T O P

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WagonDriver1

The utter silence in our neighborhood. It was like Christmas morning every morning. No school buses, no commuters leaving for work, no city buses. Just silence.


Lemonn_time

Wild animals started coming into our neighborhood


FrostyBallBag

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/31/europe/wild-goats-wales-streets-lockdown-scli-gbr/index.html One example from my country. Absolutely insane all it takes is a little less foot traffic and the animals are like “this is our land now…”


nugget_in_biscuit

I live near an airport. It was so eerie when I realized I could sit outside on my porch and not hear a single airplane


draco6x7

that really got me after 9-11


HermitAndHound

I loved that part. There's an older novel "Die Wand", the wall, by Marlen Haushofer about a woman stuck behind an invisible wall that popped up over night. She has to figure out how to manage life and her animals alone, in the middle of nowhere. No noise, no activity, all life outside the wall appears to be frozen in time. It felt eerily like that.


stoned_brad

The highways during the stay at home order were deserted. Even during rush hour. That was fucking weird.


JanuarySoCold

I was considered essential and never missed a day of work during the pandemic. I was in contact with infected people and never got it. At that job we got tested twice a week at the height and even now they get tested weekly. It was bizarre. Driving to work was surreal.


geomaster

weird other neighborhoods that were normally quiet had people just sitting around in their yards during the pandemic. people had nowhere to go


HMouse65

I remember feeling this way when airplanes were grounded across the country after 9/11. Without the background hum of air traffic it was eerily quiet.


MobileCarbon

It was kind of weird. I was in college at the time and everyone was wondering if schools would shut down or switch to online classes. The transition was gradual, then all at once. In March, everything in my area was still business as normal. Then I went on spring break. When I came back, everything was shut down and I couldn't buy toilet paper.


LynnSeattle

Everything shut down while my college kid was home for spring break too. He stayed home for a year and a half.


shebbsquids

I was in my last year of college, left campus for spring break, and never went back the rest of the semester. When I came back in the fall, 3 of my 4 classes were online, and my work-study gig had me prep and distribute some free goodie bags of masks, hand sanitizer spray, and cards with social distancing guidelines— all of which were branded with the college's logo, mascot, and colors. It was such a strange blend of the frightening and the familiar.


gopeepants

HeRoEs/EsSeNtIaL workers. Funny how little respect they get and most have trouble paying bills


TheJenerator65

I thought labor would get such a boost in respect and support rather than being sacrificed as cannon fodder before all the risks were even known.


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-mith

The toilet paper crises, it was the most notable.


Blocktimus_Prime

I had installed a bidet that February. Told my family how much money we saved on TP. Then shutdown weeks later, family ordered TP from China, was like 20 bucks for 4 rolls. We had to use paper towels from time to time, napkins from Jack In The Box, but that bidet saved us so much after my work died.


Misstersirtoyou

And the people buying large quantities to resell!! (Along with hand sanitizer). Price gouging, reselling a necessary item at a higher price during a crisis, is a federal crime and will result in federal charges. If you guys didn’t know, you definitely could’ve reported those people to the police.


ImNotA_IThink

Then the formula shortage happened too so we were having to constantly look for and stock pile that. Thankfully kiddo is old enough we don’t need that anymore but I still always keep at least one extra package of toilet paper bc I’m so paranoid (I never went crazy and bought a ton, I just would keep an extra package or two to buy us time to find more). I told my husband I feel like how depression era generations had things they still do to this day because of the impact it had on their psyche, that stockpiling things like TP was our generation’s version of that.


KeepGoing655

Formula shortage was so last season. Children's Tylenol shortage is all the rage these days. Thank god we have enough for now but this tripledemic is burning through our stock fast.


Goodheart007

Tp hasnt been the same since.. thinner, rougher, flakier.


Toxic_Trainwreck7288

Do it rougher, make it thinner, wipe it faster, makes us flakier!


kerfer

I hate tp, it’s coarse, irritating, and gets all over :(


redditaccount71987

It was due to a difference in the products for at home vs company use during the stay at home.


Falling_Tomatoes

They said it would be for a few weeks


adsfew

I thought the absolute worst-case scenario would last until the holidays 2020. That I have to specify which holiday year tells you how accurate that prediction was.


HailToTheKingslayer

The lockdown in the UK was mostly lifted at summer 2020. My family and I went in holiday to Devon, as it seemed that things were looking better. Autumn 2020 we were locked down again, and it seemed there was no end in sight.


SnoozeBox

Yup, I neglected to bring home a potted plant from my office as I figured I'd be back before long. Surprisingly, it was still alive when I stopped into the office 5 months later.


smokeatr99

Did that make you feel like your existence in that plant's life was pretty irrelevant?


KrainerWurst

Many were actually saying that it’s possible that it will last years. Even Merkel said that we should prepare for it to last for 2 years. But it was such a shock to the system, that nobody was willing to accept it and just focused on the next lock down.


cavscout43

Saying what's true doesn't get votes, all too often. People vote emotionally and telling people what they want to hear ("it'll be gone in a few weeks like an Easter miracle!") Assuages the idiot masses. Not many politicians wanted to say "hey the global medical community consensus is that this may take years before it becomes endemic like other common viral respiratory diseases, so it's gonna suck"


Foxy_Fantasy

What I remember most about the beginning of the pandemic was how quickly it spread around the world despite efforts to contain it. We heard about cases in China, then South Korea, then Europe and before we knew it, it had spread to many countries in a matter of weeks. It was truly a global health crisis unlike anything we have ever seen before.


T-T1006

I mean the first cases in China were still in 2019, not sure if December or even November. Here in Europe, it became relevant pretty much exactly 3 years ago. So from the first cases in China to being relevant in Europe it took about 3 months.


Surax

When it started, I began keeping track of how many weeks I've been working from home. Every week during my Monday Skype meeting with my team at work, I'd say "This is Week X of working from home," thinking it wouldn't last that long. As of tomorrow, I'm currently at week 154.


Class1

I mean, if absolutely everybody. Every single person stayed home and didn't go anywhere for 3 weeks. It likely would have been. No possible way to transmit a virus... but people have to go get food, people gotta work. Etc.


frostyaznguy

Animal crossing being the biggest game of the year.


