Here we are, April 2020, and it’s been the absolute craziest year of my life. I’d put this 3 plus months up against any 12 month span since the world welcomed me in 1977. That time frame covers the awful accidents as a kid, high school years, college age shenanigans, and adulthood. Nothing compares.
I’m not alone here in 2020. The events that have unfolded have been far reaching and life changing. One of the greatest basketball players of my generation lost his life in an accident. The Gambler passed away. The political landscape is a nightmare. And my city experienced flooding that forced many citizens from their homes and closed schools. All this within the first 90 days of the year.
Then we got hit with this life altering virus that has swept over the world, destroying one country after another. That all started in January but was distant to me because it was way over in China. It slowly started to spread; but I still wasn’t all that concerned because that sort of stuff “just doesn’t happen here”.
I don’t mean that in an arrogant way. I simply mean that we constantly see bad news on TV and it almost never affects us on a personal level. The news is brutal but we usually have the comfort of knowing that we will soon tuck away in our comfortable beds to rest peacefully for the next day.
This is different. We started hearing about Americans on cruise ships that were sick and being held in quarantine. There were some patients being brought back to the US to be treated. There were people doing what they always do, traveling; but unknowingly carrying a sickness that would in fact make it to our mainland.
The West Coast got hit quickly. There was a horrible outbreak at an assisted living center that shook Seattle, and sent ripples throughout the rest of the Nation. This virus was real and it was here. It was still 2,200 miles away, but it was starting to become a little more real for me.
Then, in late February, it was in Atlanta. Only 2 1/2 hours north of my home, we had our first case. In fact, I was in Atlanta that very week. But, in a weird way, Atlanta has always felt a million miles away when it comes to worldly problems. It’s a huge city, with a huge airport, and a huge population; that is in no way a comparison to South Georgia Small Town living.
On top of this being a couple of cases a world away in Atlanta, it was just that; a couple cases. Some people traveled from Italy and had the virus, which is where it was very prevalent at the time. What did I have to inherently be worried about? I’ve been west of Mississippi twice and north of South Carolina twice. And none of those trips were to another country.
I live in Lee County, Georgia, with a population of about 29,000 people and a claim to fame that includes Buster Posey and Luke Bryan. I’ve spent the last 23 years there. I spent my first 20 years in Camilla, with a population of about 5,000. So I’m used to small town living.
It takes me 5 minutes to get to work, I see the same people at the grocery store every week, and I’ve worked at the same job since I was 21. Life has been pretty routine for me, and I like it that way. With that said, in my mind, this virus was going to have to travel all the way from China, through the big international cities, and to small little Lee County, Ga.
The first case for my metro area of 153,000 came in early March. Albany, Ga is the hub of that metro area and where I work. I’m closer to Albany than I am to my own County Seat, Leesburg. But it covers Terrell, Worth, and Baker County as well.
Pretty quickly, we went from 1 case to 6. I remember Monday, March 16, when the case number of 6 was a big deal. Then, by the end of that week, we were knocking on 80 cases. We are talking about 80 cases in the first week! Information was surfacing that the majority of cases were coming from two large funerals that took place in late February.
By Monday of the next week, I was working from home and our total positive count was 125 with 8 deaths. By Tuesday, the number was 150 with 11 deaths. This virus had picked up steam and I was afraid to leave the confines of my own home. We still didn’t really understand the symptoms, how you got it, and how to protect ourselves.
By the beginning of the third week of this pandemic, my small metro area of 153,000 was appearing on charts with China, Italy, and New York. By the end of that week, we had moved ahead of New York based on positive cases per capita, with a whopping 4.1 per 1,000 citizens, which was almost double New York. We were actual proof of the number of cases doubling every 4 days.
Now, on April 4, 2020, a mere 19 days since the local outbreak, we are at 1,197 positives, or 7.8 per 1,000 citizens, almost double that of Wuhan, China; where the outbreak started. Some people may see our 1,197 positive cases and try to compare that to the 56,000 cases in New York and scoff. But remember, New York’s metro area is 20 million people. Albany is 153,000.
This is not to diminish any cases whatsoever. The cases in New York, Seattle, Memphis, Idaho, anywhere….are awful. This virus is brutal. But an area that has been decimated since 2017 with 2 catastrophic tornados, a hurricane, and a flood, is now facing a pandemic with one of the largest infection rates per capita in the entire world.
I don’t know many people who are resting tonight, peacefully or otherwise. This invisible monster, COVID-19, has most of us shaking in our boots. What started as something that “just never happens here” has become something that is destroying “here”.
Life has changed; possibly forever. I’m still working from home. School is out for the rest of the year. You can’t go grocery shopping without a mask and gloves. You can’t pump gas safely. You can’t even open mail without letting it sit in the sun for hours or spraying it down with Lysol and throwing the box or envelope away immediately.
We are stuck in our homes, scared to leave. We don’t have human contact anymore, outside of the loved ones in the home with us. I haven’t seen my mom or dad in a month, which is a long time. I haven’t seen co-workers in 2 weeks. I haven’t hung out with friends since early March. Heck, I haven’t been to Target to buy baseball cards in 3 weeks!
And I don’t see the end in sight, as of tonight. The cases are growing. We are losing people we know personally now. I have family and friends in the nursing field that have to face this daily. Every time I do venture out to get necessities, the streets are a little less crowded. I’m washing my hands so much that my knuckles are cracked and bleeding. And I still don’t know if I’m doing enough.
I’m lucky. I have my immediate family around me. While I haven’t seen my parents, we’ve spoken often. I’m lucky to be able to work from home and still have a steady paycheck. I’m lucky that my kids can play outside where we are. I have everything I need for this situation. But it’s scary. It’s scary for everyone.
People are playing games on Facebook to keep the tension at bay. We are sharing photos from our camera roll, making lists of things we like and dislike, and talking baseball cards on Twitter. But, deep down, we all have this feeling of uncertainty. We all wonder when our lives will get back to normal. We all wonder how much worse it will get before then. And we all hold our breath for the next day’s numbers to be released.
That is what it’s like where things like this “just don’t happen here”. And it’s like that for the foreseeable future. No sports, no concerts, no public events, no eating in restaurants, no going to church, and no Saturday morning trips to Pearly’s. The closest I’ll get to my friends is through the screen on my phone. As the line in “Salt and Shadow” from Thrice says, “we’re never alone but we’re each in our own little cage”. Our friends are “here but half a world away”.
I feel certain that we’re going to get through this. What I’m not sure about is what things will be like when we do. How will the landscape of our nation, and our small town, have changed? How will our economy rebound? How will this scary time affect my children years down the road? How will it affect me years down the road?
While we wait this out, hoping it isn’t the beginning of some apocalyptic time we’ve been warned so much about in film over the years, I’m doing the best to live my life. I’m working, I’m spending time with family, I’m helping herd cattle, I’m living with goats. I’m spending more time on a Kubota than in an actual vehicle. And I’m trying to stay creative with my writing and card collecting.
I had to put all of this down on paper (electronic) because one day I’ll come back and read this to my grandchildren and tell them about the “Pandemic of 2020”. This is truly a once in a lifetime thing. It’s life changing and uncharted waters. It’s all the cliches you can think of but the bottom line is; it’s real. It has hit home. It has shaken foundations. And it’s going to take us all becoming a more caring and considerate community of people to survive it together. If we don’t change as a country after this, we won’t ever change.
Stay Safe!
J-Dub