In January, 2020, Louise and I were in South Texas as we had been for the previous thirteen years. We began to hear news reports of a new virus coming out of China, specifically in the Wuhan Province. The virus became known as Covid-19 or the coronavirus.
It seemed that the news started out as a trickle then became a raging torrent. As the days went by, we began to wonder if we shouldn’t go home. Not only were we concerned that travel might become difficult but our dog (my dog!) J.J., was ill and needed surgery. We made the decision to leave South Texas two weeks earlier than we had planned.
The virus spread from country to country like a wildfire. Transmission was apparently mostly by air. Within a couple of months after getting home, the entire Country went on lock down. Most people didn’t go to work, there were no restaurants or bars open, no churches held live services and so forth. A lot of people learned how to work from home and even attend virtual church services. If you did have to leave your home, you wore a mask and tried to stay several feet away from anyone else.
As you might expect, shortages of goods began to happen. One of the first shortages was of toilet tissue. What does it say about a country or society when the first thing we run out of in a crisis is toilet tissue? Other things, surprisingly, included bread flour. I thought bread making was almost a lost art at home but apparently it’s not – people began baking again.
Although events with more than just a handful people were discouraged, that didn’t stop Louise and I from having a party one evening with nine people there, including R.B. and Teresa Ellis, Bill and Gina Henshaw, David and Lisa Swanson, my brother Milt, and Louise and me. The evening degenerated into drinking tequila shots, all from the same glass. Sure enough, the next morning R.B. was ill and tested positive for Covid. Fortunately, his symptoms weren’t terribly severe but he did miss several days of work at the fire department. The rest of us all quarantined for fourteen days and got tested but no one got the virus. We decided that the moral of that story is that tequila is an effective antiseptic!
As the summer drug on, there was a massive race to develop vaccines. The Federal Government was pouring billions of dollars into this effort. We were being told that vaccines might be available by the end of the year. In fact, there were two companies that were able to get emergency approvals on their vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna. Because there was a very limited supply, the Government developed a priority system. The first people in line were health care and emergency workers.
Because the virus seemed to affect older people much more than younger ones, the next group to get the vaccine was those who were sixty five or older. Louise and I got our first shots on January 19, 2021, and our boosters on February 13, 2021, the day before Valentine’s Day. It was easy to remember the date because we both were sicker than dogs on Valentine’s Day. A lot of people suffered side effects after receiving the boosters.
Within a month after receiving our shots, the general public was allowed to get vaccinated. As with any massive program like this, within a few weeks there was more vaccine than needed. And like a lot of things in our polarized society today, this one became politicized, with some people taking the vaccine and others claiming that the vaccine wasn’t safe.
Our daughter, Rachel, who was teaching school in Broken Arrow, was one who didn’t think she should take the vaccine. So, in late August, 2021, she developed the virus. Shortly after that, her husband, Tom, came down with it as well.
The next wave was the “Delta” variant which has spread across the country and it appears to be even more virulent than the original. While we were seeing the number of cases ebb in early summer, 2021, it began another increase. Fortunately, the vaccines developed for the original virus seem to be effective on the variant as well. The current variant, called “omicron” appears to be much more contagious and consideribly less virilent than the first strains.
Louise and I do know, personally, three people who have died from Covid-19. Phil Finch was a friend of ours from our South Texas trips and was a fine man. Roland Gniech was the husband of Louise’s long time friend from Stillwater, Susan Gniech. The most recent friend to die was Gary McBride, a long time resident of Mannford who was an electrician. He died in early September, 2021. In addition to losing these friends, we know quite a large number of people who have gotten the virus but managed to get through it.
I’m hopeful that this is the last I will write about the Covid-19 pandemic!
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