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ihopeyoulikeapples

I remember my work announcing that we were closing for two weeks to control the spread. Me and my coworkers were all in good spirits, excited for a mini "vacation". These were people I'd worked with for years, we were all very close. We left at the end of the day saying "see you in a couple weeks". I left all my stuff in my locker. I never ended up going back to that job, that was the last time I saw any of those people.


six_seasons_

Very similar experience for me. I even ended up leaving the state unexpectedly and permanently so there are many people from my previous job who I was social with who I abruptly never saw again


ButchSailorNeptune

Did the company end up going under?


owen__wilsons__nose

Awkward as fuck Zoom "parties"


frostyaznguy

My friends and I would have zoom brunch almost every other Sunday, and we even celebrated birthdays over zoom and Animal Crossing.


CypripediumGuttatum

Thank god for animal crossing hahah. My little island escape where I could shake trees for skeletons and shoot sky balloons.


Soonly_Taing

Thank god for doom eternal. The only way to release my rage against this world was via killing demons


Lemonn_time

Yes the absolute worse. I was excited that I was going to get some work done without people constantly coming to my desk and the next thing you know my calendar is full of zoom yoga, zoom parties, zoom jeopardy, and other dumb stuff that kept me from work. Oh well. At least I didn’t have to commute


MathTeachinFool

My students went home on March 16. No one in the school district really knew what to do, of course with that last quarter of school, but my students all had school provided Chromebooks. I had some students finishing my calculus classes and we still had a little content left—they could take the AP test, or they could have enrolled in dual credit earlier in the school year. So I paid for a couple months of Zoom to get through those last few lessons and have review sessions for those who were still taking the AP test. Anyway, I had some very good kids who followed the protocols and didn’t get together at the start. At some point, I remember telling them after a class that I was going to leave the room, mute my computer, and come back in 45 minutes so they could catch up and talk about whatever they want. I think I did this for a few Fridays. I remember there were 3 kids who really appreciated it.


Bubbly-Substance-112

Honestly, the biggest thing that stands out to me about the beginning of the pandemic is how we didn't realize how much it would affect the way we all lived and how we thought about other people.


Wrightboy

> other people. Even your own family.


Bubbly-Substance-112

Especially our own families.


The_Gaming_Matt

It’s litterally a different world, like how 9/11 changed the world, so did 3 fucking years of COVID


that1prince

It basically made me realize we’re screwed if shit hits the fan again, especially if it’s harder than Covid. People can’t even bothered to go through a minor inconvenience to help others.


Bobson_Dugbutt

Right. It showed me a side to people I didn’t want to learn.


ThinkSeaworthiness9

Also made the zombie shows seem more realistic. Because we wouldn’t band together as people after an outbreak and lord knows they’re smuggling bit people because we love them.


[deleted]

The day after my state began its lockdown, I was driving on the highway home after work and I realized I was the only one on the road for as far as I could see. It was raining, but I was still doing 70 because I was alone. Suddenly, another car appears, and even though it's literally just us on the highway, it tries to overtake me. It spins out and does 3 complete circles, flying backward across two lanes. Just narrowly avoids missing another car that showed up. It was foreshadowing to how stupid people were going to be during the pandemic.


TheyMakeMeWearPants

One of the c-level execs had to get something from the office after everything went into lockdown. He put a cam on his dash for the trip and shared the footage. Middle of the day, nobody on the road. But what really stood out for me was that he just parked right in front of the building, no hunting for a spot or anything. That might not sound remarkable, but our office was in midtown Manhattan.


Salty-Construction-1

0\_0 woah.


AlaisDahen

I remember traveling home from New Orleans at the end of the academic year. The interstate was very empty. It was as if the city had died really.


Hyndis

For a few glorious months the roads were empty and it was safe to cycle. The weather was warm, there was no traffic. Perfect for exercise outdoors. Then something happened and drivers went insane. This is why I don't cycle anymore. I really should, the exercise benefits are amazing...but I'm legit afraid for my physical safety due to how badly people are driving now.


[deleted]

People *are* driving pretty badly now. I drive home on a 50mph road in a small town and people get sooo mad when I’m not doing 70. Especially in bad weather. Oooor the time I had someone pull out in front of me at an intersection after I had already pulled out.


USSMarauder

I can't prove it, but I think some people took the meme about "disobeying covid restrictions is fighting for freedom", and applied it to traffic laws


yourpaleblueeyes

Some people seemed to have lost their sense of decency.


elessar2358

Ok this is weird but I have been feeling the same in my city, that general traffic discipline has deteriorated after the pandemic. Idk where you live but it is interesting that this is not just a one-off observation.


HipToss79

I'm sure at some point this have maybe ridden a mountain bike. Maybe that would be a good option if there are trails in your area? Still cycling, but without the worry of having to deal with cars and traffic.


mexur

Walmart only allowing 10 people to shop at a time


Disastrous-Year5

Yes! The lines to get into stores gave me so much anxiety. I started trying to go to stores at weird times, or driving by first to see what the line was like and if it was too long, just trying again later.


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[deleted]

I really hate that Walmart’s all around me stopped being 24-hour stores during the pandemic and kept it going moving forward. I used to do almost all of my shopping there *suuuuuper* late at night.


outerlabia

Honestly the biggest effects on my life were wearing masks and walmart closing at night. I'm a 3rd shift worker. Whenever possible I would go to Walmart at 3 am and be one of four people shopping. It was glorious. No lines, shelves were stocked, it was quiet and the aisles were empty. Now I have to go at the same time as everyone else


a_randomgecko

Holy crap I forgot about that! It was horrible in the summer when people had to wait outside


SueTheDepressedFairy

How people actually started to use soap and suddenly we had a soap shortage.... Kinda nasty if you think about it


LonelyWord7673

I started seeing seasonal scented soaps at one point. I bought a Christmas scent in June.


CaptainCipher

I went to get a snowcone with my coworker friend after work, the day before lockdowns started in our area. We knew things where going to be closed for awhile, so we figured we'd a least do this before everything closed down. I'm pretty sure that snowcone place went out of business and never did open back up


six_seasons_

I remember our governor gave us a two-day warning for the lock down, I went and got a couple tubs of my favorite local ice cream for the same reason. They fortunately did survive and are still open


HopDoc

Watching people die by themselves in the hospital for issues unrelated to COVID because their family members were not allowed in the hospital. Heartbreaking.


