Pandemic Recap (Thus Far) - Part Three

December 2020

December 2, 2020, the U.S. reported 2,760 COVID-19 deaths.

 

Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and health economist and a Senior Fellow at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington DC tweeted this image:

Pandemic Recap (Thus Far) - Part Two

June 2020

Before the pandemic, my three-year-old son and I had time to ourselves during our weekly grocery store trips. That was our thing, our dedicated time together. And I missed it terribly.

 

Before the pandemic descended upon us, our son was already far more attached to my wife. But his attachment to her became more extreme during the pandemic. If she wanted to run an errand, she would have to sneak out of her parents’ house without him noticing because he would otherwise cry and wail if he knew she was gone.

 

During his early years, I saw my son cry on many, many occasions. Early in the pandemic, when my wife would try to leave the house to go to the store, he would wail with what felt like fearful despair. He would stop as soon as she stepped back into the house. It was a different type of crying. If we had tried to explain the pandemic to him then, he couldn’t have comprehended what was happening, but he knew something was terribly wrong. I have no doubt.

Pandemic Recap (Thus Far) - Part One

January 2020

On January 10, 2020, the first SARS-CoV-2 genome sequence was posted on an open internet depository by Chinese researchers, confirming that the pneumonia-like outbreak in Wuhan, China—reportedly occurring since November 2019—stemmed from a coronavirus. The Chinese government denied the virus was spreading among humans until January 19.

 

On January 21^st, a Washington state resident who had recently traveled to Wuhan became the first person in the United States with a confirmed case of the novel coronavirus.

 

Two days later, the Chinese government locked down Wuhan, a major transportation hub and city with a metropolitan population of 11 million people.

 

On January 31^st, the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live, was identified in Santa Clara County. It was a man who had recently traveled to Wuhan. That same day, the World Health Organization (WHO), for only the sixth time in its seventy-three-year existence, declared a public health emergency once the worldwide death toll from SARS-CoV-2 passed 200 and after an exponential jump to more than 9,800 cases.

 

February 2020

A few days later, the second confirmed COVID-19 case—unrelated to the first one—was identified in Santa Clara County. She had also just returned home from Wuhan.

 

On February 6, 2020, 57-year-old Patricia Dowd—a resident of San Jose, CA—was the first known death caused by COVID-19 in the United States. She had no foreign travel history.

 

At the time, I worked at a community health clinic in Fremont, a sprawling suburb bordering Santa Clara County. A standing sign at the clinic’s main entrance posted information about the novel coronavirus. It warned patients about the virus and noted that all patients would be screened for any recent travel to China, or contact with anyone who had recently returned from China.