We started hearing news about the coronavirus (COVID-19) when it hit China in December 2019 but didn’t really think that it would affect us. With Seattle being an entrance point into the United States from Asia it’s understandable that some of the first cases were found here. Other cities impacted early on were LA and San Francisco. Also major entrance points for Asia.
- January 21 - Washington state had its first confirmed case with was also the first case in the U.S.
On Sunday, February 23 while I was looking at possible lodging accommodations for our stay in Venice this summer, Justin was reading the news and announced that Venice had just canceled its annual carnival due to fears over the virus. I have spent quite a bit of time over the last few weeks booking various flights and accommodations for our trip to Europe. I still didn’t think that it would be much of an issue but decided to hold off on making any further decisions. As things progressed in Italy and more people were testing positive we started to realize that this may escalate and not only affect our trip to Europe but also affect our lives here.
We didn’t hear much else until late February when a life care facility in Kirkland, Washington started to report positive tests within their older residents.
Friday, February 28: We got an email from our school district letting us know that they were advised to begin some contingent planning in case circumstances warranted a school closure. They advised us that additional cleaning was taking place though they stated that “because there is no evidence that it’s spreading in our state or the US, public health continues to report that immediate risk to the general public remains low at this time.”
- February 29 – The first death was reported in Washington, a resident of the senior life care center. This is also the first death in the United States.
- March 1 - some schools in Washington started to announce temporary closures for deep cleaning
Monday, March 2: We received an email from our school district assuring us that they have a plan and are taking precautions to keep our schools safe. “Currently there are no confirmed cases of the disease in Snoqualmie Valley schools, but we are busy preparing, in case an emergency response is needed in the future. Public health of Seattle and King County is not advising cancellation of events, field trips, or school closures at this time. However we are closely monitoring and the health and attendance of our students and staff and following recommendations from Public Health authorities to minimize the spread of the disease.” They also stated that any contingent plan would need to ensure equity and access to resources for ALL students, and because not all families in our community have computer or internet access they would not be able to provide individual learning needs via remote support. “It is not feasible that our school district would be able to support online learning at this time.”
- March 2 - the death count in Washington rose to 6 with 14 new cases.
- March 3 – state death toll increased to nine. Additional schools announced closures for up to 14 days.
- March 4 – death toll in Washington increased to 10. County recommends people over 60 avoid crowds.
Thursday, March 5: Today we got news that our stake women’s conference that was scheduled for this Saturday, March 7 was canceled. Based on this I highly suspected that our stake conference scheduled to be held the following weekend, March 14 and 15th would soon be canceled as well.
- March 5 – death toll increases to 11. The total case number increases to 70 statewide
Friday, March 6: The updated notification from our school district was that “the public health department continues to recommend that schools stay open when there are no confirmed cases” which is the case in our area. However, they did suspend school facilities being used by outside groups, field trips would be considered on a case-by-case basis and all games, concerts, dances, plays, and information and evening events would be canceled or postponed. The girls would still be allowed to continue with daily tennis practice, however it wasn’t looking like they would be starting their tennis matches as scheduled since other school districts were closed.
We received notice from our church leaders today letting us know that for the near future we would only have sacrament meeting on Sunday and forgo the second hour of church. They also canceled all mid-week activities for the youth. However, they would continue to hold seminary classes in the morning so long as the schools were open. They were waiting for direction regarding holding stake conference (scheduled for March 14-15) from the church authorities. The institute class that I attend on Mondays would be canceled until further notice. This news about holding sacrament was another confusing thing for me. If the purpose was to stop the spread of the virus then meeting as a ward unit for 60 minutes vs 120 minutes wasn’t keeping us away from any potential exposure. When I expressed this to a friend she was of the opinion that it might be so that those people who are uncomfortable coming to church don’t feel like they need to come because they have a responsibility to teach or serve during that second hour. We got official word later this afternoon that stake conference would be canceled and to plan on having a sacrament only meeting on March 15.
Justin also received a little heads up this afternoon that the temple was closing tomorrow through the rest of the month.
- March 6 - several colleges announced that classes would no longer meet in person. This includes Bellevue College which Abigail attends. Their quarter ends on March 20 so all finals would be held online and the situation would be reevaluated on April 1 when the next quarter is scheduled to begin. Abigail is taking all online classes next quarter so with this announcement she is officially done with attending any classrooms until she attends BYU.
Saturday, March 7: This afternoon Justin, Jason and Abigail (with some of her friends) drove down to Tacoma for our high school state championship basketball game. We won!
- March 7 - Washington death toll increases to 16 and there are at least 102 confirmed cases state wide.
Sunday, March 8: Church today was definitely unique in that we were only holding sacrament meeting at the church. The attendance was noticeably less than typical weeks. The Aaronic priesthood that would be participating in the sacrament were all wearing gloves and we were asked to keep the small sacrament cup in which the water was administered so that we wouldn’t be putting that back in the serving container with our germs on it. They also had hand sanitizer for us as we entered and exited the chapel.
- March 8 – Governor Inslee announced officials were considering mandatory social distancing measures. Statewide totals increased to 123 people.
I went biking with Jason this afternoon. We decided to go on some of the trails in the neighborhood which is new to me as I’ve never done much mountain biking. Granted this was very, very basic trail biking, but still it was new to me but lots of fun. I take regular cycle classes at the YMCA so I was discouraged that I wasn’t able to make it up the steep hill on Swenson on the way home.