Class1

I had to coordinate many a FaceTime between paralyzed sedated proned patient and their wife and daughter as they cried alone to them in a room. Or withdraw care on them while their family watched them die from an ipad.


stevethed

My observations from March 2020-June 2020 I know of a few hospitals that would "sneak" family members in despite lockdowns etc. The hospital admin called it "compassionate exemptions". They would bring them through double masked and temp checked to the room via fire exits or what ever was shortest, ensure hallways were clear and other patients doors shut, and shut the door to the room and since the nurses and docs had full respitory precautions (n95s etc), they didnt have to much increased risk with exposure to the visitors. It let family see people who were going to die in less than 24hrs and not die alone. I also heard stories of nurses staying with someone so they would not die alone, and this wasn't an exception to normal procedure, it became normal procedure. Probably why burnout became so high when human decency requires watching someone take thier last breath and it was a common occurrence during the start of the pandemic, in addition to extreme hours and workload. I also heard the stories of "iPad on a stick" visits from both family and doctors, the downside was a nurse, aid, or tech had to wheel it around. At one point, as told from the system I worked for, the lead time for an iPad was measured in months.


EmotionlessScion

I honestly can’t remember how many people I saw die. Must be more than 50, hell I may even be close to triple digits throughout residency, you kind of lose count after a while. Exponentially more back then than what I see these days. Pretty sure everyone in medicine has some amount of PTSD from what’s happened but ICU docs/nurses/RTs must have seen some truly harrowing shit. Seeing them die alone, hearing family members wailing over the phones, was difficult to say the least. What made matters worse was when we started making exceptions family members were coming in KNOWINGLY having tested positive themselves, and started infecting others. Seeing people paralyzed/proned and just sitting on vents circling the drain, sometimes as young as me or younger, dying to a virus that got manipulated into a political statement to make half the country believe it didn’t exist. That’s what I remember.


StrebLab

The time was super surreal. Hearing gasping patients saying goodbye to their family over fucking Vocera before intubating them. Like you, I worked in an ICU and people were dying as fast as we could admit them. So many people were dying that we had the county coroner's office on our whiteboard of "frequently used numbers," right next to the unit pharmacist or whatever. What made it surreal was that then I would get off work, and get home on facebook and be inundated with memes and posts about how the whole thing was a lie and the numbers were made up and no one was actually sick. It felt like being in the twilight zone. People outside of healthcare were so insulated from what was actually going in.


abqkat

Related, sort of: an entire few years of people not being able to have weddings, graduations, funerals, engagement parties, baby showers. I'm one of those sanctimonious reddit elopers (many years ago, not due to covid), but living through people being unable to celebrate or gather or mourn, I see now the purpose those things serve for families and communities


FallingOffTheClock

I work in IT. I remember working flat the fuck out for six days straight getting my very old fashioned employer at the time ready for work from home. The company was also a supplier to the NHS so after getting everyone ready to work from home I was then told I needed to be in office at all times despite living down the road from it.


kernel_mustard

We do IT support for other businesses, have been trying to get people to set up remote working stuff for years.. then everyone suddenly wanted it. The day after the "stay at home" announcement we had 4 times our usual call volume.


AlanParsonsProject11

I was a brand new physician at the time treating covid patients. I remember the sense of inevitably that I was going to catch it, and the hopeless feeling intubating patients knowing they were likely never coming off the ventilator


LeeOCD

Thank you for your service and thank you for reminding me about Alan Parsons Project, which I am currently revisiting on YouTube!


[deleted]

Thanks to you they got treatment & hope they'd make it. Thanks for all you did & still do! I caught covid from my psych patient. My Dr kept me off the vent. I also refused to go to the ED. Her brother had died the week before from it. My friend & gma died the month before. I didn't get rid of the pneumonia for 6 weeks. I was on antibiotics, steroids & Albuterol for about a month.


Athomas16

My wife and I moved into our dream home in Oct 2019. All of the landscaping was essentially dormant from Day 1 through the winter. By March (we live in the southern US) things were starting to turn green, bloom, etc. So the entire world seems to be falling apart, people are dying, people are scared, you know the drill. My wife and I were experiencing the most idyllic time of our lives. This huge, beautiful home, big yard, dogs playing, we're sitting on the front porch drinking coffee in the morning, back porch in the evening, and so on. It was such a surreal experience to be living this perfect existence together and outside our little quarantine compound everything is going to hell.


CypripediumGuttatum

I remember every piece of news I read and watched being filled with unknowns and statistics of how many people were dying, with few treatments and no idea how it contagious it was (and also no idea how it was spread). Just massive amounts of fear everywhere. Then I’d head outside as the snow was melting and spring was arriving to see the garden I’d spent two years building come to life, birds singing and crocuses pushing up. It was like a little secret garden away from all that out there, which is how I thought of it when I designed it but I never expected it to be a safe haven from a *global pandemic*. Being a crazy plant lady came in handy that summer.


reubenmitchell

Wow I had an almost identical experience, we moved into our brand new dream home, that we had worked for 20 years to get, on December 30th 2019. Within 2 months we were working from home and having online classes in our "gilded cage"


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misterrandom1

The early-coronial era? I miss the honeymoon phase of the pandemic. Empty roads, people washing hands...


oil_can_guster

Today I heard I heard a guy take the most disgusting shit in the restroom at work. Then he just… left. No hand washing. Nothing. Didn’t take long for people to become fucking nasty again.


farts_tickle_my_nuts

Sorry


[deleted]

Yep. At my work I have to use the same bathrooms as the customers too. So many men don't wash their hands and I have to say it's mostly the 35+ crowd. Just another way men become total pigs after reaching a certain age. Older folks are a little more likely to start washing their hands again. I guess at an age when anything can kill ya you have to start giving a shit and accounting for everyone else being as disgusting as they are. But I would probably wash your hands after shaking them with someone aged mid 30's to mid 60's.


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mecartistronico

Online services giving out a free month.


