Hey, it's me. I wanted to write about my experience of seeing the not so gradual increase on the corona experience. Even though we may fully understand the heaviness of what is happening, you never really expect what will happen and the effect of it. I feel like I didn't start noticing America addressing the seriousness of this virus until everyone else was already in disarray.
Nothing started to set in until we were hearing about other countries going through devastating losses, hearing their pleas of not following in their footsteps and seeing the footage of what ground zero looked like and knowing that we could potentially mirror it here, in America.
I was in NYC a week before the shit hit the fan and was there for 5 days. While walking through the city I was being cautious to not touch unnecessary surfaces and only taking public transit if it was absolutely necessary. In the beginning of my trip, everything felt the same. No one seemed to be changing how they were living life, no masks, no gloves just an average Monday. I went to the Comedy Cellar where every comedian that hit the stage cracked a joke, ate out for every meal and took the subway. It wasn't until the last 2 days of that week when you started to see others wearing gloves, then masks, and a few full-on armageddon-looking outfits.
The sidewalks were feeling a little less crowded and the restaurants were less busy. There weren't wait times during the dinner rush and you were never sure if a place was closed or just empty. If felt strange being the only one eating in an empty restaurant.
By the end of that week, everyone started to feel the panic. Statistics were coming out of Italy of the number of daily deaths, the government forcing communities to stay home, choices medical personals had to make when they started to run out of the equipment they needed to save lives. The same day I drove back from NYC I knew I had to hit up the grocery store. I had zero food since I had been gone all week and I was actually low on everything. And I knew if I didn't go that day there would be nothing the next.
So I grabbed my reusable bags and went to Aldi's and it was insane! There were already multiple lines of people, no carts to use and it looked like they had been robbed. I was trying to get enough to last 2 weeks, trying no to overbuy. While there were others with two carts clearly buying a lot more than they needed. There was flour thrown on the ground and boxes everywhere. I had to help a man in a wheelchair get what he needed because he couldn't get through all the clutter. It's times like these where you really see what humanity is like and it wasn't pretty. It was very disappointing...