so lucky that a relative came out of hospital after a stroke about two months before it really got bad. Five months in hospital and was discharged home, she has problems with her lungs so we believe if she was in hospital during covid then she would have died.

Thankfully we didn't catch it until last august and by then she was pumped full of vaccines and boosters. :)

[Captain Quint]

I remember watching the Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey movie and hating it, then the next day or so they shut down everything, and then I got sick for a week, and that worried me, and I thought "I'm going to be pissed off if Harley Quinn is the thing that killed me" (indirectly, of course)

I had plenty of toilet paper, but I was out of quarters, and no one would give you any, so to do laundry at my apt, I had to feed bills into the vending machines at work, then buy nothing in order to get refunded in change.

I was an essential worker, so I had that. But it was spooky because no one was out and about and there wasn't much actual work to do - just, be here, just in case, do some paperwork, read books, then go home and watch Abbott and Costello movies (I ordered the box set) for a brief escape from the news and all the anger and fear that was going on around the world.

[Captain Steel]

I remember seeing through all the lies and disinformation as it occurred and living my life accordingly.

(The first story I recall as tipping me off that certain "authorities" were going insane and abusing power while using the pandemic as their excuse was the one where a father in a deserted park playing with his wife and child, was handcuffed & arrested for "gathering" in a public place. This was despite his being there ONLY with the same two people he lived with, being outdoors, and the fact that the park was NOT closed, but had only a posted sign saying "gatherings of 10 or more individuals prohibited"!)

Everything I thought was wrong turned out to be wrong.
The path of the pandemic followed, almost to the month, all my predictions - some of which came from studying the Spanish Flu that broke out in 1918 and using that pandemic as a guideline while compensating for a far greater populace that exists today along with modern medicine & technology that did not exist in the early 20th century.

I remember reading the Barrington Declaration and agreeing with it as a way to proceed = focus on isolating & protecting the vulnerable (the aged, the obese and those with conditions that lower immunity) and utilizing good hygiene while carrying on life as normal for those not falling into the vulnerable class. (This was despite certain individuals condemning it, censuring the doctors involved with no authority to do so, and refusing to follow its common sense recommendations, much of which was based on statistics from other countries that had already suffered the worst of the virus without shutting down their schools & economies and coming out of it with far better results than countries that succumbed to all the doom-saying and corrupt power-grabbing).

I remember refusing to get the "vaccine" - today I'm pretty healthy with no trace of myocarditis. However I know several people who took the jab who now have a variety of chronic illnesses & terminal conditions. I also knew several who have died either despite (or perhaps because of) the vaccine.

[Captain Steel]

This one's kind of funny: I remember going to ACME supermarket (I usually go to Shop-Rite) because my mom needed capers (I think) and ACME was closer.

Anyway, I'm going down an aisle looking for the capers and this old woman says angrily, 'You're going the wrong way!"

At first I thought, "Is she reading my mind? Does she know where the capers are?"
Then I realized she was talking about the aisle "directions": the floor had one-way arrows on it.

At Shop-Rite, they never adopted the one-way aisle thing, so I wasn't aware of it at the time.

[hownos]

I remember having to wear a mask everywhere and my glasses occasionally fogging up. Yeah the toilet paper craze. People were desperate to get toilet paper. I remember being in a dollar store and some guy came in all anxious about wanting to buy toilet paper. Crazy times. Oh and covid itself. I caught that and I couldn't taste food for several days. I was worried that it might be permanent. A depressing experience.

I never did understand the run on toilet paper.

[hownos]

I remember I had a long cold in February 2019. That was weird because I never get colds. It was probably covid. I am O-. I have heard that people with this blood type have a better immunity to it. I remember Trump talking about a possible shutdown before the end of 2019, so I hit the stores and bought my mother loads of supplies. I was still using the toilet paper I bought her till 2021.
I was lucky as my job was deemed essential. It's not. I drove around with a paper in my car saying I was an essential worker in case I was pulled over by the cops.

You must mean February 2020.

[Death Proof]

No traffic. Just wide open roads. It was glorious.


As a result, less pollution. And in some places mother nature started to take back the cities.


https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/04/07/world/01xp-virus-animals/01xp-virus-animals-videoSixteenByNineJumbo1600.jpg

[Mesmerized]

The only good part was the stimulus checks.

[Citizen Rules]

I never did understand the run on toilet paper.Because wiping your ass with a $20 bill is just not economical:D

[Captain Steel]

I remember 2020 was a great year for star gazing (even in NJ)...
There was some sort of planetary alignment going on where all the neighbor planets were closer to Earth than at any other time (and this alignment would not occur again for 600 years). If I remember correctly, you could see Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn all at the same time and they were all brighter than usual. Plus, with so many people driving less, the sky looked noticeably clearer!