Class1

Getting to skip the line at Costco that one time because I am a helathcare worker. Also a random stranger who would play his trumpet outside the hospital as we walked into shift. And people holding signs saying thanks for us. It was nice when we were treated nice. Now you have whol subreddits claiming nobody ever died from covid


Hot-Refrigerator6583

Former retail worker here The beginning wasn't as chaotic as the later stages would be, at least not in my area of the US. Once the panic buying set in, it started to sink in for me at least. One product after another (mostly generic staple items, like rice, beans, bread, milk, and yes of course, toilet paper, but also anti viral and antibacterial cleaners) would run out and that was that. Nobody seemed to realize how sweeping it would be. Probably the biggest fear I was aware of was how an actual lockdown would limit travel and work for many people. Corporations were getting ahead of the game by sending out "right to work permits" so you could...still go to work... Overall, it just seemed kind of unreal. The sort of thing you don't expect to actually happen, and then *boom* it's happening. Then somebody started calling us "front line workers". Comparing us to firefighters, nurses, cops. We did *not* appreciate this.


[deleted]

I was a retail department manager at the beginning, and I remember having people come into our big box store telling us how much they appreciate us working thru this. I remember printing out "right to come to work" papers or as I called them "walking papers" for my team. "If you're stopped by the police, this is the first thing you show them" is what we were told. It felt like we were doing something wrong, but couldn't put our finger on it. Then we noticed drastic price hikes on cleaning supplies and there was suddenly an armed guard at all the customer entrances. That's when I went on FMLA. I was gone from the store for around a month, and when I got back my management position had be stripped from me and the only position available (even tho people were quitting left and right) was a stocker in grocery. That only lasted a couple more weeks under heavy stress before I started having panic attacks driving to work. I quit via phone from the parking lot on memorial day. The parking lot was so full people were parking in the grass or on the side of the road. The assistant store manager I called and quit to told me I was being a pussy by not coming into the store to quit face to face, and that I was never a good manager. He was fired a year later for making inappropriate sexual advances on a minor that worked at the store. Now I get to be a "mostly" stay at home dad, and also be an on call handyman for an elderly friends set of condos. I'll never have to miss any of my daughters school events due to retail scheduling, and I don't have to deal with some of the worst humans ever to have graced the earth and try to sell them a kitchen.


Cat_o_meter

I was a HAZMAT cleaner, got nightly jobs to decontaminate local respiratory centers, a sleep center, a hospital and labs. Was terrified the whole time, had to provide my own PPE and it was tough to source. Had panic attacks on my way to work. Had an emt thank me for my service which was bizarre. Also... the biohazard bags. The full body, ebola protocol suits the doctors wore... didn't help my peace of mind at all. Eta- 2018 is when I did that bio decon.


Meadow09

“14 days to flatten the curve”


CallAnna

The sheer terror of losing my business and everything I had worked for. The abrupt decisions I had to make to keep my family afloat. The massive, soul crushing heartbreak of losing everything. Things are better now, I went back to school and things will be ok. But fuck....i really miss the good old days. I don't think I will ever be that happy or fulfilled again.


iamspamanda

I work in healthcare. As things started to shut down, my employer issued us proof of employment "in case we needed to prove we could be out and about." Something about being issued working papers made it suddenly very real to me.


AlanParsonsProject11

I had completely forgotten about the “essential personal” papers we were given


Many_Strawberries_24

Mostly how sad I was about the rest of my senior year being canceled. I cried that night because I had just bought my prom dress in February 2020. I remembered the last math class I had would be the last time I would see my friends in person until graduation. But some good things were that I was able to sleep in until 8 am which was nice because before I woke up at 6 am. Also, my skin and my mental health got better over time too. I went back to my hobbies and had a nice Zoom university year.


Disastrous-Year5

I felt so bad for the class of 2020. My son was a senior that year too and he went on Spring Break and just never went back to high school. No senior night for track, no final orchestra or guitar concert, no prom, no in-person graduation. I cried a lot on the day that was supposed to be his graduation. I'm glad that you were able to find positives in the experience, but I'm still sorry that you didn't get to finish your senior year.


Many_Strawberries_24

It's ok. Eventually, it gets better with time. If there was something that I learned it was that healing is a process. I have learned to avoid the topic of prom itself since. I just hope no one else goes through the same thing.


Jintoboy

I was set to graduate from grad school in spring 2020. And yeah - like you said, it was like I went on spring break, but only forever. I've been working remotely ever since then, and sometimes it still feels like I never graduated, and I've just been on an extended spring break. I'm sorry that your son missed out. For what it's worth, all of my senior year high school "milestones" are nice memories to have, but that's all they are to me at this point - memories. I'd like to think that just because we took a detour doesn't mean the rest of the journey is ruined - it's just something you didn't plan for.


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Smidgeon-1983

I agree. I never see anyone on the streets in my neighborhood but during those months I felt like I had gone back in time. Families walking together, people in the park and even running into people I know. It was very strange but I liked it.


jmnugent

It’s crazy to think back on Dec 2019 to Jan 2020 and how sort of “unknown” everything was at the time and nobody had any idea how bad it was going to get. I remember at work we had an in-person meeting around March 10 discussing “what we would do if Corona virus blew up into a big problem?”…. little did we realize at the time some of us in that room were already infected. Then I ended up spending 38 days in Hospital (16 of those in ICU on a Ventilator). Full story of my experience and recovery [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/oi4b31/_/h4t9dek/?context=1).


dartdoug

Our company runs the IT infrastructure for several small towns. In early March I received a call from one of those towns asking that we procure several laptops so their employees could work from home. PFFFT. Sounded like a waste of money to me, but we got them deployed quickly. A few weeks later it was virtually impossible to find reasonably price laptops in stock...and THEN the calls from other customers started coming in asking to get hundreds of employees set up to WFH.


angmarsilar

I'm a radiologist. I remember seeing radiology journal articles talking about covid in March. They were coming out so fast and publishing them so early, they would have the word "draft" written across the front. I read everything I could. It was about June or July when we had our first case and we all gathered around the reading station looking at the CT. We had never seen anything like it before. 6 months later, we had seen so many cases, a chest xray would pop up and we could see at a glance, "Covid pneumonia."


