Five years ago today - the shut down started

[gomper]

I went to the Sabres game on the 9th. Dinner at the Town before.  No idea of what would come. On the 11th I had to be in the north towns unit 8. I live in Colden.  It was absolutely surreal listening to WFAN on the ride home. Updates came fast. First the NBA canceling the rest of the season.  3 minutes later it was the NCAA tournament.  Even the host couldn't believe it. I'll never forget that the only people on the road were Fed x and Amazon

 

It was really creepy 

 

 

 

[Just Jack]

30 minutes ago, Mike in Horseheads said:

I worked FT in the office for that whole experience as I was deemed essential (only time in my life lol).  So I had the letter in the car to give to the cops but never was stopped.  We had tickets for the end of the month Niagara Falls Ontario to see Kathleen Madigan  at the casino by the Hilton. Ticket master gave me a full refund no questions asked but the Hilton was kinda  jerks and i was like  i can't go be there if I wanted to the ***** border is closed.  smh

 

I had a bunch of concert tickets, back when you could still get paper tickets, that had been cancelled.  A few weeks into it, I posted a picture on FB of the ones that had been cancelled and asked if anyone wanted to buy them.  One of my FB friends thought I was serious and asked how much I was asking for them.  

[ExiledInIllinois]

I got da Covids two years later & I think I still gots it.  /smdh

[Augie]

32 minutes ago, ExiledInIllinois said:

I got da Covids two years later & I think I still gots it.  /smdh

 

I got Covid before it was even officially here. On 12/19/19 we drove for 8 hours down to Florida with a young lady who coughed the whole time. She had just returned from NYC. By Christmas Day I was so sick the wife put me in the back seat and drove 8 hours back to Atlanta. I coughed into February. 

[Just Jack]

The news from that night

 

 

[Bad Things]

I actually look back at the Covid years fondly.  It was a really pleasant experience to have New Zealand (and the Cook Islands) all to ourselves without any of the international tourists here.

 

Tourism was beginning to get a little out of hand with the number of people coming here to visit.  Covid squashed that, but the numbers are already beginning to rise again.

 

Being home with my teenage kids was really good too.  (Mrs Things was an essential worker so had to go in each day.)

[Just Jack]

2 hours ago, Augie said:

I got Covid before it was even officially here. On 12/19/19 we drove for 8 hours down to Florida with a young lady who coughed the whole time. She had just returned from NYC. By Christmas Day I was so sick the wife put me in the back seat and drove 8 hours back to Atlanta. I coughed into February. 

 

I also believe I had it early.  Some point between Thanksgiving and Christmas 2019, I had what I can only describe as a very bad cold or flu.  Went to the doctor and they ran some tests, but all they could tell me that it was something viral and to just let it run its course.  Took about 2-3 weeks to get over it. 

[AlCowlingsTaxiService]

I’ll always remember the evening before.  Out a a local watering hole celebrating a friend’s birthday. Place was packed, but there was a sense that this activity would be coming to an end … sad times 

[BuffaloBill]

I remember early days thinking that if you caught COVID it was a death sentence.  I worked at the time in an “essential” business so I pretty much was out among people every day.  Crazy times and also sad because of lives lost and long term damaging health conditions for some.

[Draconator]

I was working at Yahoo at the time. We worked off of company supplied Mac Books. When the lockdowns hit, we were told it would only be a couple of weeks that we would be working from home. 5 years later and the entire Incident Management team was laid off in favor of AI, and Yahoo sold their data centers and is storing all your credit cards and personal information on Google and AWS cloud servers. 

[PastaJoe]

I was set to retire in June 2020 from OCM BOCES which supplies and supports the computer systems used by 52 school districts around Syracuse and Central NY. When the shutdown hit we had to schedule a time to come into the office and collect our computers so we could start working from home. The systems had to be modified to support remote learning, and thousands of iPads had to be sent out to schools to distribute to students. We quickly learned what a Zoom meeting was. Since I was home and had nowhere to go anyways, I delayed my retirement until 2021 when we were back in the office.

