One View of the Pandemic, One Year Later: Part 1

The first two weeks...

One year ago today the calendar was chock-a-block with things to do and places to go. It was Saturday, February 1st, 2020, and over at Lucky Penny we had some classes for kids going and a rehearsal for our upcoming musical. I was set to work a half day in a local tasting room, and the Kiwanis Club of Napa crab feed was a highlight on the social scene that evening (which tells you a lot about Napa). Roddy Ricch had the number one song that week but I don't think the DJ played it at the crab feed. 

One day earlier, on January 31st, 2020, the first positive coronavirus test in the Bay Area had been recorded in Santa Clara County.  

One year ago this week we were meeting with potential donors for our biggest fund development project in Lucky Penny's 11-year history, and we hosted the Boys and Girls Club and Poetry Out Loud at the Community Arts Center. Most of the morning radio shows were kind of B- that week even though the California primary was only a month away. We were all still grumpy about the 49ers losing the Superbowl. Pres. Trump was acquitted in the Senate impeachment trial but that was a foregone conclusion. A plane with evacuees from Wuhan, China had landed at Travis Base. I was looking forward to the Oscars on Sunday night. 

In the middle of that week, a woman died in Santa Clara County of Covid-19. It wasn't reported in the media because no one knew it was Covid at the time. It was the first Covid death in the US. 

February rolled on. Radio shows, theatre classes, planning for more special events. We opened "Five Course Love" on Valentine's Day and everyone (appropriately) loved it. Two days later we started rehearsal for "Sweeney Todd." Tickets were selling for everything. Doing a talk show in an election year was cool. 2020 was shaping up as a sensational year. 

In mid-February on the radio show I shared the first news story that made me edgy - the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which had been stuck offshore for quite awhile, disembarked their passengers and a group of them were taken to Travis Air Base to quarantine. It wasn't until after all those passengers were back on US soil that we learned there were 14 positive cases among them.  

This novel coronavirus thing didn't seem real when there were cases across the sea, cases on a boat, one case in Santa Clara - but now, suddenly, there were a bunch of people who might be carrying it just a few miles away. 

In part two, how things escalated quickly. 

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