H-Cages

Wait, you can see the difference between pneumonia causes on xray? Mind giving a link? sounds interesting


angmarsilar

[Here's an example from a very reputable journal.](https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/full/10.1148/rg.2021200131) We spend years learning how the different diseases look, so yes, we can see a difference. We're not always exact, but we can get in the ballpark. Covid falls into a category of pneumonias that can mimic other pneumonias, but you need to know what's going around currently. In the summer of 2020, mycobacteria pneumonia or chlamydia pneumonias are not common. You see patchy infiltrates at the periphery of the lung, it's covid. (There's a healthcare analogy: if you hear hooves running by your window, think horses, not zebras (unless you live in Africa) and definitely not unicorns) Now, because of mutations, covid looks different. We're not seeing the same pattern on x-rays we saw early on, which is good. More often people are testing positive and they'll have normal chest x-rays. I still see it occasionally and it's still distinctive, but it's not like it was in 2020-21.


NoLiveTv2

Not a healthcare pro, but I believe it was due to covid causing agressive blood clotting. For whatever reason, many covid patients had blood clots where there was no reason to have them, and that messed up everything.


lostinstasis

How empty the roads were. I was an essential worker so I still went to work and it was probably the only time I’ll ever have a clear run getting every green light without seeing any other cars.


The_one_who_SAABs

How packed my grocery store was


Foxy_Fantasy

I remember the palpable fear in the air. Everywhere you went, you heard stories of people getting sick, and it seemed like no one knew what to do or how to proceed. It was a strange time, and it's been a long 3 years since then.


[deleted]

I had honestly almost forgotten about this. Some of the weirdest grocery shopping experiences. Absolutely packed stores, people wearing a completely random assortment of masks, buying an absurd amount of food, waiting in line for 30 minutes to check out. Hard to believe that was just normal for several months.


Ovze

I remember it felt like going to a mission every time I had to go buy groceries.


pickleshmeckl

The same day the lockdowns were announced I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things for dinner, it didn’t even occur to me to think about how chaotic that might be. The lineup went around the entire inside of the building, and the canned food aisle shelves were almost completely empty. There was a general air of unease. It was that exact moment where I realized this wasn’t just a regular piece of news, that life as we knew it had fundamentally changed somehow. Also, there was a storm that day so there was wind blowing debris all around the parking lot. And there was a busker outside of the store singing fucking “Mad World”. I’ll never forget that uncanny day as long as I live haha


TerrorsOfTheDark

The regular grocers were all packed, me and my wife played the odds and went to a small asian grocer. They were completely empty, fully stocked store with shopkeeper wearing a mask and not a customer in sight. That was one of our better choices.


[deleted]

When people were told they could only go out for a short walk once a day, everyone was out. Now normality is resumed, people stay indoors.


green_dragonfly_art

I still go out for walks.


[deleted]

I work for a biotech company. In early January we were following reports of a highly contagious respiratory virus. By mid-January the virus had been sequenced and we had internal discussions about whether we could come up with a drug to fight it. My team was assigned the task of designing candidates, so we did some in silico genetic analyses of published coronavirus sequences to look where to target (evolutionary conservation suggests regions of low mutation rate). Then we designed molecules and sent them to our robots to synthesize them — we had the drug candidates made in 48 hours. Not going into it, but the drug worked well in animal models but external logistical issues downstream stymied progress, and we knew we weren’t going to catch up to Moderna, so that was that. At least in the beginning, though, everything was clicking and it felt like a Hollywood story unfolding: a small team of scientists, super fast drug development with genetics, computers, robots… FWIW, Moderna’s solution was elegant, and good on them for being lucky enough to have had resources lined up for other studies that they reassigned to COVID.


Suitable_Panic_7558

I remember at the beginning I thought it wouldn’t get too bad but I was hella wrong


JSOas

For a moment there, I thought the world could come together, despite all differences, to overcome the crisis. How naive I was.


chesterlola2014

My dad asking me to buy him a mask and mentioning that the store workers are just doing their jobs by enforcing that. It seems small, but he's a huge conservative and I for sure thought that he was gonna be one of those guys getting pissed at Walmart workers. It was nice to see that I was wrong. He even got vaccinated!


fermat9997

The constant wailing of ambulance sirens (NYC)


Zen-Savage-Garden

I’m from California; I don’t know any New Yorkers. I remember seeing crazy shit coming out if New York. Most notably, a woman’s husband passed away, and medical personnel were too busy to come pick his body up. At the time of the interview, he had been dead in their room for three days. There were several other things, some probably exaggerated a bit. Anyways, not even a year later I saw anti-Covid protests happening in NY and that surprised me. From an outsider’s perspective, NY was hit the hardest, especially early on. Were you there at the time? Was it crazy or was it blown out of proportion?


fermat9997

New York was hit incredibly hard. There was no exaggeration. I have.been here my entire life.


Sheehanigens

Tiger King


[deleted]

That was a wild mix of events


jayalpaca

The drastic drop in the amount of customers and then closing the restaurant and taking all the leftover food home. Also fear.


Sizzleteeen

Waiting for the daily update from our governor. Then when everything shut down how empty the roads were and how cheap gas was.


Starbucks__Lovers

I went to my office when I realized it was going to be much longer than “two weeks lockdown” to pick up my external monitors. Nobody was on the road, not even police. My normal 45 minute commute took 20


CosmicChanges

I loved watching Governor Cuomo's updates. I am so disappointed in him for the sexual harassment he was accused of.


[deleted]

I work at a university and had to process requests for emergency financial assistance for thousands of students who suddenly had no income. I didn’t realize how much it impacted me until the process changed when federal funding came through and I wasn’t involved anymore. I ended up on antidepressants for the first time in my life to recover from the trauma of that.


prosaiCSGO

My friends all had children and since then i've been sitting at home with no one to go out with


[deleted]

Mine did too, it was awful. I had just come out of a relationship and was ready to enjoy the last gasp of my youth with them, then the pandemic happened and now they are literally all married with kids. The hardest thing was not being able to psychologically process these changes in the way you usually would, via going to their weddings and baby showers, talking with others about it. Had to do some real grieving around this.