[Fleezoid]

I'm convinced I got it the day before the Super Bowl. I believe there were only 1 or 2 cases on the West coast by then. I was so sick on Sunday, I had to go to bed by halftime. Called in sick all week until I finally went to Urgent Care on Thursday. I was having breathing issues. They diagnosed me with bronchitis. The prescriptions I was given worked in about 4 days, but I remember being so dizzy and weak waiting to pick them up. I was coughing so frequently and violently my abdomen hurt. 

[Sweats]

On 3/11/2025 at 9:59 AM, Augie said:

March 11 was the day the NBA cancelled games, and that seemed to touch home with a lot of people. Somehow things turned “real” in a hurry.  I’ll never forget going to the grocery store after that. You had to follow people to their car to get a cart, and there was nothing on the shelves but the stuff nobody would ever buy on purpose. It was surreal and the panic was palpable. That day was one of a kind in my life. 

 

Months later I mentioned that crazy day to one of the regular cashiers at the grocery store. I remember she checked me out that day. When I brought it up her eyes glazed over like she was reliving the trauma. She asked “you were there that day?”  Yes, I was and I’ll never forget it, either. 

 

 

EDIT:  That tells you how crazy that day was. Months later I actually remembered who checked me out that day and I remembered the fear in her eyes. That panic was unlike anything else I can think of. The closest  I can think of was the 2006 real estate collapse followed by the 2008 bank collapse. Nobody had any idea what was next. You could buy CitiBank at .50 cents a share. (I chickened out, of course.)  We wondered if the world as we knew it was going to end.  Crazy times. 

 

 

 

 

.............meh, i get women checking me out all the time and i don't feel the need to write about it.

[Simon]

1 minute ago, Sweats said:

 

 

 

 

.............meh, i get women checking me out all the time

 

They're deciding whether to call the cops.

[Sweats]

So, i remember around that time, i was working out of town on a big project back in the city.......i twisted my body the wrong way, got all dizzy and went down for the count. When i finally revived myself and tried to stand up, the whole left side of my body was completely paralyzed and i thought i was having a stroke.

 

I drove myself to the hospital (quite a chore in that state) ........and they informed me that my neck was partially broken, so i had immediate CAT scans, X-rays and an MRI.

Yep, neck was partially broken and probably due to degenerative spine and disc, however, the only way to fix it would be to have surgery which was about 3 months out yet.

 

So, because i couldn't work or even move at that point, i applied for short term disability through my union hall, which was partially subsidized through the government. There was no problem with my union hall, however, the government came back and said it's a symptom of Covid and for the record, it is not......and i had a fight on my hands for them to pay their part.

 

My doctor, my union hall, the hospital, etc. all wrote legal documents to the government to say that it was a partially broken neck and NOT a symptom of Covid and the government finally relented and paid.

 

If there is only but thing i remember about that time, it is that i was laid up in a lot of pain for 3 months waiting to have this surgery........and i can honestly say that it was the worst time of my life and i wouldn't wish that upon anyone.

[BuffaloBill]

1 minute ago, Sweats said:

So, i remember around that time, i was working out of town on a big project back in the city.......i twisted my body the wrong way, got all dizzy and went down for the count. When i finally revived myself and tried to stand up, the whole left side of my body was completely paralyzed and i thought i was having a stroke.

 

I drove myself to the hospital (quite a chore in that state) ........and they informed me that my neck was partially broken, so i had immediate CAT scans, X-rays and an MRI.

Yep, neck was partially broken and probably due to degenerative spine and disc, however, the only way to fix it would be to have surgery which was about 3 months out yet.

 

So, because i couldn't work or even move at that point, i applied for short term disability through my union hall, which was partially subsidized through the government. There was no problem with my union hall, however, the government came back and said it's a symptom of Covid and for the record, it is not......and i had a fight on my hands for them to pay their part.

 

My doctor, my union hall, the hospital, etc. all wrote legal documents to the government to say that it was a partially broken neck and NOT a symptom of Covid and the government finally relented and paid.

 

If there is only but thing i remember about that time, it is that i was laid up in a lot of pain for 3 months waiting to have this surgery........and i can honestly say that it was the worst time of my life and i wouldn't wish that upon anyone.

 

 

We know the real story is that you were subject to a mafia beating and they busted your neck. Have you paid off the “loans” yet?