At this point the girls were still having tennis practice every day; however, because some of the neighboring school districts had closed their schools it was announced that games would be canceled at least through Friday, March 20.
- March 9 – state wide death toll increases to 22, 19 of those deaths are linked to the life care center in Kirkland.
Tuesday, March 10: We received word from the middle school today that sports and clubs would be canceled. This was Jason’s final week of basketball so he had two games that were canceled and his season was all of a sudden over.
I went to the gym this morning for cycle class and was the only one there besides the teacher Kari. Kari and I are friends so I told her if no one else showed up we could just skip the class and I could do something else. When no one else came she said she’d be cycling anyhow if I wanted to still join. Reluctantly, I told her I’d stay for the first half. She was cool with that but of course I couldn’t stop a class half way through and plowed forward earning my best cycle workout ever. That’s what happens when the teacher is watching you the whole time and you can’t get away with slacking off at all. I proudly declared I was the BEST in class!
- March 10 - the new state wide coronavirus case number reached at least 269. There were reports that Governor Inslee would ban gatherings of 250 people or more.
I can’t remember what brought me to Safeway today, but this was in my camera roll. Empty store shelves is not unusual these days.
I did not sleep well. It’s not necessarily that I was nervous or worried it was just an anxious feeling about what kind of hysteria I was going to be facing. I woke up at 4:30am and knew immediately I was in trouble. I tried to will my tired body to go back to sleep but my mind was already in game mode and ready to attack the day. I laid in bed for a few hours but never did fall back to sleep.
- March 11 - the world health organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. Inslee band gatherings of more than 250 people in the three counties that are hit the hardest (this includes our county). The NCAA announced March madness games would be played without fans. A handful of school districts announced they would close through the end of March. The death toll rose to 31 deaths from 374 confirmed cases statewide. Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, announced today had the coronavirus. President Trump announced that a 30 day travel ban on all incoming travel from Europe, except for the UK. US citizens are exempt. The NBA suspended games.
Thursday, March 12: I headed down to Covington as soon as I got the kids out the door heading to school. I first picked up some free breakfast items at Chick-fil-A, as they’ve been running a promo all month for free breakfast items. Then I went to Walmart and was able to get most of what I needed pretty quickly. Of course they were out of hand sanitizer and most cleaning supplies, but I was able to get some hand soap, groceries and medication that we needed.
I got to Costco about a half hour before they opened and thought I would just wait in my car but then I noticed there was a long line all the way out the door and along the side of the store. I decided not to wait in line and instead just hung around by the front door and when they opened I went in and got busy. As we were entering the store they were telling customers that there was not any toilet paper, sanitary wipes, or hand sanitizer. I decided to do my regular little route and went and picked up the produce that I needed and as I was heading back to the dairy section to pick up some milk I ran into a large group of people waiting in line for water and toilet paper. I didn’t necessarily need either but the lady next to me told me mentioned that this was her fourth time trying to get toilet paper, so I figured since I had access to it I might as well pick some up. They allowed each customer two bundles of water and one package of toilet paper and ran out of both very quickly. I basically just got things that we needed but I did pick up an extra package of chicken and a few other extras. My cart was very full. There were also pretty long lines for check out but overall it wasn’t over-the-top crazy. Crazy, but manageable crazy.
This afternoon I started to get word from Carly who was at high school that the schools in our district would be closing down today and that we wouldn’t be going back to school until April 17. These teenagers seem to get news much quicker than anyone else. She wasn’t entirely correct - when official announcement came out our schools would be officially closed until April 27. My mind was blown! Never would have expected that long of a closure. I was pretty confused because we’d been told that although kids could be carriers of the virus they weren’t necessarily at risk for getting very sick from it so the opinion up until this point was to keep them in school. By putting them on a break without quarantining them seemed to negate the idea of not spreading the virus. So I was pretty confused about what limitations if any would be in place. One of my initial thoughts was that if we’re going to have a six week break from school we should go on vacation, do some exploring, go to some national parks, head out on some road trips. To cancel school without any limitations in place was defeating the purpose in my opinion. I think I am usually pretty chill but this afternoon I was feeling very uneasy about the situation and confused about what our new regular was supposed to look like. I’m a person who likes to have a plan and be in the know so it was an unsettling feeling.
We also got word that church services would be canceled entirely due to the new limits on the number of people allowed in social gatherings from our state officials. We were encouraged to have the sacrament in our homes if possible.
Justin has been going into the office every day. There have been many companies that have encouraged their employees to stay at home. T-Mobile has kind of done that, but also stated that if you feel like you need to be in the office then you should be. So most of his co-workers have still been going into the office. However, this afternoon he was told that everyone in his building needed to leave immediately as someone on the floor beneath him had tested positive to the virus. That individual hadn’t been into work for over a week, but the building would need to be thoroughly cleaned over the weekend.
Abigail had three friends over tonight that joined us for dinner and then a few additional friends cycled in and out of our house throughout the evening. I didn’t mind, but this is another area which was confusing for me. Unless they tell us that our kids shouldn’t see their friends or unless we get quarantined, I’m not sure how realistic it’s going to be to keep my kids, especially my teenagers, from socializing with their friends.
- March 12 - statewide death toll increased to 31 from 457 total cases. Governor Inslee announced the closure of all schools in King, Pierce, and Snohomish County’s through April 24. National and college sports seasons were canceled.
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