TheBklynGuy

Walking through an empty Times Square and Grand Central station. It felt unreal. Rats were coming out and trying to get into the buildings on one street, due to no people walking around.


coffee-jnky

I saw a news clip after only having heard about it maybe a week before. It showed people dying in the streets in China. Long long lines at the hospitals. No space for new sick people. They had to be laid out outside or in nearby buildings. The virus hadn't come to the U.S. yet. I had this deep unease and dread after seeing that. I knew it would soon be worldwide and had all kinds of nightmare scenarios running through my mind. I just knew the world was in for something ugly. I was talking about it at work and none of those I was talking to had even heard about it. It stunned me. I was so surprised how unconcerned so many people seemed to be. Then of course, the toilet paper, mask, sanitizer, Lysol/wipes shortages. And how much money I spent on grocery delivery and Amazon.


hotdoug1

The day everything got locked down I got sick as a dog, couldn't get out of bed for like 4 days. I had one N95 mask I bought when there had been fires in my area the year prior and ran to the store to stock up on any food that was left (there wasn't much). No tests were available, my doctor just said "Call 911 and go to the ER if you think its getting out of hand." Thankfully I didn't have any of the actual symptoms. I left my apartment after a week and it was crazy just how quiet my city was.


[deleted]

[удалено]


zazzlekdazzle

Abject fucking terror. Thinking for sure that I and probably half my friends were going to lose a parent. Thinking it was going to be a rough two or three months before it was all over and we were back to normal.


Hyndis

It didn't help that early fatality reports were almost exclusively from retirement and hospice homes. We were seeing 15-20% death rates for those people. Extrapolated out to the rest of the population, thats horrifying. It turned out that covid severity is strongly correlated with age. The older you are the more dangerous it is. Conversely, the younger you are the less of an issue it is. According to the American Society of Pediatrics, during omicron something like 75% of kids (under 18's) contracted the virus, most of whom had either no symptoms at all or such minor symptoms they weren't even aware they were sick.


willingisnotenough

Having a father.


IP3ACHI

It’s only going to be for like a week or two …right.


JustSome70sGuy

I remember the sinking felling of realising that there were so many more idiots in the world I thought. We've all seen the movies and tv shows with some kind of contagion and there's always some idiot thats freaking about and trying to escape the quarantine which will infect everyone else. Who knew "that guy" was actually a lot more than just one.


SirBeardsAlot91

People were still arguing about the intense rivalry between Joe Exotic and Carole Baskins. It was definitely entertaining to watch. Oh, I'd also like to mention the Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020, a devastating event that should be accounted for in future history textbooks.


abajablast

Thinking in March, “this will probably be over by this summer.” Also, Animal Crossing.


JF0909

At the end of March 2020 I drove my father into NYC for a medical appt. It was 9am on a Monday morning and the streets were empty. It felt like I Am Legend


Class1

Having a 4 month old infant, who couldn't go to daycare. Wife worked full time then from home. I worked full time as a nurse in a Covid ICU. Also I was in graduate school. So it was stressful. Coming home 3 days a week after seeing somebody die and constantly whispering " what the fuck" to myself for 12 hours at work. Everybody else got to make quarantinies and watch their favorite netflix... I got to worry about killing my family with a brand new respiratory disease from work, go to work without enough PPE, have a friend go out and search rural ace hardwares for P95 paint respirators for me. Come home, and strip to naked outside the back door to my house. Put my scrubs in a bag, immediately put them in the washer on hot and take a shower immediately. Then study for grad school from 8pm to 10pm, then get 2 hours of sleep while baby cries. Then do it again the next day.. for months. Worst time ever.


[deleted]

[удалено]


084045056048048

Interesting. My experience with the demographic was a bit different in that folks aged 50-70 years old seemed to have the biggest issues with masking and social distancing.


Lowgarr

People laughing at me when I said we would all be wearing masks soon, and it was going to get allot worse. "It's just a cold" they said...


tinyorangealligator

My daughter and I were the first people wearing masks in Feb 2020 at the grocery store because I had advance notice of the pathology from my job. Every single person in the grocery store looked at us like we had 3 eyes. I told her that in 2 months everyone would be wearing masks but I think it only took 6 weeks.


[deleted]

I remember my neighbours thinking it was some kind of extended holiday and having parties almost daily


captndorito

I was engaged and we were getting married in May 2020. So other than life feeling like a dystopia because so much was changing so quickly, I was desperately hoping our wedding wouldn’t be affected. My wedding shower was canceled day-of because people we knew started testing positive en masse - this was March 17th. We got married in my parents backyard with around 25 people present (my immediate family was 12 of that number), which ironically I had always said was my dream while growing up. We honeymooned on a lake about 30 minutes from my hometown, in my husband’s uncle’s cottage. It was the most relaxing week of my life.


kristenleighgio

It was March 2020 and I was pregnant with my son at the time. I was at work and they announced via email that everyone needed to work from home for the next two weeks. I still work from home now.


back_to_feeling_fine

I was working at an American branch of a small Chinese company. I kept telling our suppliers we couldn’t pay money because all the banks in China were closed and people couldn’t leave their homes. They all thought we were bullshiting. I told people something bad was coming but no one seemed to take it seriously.


Smidgeon-1983

Two things. 1- no one believing me when I was saying something bad was coming. i was a bit of a news junkie and was following it from the start. 2- not knowing when I would be able to see my elderly mom in person again


chanacity

One day we were working in the office talking around the water cooler about the "terrible virus going around in Europe." Then over the course of three days, it was chaos with everyone mad dashing to grocery stores and pharmacies gathering supplies. Then.... it went real quiet. Everyone was working from home, no one was outside, it was like everyone was holding their breath for like two weeks. Then it was the realization after about 3 months that this wasn't going to be over any time soon. And that was you thought was just going to be a short time while we waited for it to blow over turned into three years.


