Coronavirus

Back in January, we started hearing reports of a flu-like virus that was hitting parts of China pretty hard. They identified it as a coronavirus and named it Covid-19. Researchers think they have traced it back to a wet market (a market where they sell live animals that they sometimes butcher, right alongside food and other products) and think that it was a case of animal to human transmission. Scientists have thrown out things like bats, cobras, and pangolins as possible suspects for how the virus jumped to people, but they just aren't sure.

I only write all this background information because this new, unknown virus has thrown the entire world into chaos and has been an event that will be found in history books someday. When I am old and look back at my life, I will likely remember this time and the many unique challenges that it brought.

Way back in January, we paid very little notice to this coronavirus. It seemed to be a virus that really wasn’t effecting the rest of the world. Partway through January, the Chinese government took the unprecedented step of putting the entire city of Wuhan under lockdown. People were not allowed to work, travel, or visit other people. This definitely caught the attention of the world, but we still felt very far away from danger.

From what the media told us, the symptoms were similar to the flu: high fever, fatigue, dry cough, sore throat, etc. all of which could possibly lead to respiratory distress. We knew that some people were dying, but people die every day of the flu too, so how different was it, really? As January wore on into February, the virus started to spread. The country of Italy suddenly came to the forefront of the news. Covid-19 started spreading like wildfire in the northern part of the country. As it spread, emergency rooms and hospitals started filling up, and there were not enough beds for the people who were deathly ill and needed respirators. The news coming out of Italy was much more legitimate than what we had been hearing out of the communist-controlled regime of China. The world began to really take notice.

The first step was to stop flights from China, Italy, South Korea, Japan, and other areas that were dealing with the situation. Next, we started to see more and more stories about how to prevent germs like washing hands properly, avoiding sick people, and staying home from work or school if you didn’t feel well. To be completely honest, I still felt like the whole virus was overblown. Yes, it was sad that it was causing some deaths (mostly in the elderly or immune-compromised), but I could never have imagined what was coming. I didn’t really take notice of it until the church announced the closing of several temples and the cancellation of church activities in hard hit areas.

The first cases of Covid-19 soon arrived in the Untied States. Seattle was the epicenter, and we started hearing news of the first deaths. Sadly, many residents of a nursing home died, and the numbers continued to swell. Next, San Francisco faced a wave of illnesses. China, Italy, and many other places were under strict quarantine, and we started hearing whispers of a quarantine in the United States as well. In Utah, the coronavirus was still just something that we talked about, but not reality for us.

Midway through March, one of the basketball players for the Utah Jazz tested positive for Covid-19. It was so ironic because just days before when the media had asked him about the virus, he (Rudy Golbert) said he wasn’t worried about it and proceeded to touch all the microphones of the reporters in a show of playful ignorance. As soon as news got out that a very high-profile, popular athlete had contracted the disease, the general public started to get nervous. Things started happening extremely fast. That very day, the NBA suspended every game and put its season on hold.

Around the same time (March 12), the Church announced that all church meetings would be cancelled for the foreseeable future. The announcement said that the Church wanted to be good global citizens, and I could tell that they were being very careful not to risk the reputation of the church or the health of any of its members. This action, more than anything from the government, showed me the seriousness of the situation. In my entire lifetime, I don’t remember church ever being cancelled for an extended period of time. We were all a bit unsure of what would happen next, but we prepared for home church and were so grateful for revelation that inspired the recent changes of the Church to become home-centered, church-supported.

Within the next few days, we got the announcement that all schools in the state would close for 2 weeks to help prevent the spread of the virus. We were all shocked! Even BYU decided to close campus and start doing online classes only. Other states had closed schools, but there were still very few cases in Utah, so it seemed premature. The WHO declared Covid-19 a pandemic and everything officially closed down on March 16th (Jonathon’s birthday).

This week will be our test drive with pseudo-quarantine. We will do home church, learn how to homeschool, and start “social-distancing” to prevent the virus spread. This is going to be crazy, but hopefully, it helps save lives and life gets back to normal quickly.