The Pandemic Struck Three Years Ago: A Remembrance of a Very Strange Time
It came on slowly, then suddenly. Looking back, it seems unreal. It was very real.
March 15, 2020
I don’t remember the first time I heard of the novel coronavirus-19 outbreak in China. I do know that by the time I traveled to Spain in late January 2020, I knew about it because it was constant sources of jokes in the Spanish class I was taking in Seville. Once, another student coughed and someone — maybe me — said, “Uh oh, coronavirus!” We all laughed.
Toward the end of my two weeks there, there was a news report that a foreign visitor had tested positive for this new illness. I remember thinking, If it’s here, it’s everywhere or soon will be.
I returned to New York in February. By then, there were Covid cases in the U.S. The first one reported in New York City was on March 1st. It has been diagnosed a few earlier in a 39-year-old woman who had apparently contracted it while traveling in Iran.
“There is no reason for undue anxiety — the general risk remains low in NY,” tweeted New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Ten days later, there were 36 reported cases in New York City and, oddly, a cluster in New Rochelle, just outside the city.
The dominoes fell fast. On March 12th, the first death in New York State was reported: an 82-year-old woman. That same day, gatherings of 500 or more people were banned in the state. Broadway shows closed, officially just for a few weeks. Cultural institutions — museums and concert venues — shut down. Professional basketball and hockey suspended their seasons. The NCAA college men’s and women’s championship tournaments were cancelled. There would be no March Madness this March or, as it turned out, any month.
March 13, 2020 was a Friday. I was invited to a small dinner party at a restaurant near Madison Square Park to celebrate a friend’s birthday. I got to the area early. It was a pleasant late winter afternoon. I was sitting outside at a table beside the park when my friend’s wife called to say the restaurant had cancelled the dinner, had, in fact, cancelled all reservations and was closing indefinitely.
That was three years ago this week. Even though Covid is still out there — just yesterday, March 14, 2023, six people died of it in New York City and there were 289 news cases reported — it feels like those dark, anxious first days and weeks of the pandemic were a long time ago. Already my memory of what it was really like has faded. fade. The whole episode feels remote and strange. The daily televised briefings by Cuomo that made him a national star — for a while. The rows of shuttered storefronts. The silent, empty streets. The desolate subway with only a handful of people on the trains, eyeing each other suspiciously. Empty buses still traveling their routes. Social distancing. Face masks. Handwashing tips. The sudden shortage of toilet paper and hand sanitizer. The whoop and wail of ambulance sirens as they ferried the sick and dying to packed hospitals. Streets so devoid of vehicles you could lie down in them undisturbed if you were so inclined. The banging of pots and pans out open windows as a nightly tribute to first responders. The wariness of strangers. The spasm of panic and anger — yes, anger — when someone near you coughed or sneezed without covering their mouth. The fear. And no one — no one — knowing when this would end or how. It all seems now like the shards of some fevered dream.
New York City — bustling, frenetic, energetic — was transformed. Muted. Spooky. Weird. It was especially strange to be on the streets of Manhattan after dark when it seemed the only other people out were homeless, crazy or menacing.
In the first weeks of the pandemic, I took a lot of photos with my phone. I wanted to make a visual record of this extraordinary time. I created a file for them and labelled it, Zombie Apocalypse.
Here are some of those images. With the exception of the picture of a poster from the Unmasked NYC exhibit (by photographer A.,J. Stetson), which I took in December 2020, they are from March and April 2020.
March 14. 2020
March 18, 2020
April 1, 2020
March 16, 2020
March 30, 2020
March 10, 2020
March 30, 2020
Spring 2020
December 20, 2020
A good remembrance, and photos ... it does seem like a long time ago. My wife had covid this week ... for the second time. If I had it, there were no symptoms. It was so inequitable. There seemed to be no way to nail it down. You'd hear of an old person with it, who survived. Young people who died. Then it would be the reverse. People who wore masks, people who didn't ... complete misinformation disaster on top of the pandemic. Changed our lives forever. A friend of mine said, "I think for the rest of my life I will see people ... even if just a few ... wearing masks in public." So far, so true.
The aftermath is still out there. Whole downtown business districts devoid of workers. The flight to the burbs or beyond, work from home, etc. It sure made things weird for school age kids and young adults. A window into the future of man? Hope not...