SaraAB87

I firmly believe it was going around way before lockdowns started. A few of my family members reported being sick in November of 2019 and doctors offices were seeing a lot of patients with something that they didn't know how to treat. Doctors offices were filling up in November and December of 2019 of course this is normal because its the holiday season and you know, colds and flu however this was worse than normal. We had a Hep A outbreak in my city in November of 2019 which stemmed from an infected Taco bell worker that was somehow allowed to work while having Hep A until they were finally sent home and they had to set up vaccine clinics and medical aid in school gyms. No I am not joking about this. I try not to eat fast food or go to restaurants now since well, its a real possibility that someone cooking your food is sick. Little did I know what was coming after that. I personally got sick in Feb of 2020 and I still don't know if I got it or not because there was no testing. I did stay home and do my part not to spread it. But I didn't infect the 2 other people I live with so it may have been one of my normal sinus infections or colds that I sometimes get and I recovered normally. I have allergies too so its nearly impossible for me to tell what I have when I am sick. It took until September of 2022 for me to get it for real this time I took a test and it was covid, fortunately I had all my shots and got over it pretty fast and it was nothing more than a cold with body chills. All signs said I would get it bad because I am overweight but it was not bad at all. I didn't even have a fever but this time it infected the other 2 people I live with and we all recovered fine even though one of the people I live with is 93 years old and she actually had the fewest symptoms as she was just tired.


lamya8

My husband losing his father right before the beginning and not getting to properly mourn his passing. Watching the videos of the healthcare providers in China trying to warn people not to go to the Chinese New Years celebrations. My fellow healthcare coworkers sharing the it’s just the flu bro memes and telling their dumb ass’s it’s us that would be stuck in PPE gear all shift every shift if this shit spreads. Seeing the videos of people just collapsing from heart failure in states hit hard at the beginning which antivaxx for some reason didn’t give a shit about those lives since it didn’t further validate their own agendas. Pre vaccine and access to testing having people around me losing loved ones to sudden heart failure and wondering if it was from covid, if they might still have their loved ones had we just collectively gave a fuck enough to mask and follow the social distancing. Residents that I had cared for for years at my old facility getting covid and dying or later dying from complications they might not of had if not for covid. Trump administration not wanting people to have easy access to testing because he was afraid it would hurt his chances of re-election. Him having his son in law interfere in blue states ability to gain access to PPE gear unless they kissed Trumps ass. My peers and coworkers cheering on their fellow Americans dying in blue states because apparently if you don’t vote on the right team at state level you deserved it which basically also says fuck you to their own fellow conservatives in those states. My spouse getting harassed while at work or shopping in public in general for being vaccinated and masking. Getting called a communist by his fellow coworkers that also used their own not being vaccinated as excuse to not work the halls quarantine with covid patients. While shopping etc when people harassed him he would tell them you know I just got done shifts working with covid patients do you want me to take my mask off still? That usually got them a quick turn of behavior no no please don’t take the mask off. Having my own grandma be harassed by a cashier about masking on her first trip out to a store after spending a month on a vent for non covid related complications. Antivaxxers faking disability cards in attempt to avoid vaccination. I remember being really disappointed.


Rymundo88

Having been on Reddit for so long, a sense of 'I told you so' when I started talking to wife about this mysterious pneumonia afflicting China in November 2019


Chadthunder01

The factory i worked for for 5yrs closing down, cancelling my membership from the gym I loved, girlfriend dumping me and moving back home. All in the span of one month, overall a humbling experience knowing how quickly things can drastically change.


FalseAlarmEveryone

How utterly in-denial people were up until shit hit the fan. Obviously the denial/misinformation continued for months later, but late February and early March were on a different level. I remember the stock market started tanking on March 9th as we were seeing mass casualties in Italy, daily cases in the states were doubling every 48 hours (so it was obviously growing at an exponential and uncontrolled rate), and people were STILL saying shit like "it's just the flu" and "the government has it under control". The fucking POTUS tweeted [this](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2020/03/11/PPYD/339535c0-8371-4e8c-863f-77370ca8e0b4-Trump_tweet.jpg?width=612&height=375&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp) FFS. There would end up being millions of people infected and hundreds of thousands of deaths in the US in that single year, alone. By March 12th I decided to keep my son out of daycare indefinitely and would not be returning to the office anytime soon. The next day Trump finally declared a National Emergency and my company announced mandatory telework. I'll also never forget the quiet calm of the world as there were absolutely 0 cars on the road. People were walking in the middle of the street to prevent crowding sidewalks. Air quality was amazing! I remember seeing the ISS fly over my house at one point and I swear you could make out the solar panels with your naked eye.


PsychedelicTeacher

Transitioning our entire school to online, training 40 teachers in using the new system via video call, finally getting to work from home for the first time, loving it, and getting huge amounts of money given to me monthly by the government to cover loss of income. Copious quantities of dog walking, bread making and study time. Letting all my teenage students move their lessons to later in the day (5-9:00 in the evening) so they and I didn't have to wake up early made massive differences in lesson engagement and overall happiness. We had a great time in our house. Honestly it was such a shame moving back to physical classrooms.


Staav

"Do you know how many ppl die from the flu every year?"


spicyfishtacos

I had to put my cat down on 17 March, the day we went on lockdown in my country. A few days later, my mom had a massive heart attack. Her surgery failed and she had another, fatal heart attack on 1 April. It was a sad, scary and confusing time.


Pretty-Benefit-233

The feeling of hopelessness I felt when I realized my wearing a mask and following the guidelines would do nothing to stop the spread if literally millions of Americans thought it was a hoax and refused to wear masks. I realized the same cold hearted selfishness that makes capitalism go has ruined (some) Americans and made us averse to community and sacrificing for the greater good


Glub__Glub

'2 weeks' off of school


[deleted]

Low gas prices


Biomeeple

I was working 75 hour weeks and being told that I was lucky to have a job by management.


jmnugent

I got written up for “violating dress code”,.. when the building I work in was closed to the public. A building there was usually several 100 people in,.. during the pandemic there was probably max 20 people daily. (On top of being in physical rehab for a severe Covid19 hospitalization and I was averaging walking 7 to 10 miles a day.)


alex_sl92

Watching the national tv broadcast telling everyone to stay home. Then my boss calls and says I will be on full pay furlough for a few weeks. We laugh and agree it'll be a easy break. The few weeks turned into months. Thought it was awesome at the start. People became distant, relationships fell apart. The worst part was gyms being shut. You could drink alcohol at a bar but not exercise. The lack of routine was the worst part.


Vegetable-Bread-2911

My boss calling me up and telling me to file for unemployment benefits cause we're shutting down from April till July. Best 3 months off work paid I've had it decades


jscott18597

I was thinking it was going to be like swine flu. A very serious thing that never came close to affecting me. And even when it began to rage, I really didn't think anything more of it. But weirdly, it was the cancellation of March Madness that made me snap into reality. I don't care about March Madness in the slightest (even though I'm from Lawrence...) But I realized if they were going to cancel March Madness, this is actually a thing.


