Three years ago today I made a post that foreshadowed what was to come and I didn't even realize it at the time.
We had just gotten home from Disneyworld and made a grocery trip to restock the house after being gone for a few weeks. The grocery store and Target were ransacked. Entire sections of shelves were empty. The stocker told us they had been trying to restock and keep up but that they hadn't expected to be slammed like that and they just didn't have items to put back on the shelves.
It was the first wave of pandemic buying.
At the time we had three cases in Oregon (all of them in our county) and one suspected death. That was it. But it was enough for people to start thinking that maybe this mystery virus was actually a threat.
I'll be honest, I wasn't there yet. I still was in the camp of treating it just like you would any other sickness. Stay home if you don't feel well, Wash your hands frequently. Don't touch people if you don't have to. Reading through some of my Corona Chronicles I can see when the shift started to happen. More to the just stay home part. As cases grew and we got more and more information we really tried to follow best recommendations. But three years ago today? Still in the wash your hands and stay home if you don't feel well camp.
Now here's where the foreshadowing really gets going. The supplies, sure, that was part of it. We had no idea how bad it was going to get. How wiped the stores were going to be, how long we were going to wait to be able to buy toilet paper, for instance. I was really glad we had a basic supply of things in the house but we got really lean there at the end. Our supply chains were broken.
But in the comments there was someone who "heard on the radio" a stat. That stat made my "that doesn't seem right" sense go off so I did what I do and I looked it up. It didn't seem right because it wasn't. So I did what I do and corrected them, with links to the actual numbers and where I found them. You know, facts. Their response was not "oh, wow, thanks, I'll never say this again" their response was to argue with me that I was wrong. That that was just like my opinion, man. And I kept saying no, look, I've given you source documents, but they weren't having any of that, because it didn't fit with what they wanted it to be.
In reading some of the older posts this morning there was a blog post from me a few weeks past that date lamenting the fact that the President was using that same bogus number in speeches, over and over again. And it didn't matter how many times it was fact checked and news organizations corrected him he continued to use it so other people continued to say it.
March 1, 2020 I didn't realize that what I was seeing was how the entire pandemic was going to go, in my early blogs I was actually hopeful about the country pulling together, and maybe even that this mystery virus would put an end to anti-vaxx bullshit. And...well...
It didn't matter what the facts were. It still doesn't. It matters how you feel about things. Instead of fuck your feelings we've reached peak fuck your facts. I had no idea how bad it would get.
And it's still going on today. I mean just this week you've seen the conservosphere just lose their damn minds because the Department of Energy said that they were changing their opinion and saying the virus came from the lab in Wuhan. They think this happened but with low confidence. Which is like what? That's a big bet hedger phrase. But it boils down to...we still don't have consensus even in our own government where it came from, how it started. But that didn't stop the rush of posts and articles this week. Most of them with really sensationalized headlines, and a lot of them that nobody read past the headline because you got the hot takes of China created this virus to unleash on the world for...reasons.
None of that is what they concluded.
The other part you are seeing is the conservosphere "sticking it to the lefties!" who all insisted that it couldn't have come from the lab. Well, that's why I went to double check my blogs. I mean, I knew what I had thought, and I was pretty sure I wrote about it, and I did. In April of 2020 I wrote that I believed it came from the lab. That the lab had already been cited for not following good safety protocols. And the lab was studying coronavirus in bats so it made sense to me that that is where it came from. And then I did this weird thing and said, but I didn't know for sure.
Because I didn't. I still don't. I mean, the wet market thing is also a possibility. But I still feel like it was probably the lab. I don't think it was a virus created, I think it was a studied virus. I mean if the Chinese were creating it as a bioweapon and they released it as such, wouldn't they have waited to release it until they had their population vaccinated? And why would they release it in Wuhan? I mean, release it in New York City right?
And I don't know that we will ever know for sure, because China isn't sharing information any more. Not that they were sharing a lot at the beginning, but they for sure aren't now. So we have speculation.
But what we don't have is proof that China created a bioweapon and released it and SO THERE you stinking libs!
The facts don't support that.
Yeah, I know, fuck the facts, what do you feel about it?
It was an interesting post to read, knowing where we are now. The virus is endemic, we are all handling it the way we are comfortable handling it. A mishmash of ways for sure. I know we are more careful than some and less than others in our daily lives.
We aren't sure if Katie has or hasn't had it. We think so but aren't positive. We know for sure Brent had it and had the rebound as well, though seems to have skipped long Covid which is great. I have never tested positive despite being exposed multiple times.
I also know that the worst foreshadowing happened in one of my early blogs when we were all starting the staying home and social distancing routines. I mentioned talking to Brent's mother to make sure she was okay and that I was worried she wasn't taking it very seriously even though she was in the highest risk factors in multiple areas. I will never know when or how she picked up the virus exactly but I do know it killed her. And I know that makes me much less tolerant of people who fuck the facts and want to run on conspiracy theories and feelings.
I'm not sure where we go from here with the virus. I think it's just part of our lives now, and we will all do what we feel is best for ourselves and our families.
Basically for us we are back to, wash your hands, stay home if you're feeling sick, keep up on your vaccines, don't hoard groceries and I wear a mask when the crowds are very crowdy.
Stay safe.
Remember to follow the facts and that means reading beyond headlines.
And for fuck's sake, don't spread false information.
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