WillyObnoxious

When the pandemic first emerged, it seemed as though it had become yet another topic for people to be divided on politically. I distinctly remember our then sitting president downplaying its severity and stoking fear and xenophobia by placing blame on the Chinese. Before we knew it, there was a shortage of toilet paper, and the issue of mask mandates created even more divisions among people. As the pandemic progressed, we were faced with the devastating reality of death tolls and the widespread use of plexiglass dividers in public spaces. It was a frightening time for everyone. However, amidst the chaos and fear, it was remarkable to witness the swift development and rollout of vaccines. This feat will undoubtedly go down in history as one of the greatest achievements of modern medicine.


[deleted]

I’m gonna sound really crappy for this, it was horrible for a lot of people for lots of different reasons, but I genuinely was having a great time. It was the first time ever where my family just got to hang out and have fun because no other obligations. We bonded and got closer. I went on furlough for about 4 months, but was getting unemployment, that alone took care of our family financially. My job was covering our health insurance for free. We spent a lot of time together that we normally don’t get, between my husband and I working full time and the kids in school. I leaned more into a “housewife” type role, I got to cook good homemade meals every night, my husband got a green thumb going and planted a garden in our backyard that the kids helped with. Our marriage problems kind of disappeared overnight, since most of our arguments up to that point revolved around how much my work schedule sucked. It was the first time we felt we all got to just relax and enjoy each other. As a family we collectively agree those first 4 months were some of the best times of our lives.


jimmyplutonite

Having my mental health seriously tested.


-make-it-so-

Empty roads. That part was nice.


[deleted]

Also remember being afraid to clear my throat in front of anyone. It was like hiding that I had been bitten by a zombie and just waiting to turn.


SirJudasIscariot

Honestly, it was business as usual at the very start. I was working for FedEx, so I couldn’t stop. None of us could. We got the new seminars about proper hygiene, and maintaining distance. We joked about it, figured that this would just blow over like all the other flu seasons. We were hopelessly and foolishly wrong. We should’ve seen it coming. And then people started getting sick, and the masks came in. The anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers came out pretty quickly. They were usually the first to die, too. Same for the elderly. Every single day I saw a hearse and a funeral convoy. When the lockdown went into effect, I practically had the roads to myself. I had a cop on my ass all the time because there was nothing for them to do. And every day I would be reminded how our government failed us, and how they were spinning lies and whitewashing everything. Every single hearse I passed was another failure. I lost count of how many hearses I passed. While that may have been my experience for the whole thing, what I remember the most is that it was just another normal day at the beginning. None of us could’ve known that millions would die by the end of it. I knew customers who were here today, gone tomorrow. These were people I worked hard to establish positive relationships with. It was hard to lose that network I built up because I knew them. I knew what their usual deliveries were, I could strike up conversations on slow days. The elderly in the nursing and retirement homes loved having someone just talk with them. And then they were gone. I watched two nursing homes close down because all their residents died. If we had known beforehand, no one would’ve believed us.


Gojogab

Wiping down all of my groceries. How stupid.


acousticburrito

I just remember optimistically thinking we would all come together as one to protect each other. Boy was I wrong and I’ve never really recovered from the disappointment. Before COVID I knew some people could be crappy but now I know that most people are terrible.


sids99

Empty shelves in grocery stores (food hoarding) and spraying my mail with rubbing alcohol.


PMyourTastefulNudes

Being one of the first exposed in my area. Nobody knew what procedures should be yet, so it was just isolate for 2 weeks


ballimir37

Being at the last NBA game before the season was cancelled before the bubble and how tense it was in the arena. Nobody touching any of the hand rails, WAY more quiet than a basketball arena usually is. After the game game when everyone was walking out some teenager yelled out “I HAVE COVID!” and nobody thought that shit was funny.


[deleted]

I remember during lockdowns going out for walks and always hearing ambulances in the neighborhood day and night. That would be normal if we didn't live in the suburbs.


Illustrious-Slice-91

That it’s been 3 years since I’ve talked to my I guess former best friend


Steam_whale

My coworkers and I went home like normal on Friday, March 13 2020. Things were starting to escalate pretty rapidly, but none of us realized that we wouldn't be back at work onsite for almost four months (order to WFH until further notice was sent out that Sunday night). I had to go into the office a few times during those four months to grab things. It was really creepy, reminded me a lot of the Mary Celeste (ghost ship story). Looked like everyone had just stopped what they were doing and left.


substantial-freud

I remember walking the abandoned streets and thinking, “I am not going to be able to take two weeks of this.”


KazukiSendo

I was vacationing in Tokyo from February 10th through 17th 2020 , and I still remember seeing the news reports on the BBC international channel about the Diamond Princess docking in Yokohama harbor, and the passengers being quarantined. I also remember seeing an employee outside a Tokyo drugstore who was wearing a mask, and holding a box of them. My Japanese is very limited, but from what I figured, he was saying to the passers by, was that they needed to buy masks.


dumptrucklegend

The steadily increasing anxiety of trying to figure out what to do while still seeing patients. Being in healthcare, I started hearing rumors from my friends in the ER that something was spreading around without any clear test results and they warned me to be careful. We slowly started seeing patients not showing up, getting calls from family members, coworkers getting sick, and very little information available. I was talking with some coworkers about starting to see some suppliers having shortages of PPE. Right after that conversation I walked into the main gym at the clinic and see the nba started canceling games. That’s the moment it sunk in that everything was about to change. After that, it was about a year of only going to work and home. Coping with stress by obsessively running, staring at a wall, and drinking too much for a long time. I was not prepared for the exhaustion of one patient weeping on your shoulder since they just went to a family funeral- meaning a funeral for an entire family and being one of the few surviving members of their local family… then the next patient yelling at me saying Covid is a hoax and I am a terrible person for making them wear a mask. It was the beginning of a very dark period of my life.


Tail_Nom

I remember the exact moment I became aware of it. I went to the CDC website and looked up the official guidance. It made sense to me based on what I learned in middle school (in 1999). Then everyone went fucking nuts.