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COVID Anniversary: a Retrospective
Mar. 14th, 2021 11:32 amA year ago, the coronavirus (as we called it back then) appeared in Michigan with two recorded cases.
No one was wearing masks in public much. We were avoiding handshakes and doing elbow bumps instead. But no one seemed overly worried.
I was terrified. I remember watching it show up in China and spread quickly. Cruise ships filled up with plague victims and were refused docking. Still, everyone, including Donald Trump, was saying it wasn't a big deal, and I was saying, "This is horrifying." Diseases like this spread like crazy, especially in a world of quick, cheap international travel. It only takes a single case in an airport to send a virus all around the world.
The latest (and ultimately false) information we had back then was that the virus spread on surfaces, like the flu does, so I set my students to work. Twice a day, every day, I sprayed my classroom tables down with bleach cleaner and had my students wipe them dry with paper towels. They grumbled and complained that it was stupid, that there was nothing to worry about. I ignored them.
On Wednesday, I brought in a giant bottle of hand sanitizer and told my students that everyone who entered the room needed to use it, even if they said they'd just washed their hands. This excited some commentary, especially from "Moe," a nasty-minded student from a right-wing family. Moe was a big kid with a loud mouth who had clearly been raised to believe that if a big person just shouts at people, they'll be cowed into submission. He was a bully and weasel both, who tried to get me into trouble by peddling false stories about me to the principal. These stories ended in showdowns in the office, and Mick upped his attempts to get me into trouble.
So after a bathroom break, Moe strode into the class and bypassed the sanitizer. I stopped him and told him to use it. He made a huge, vocal deal about it. "This thing is a fake! It's nothing! This is stupid." I ordered him out of the classroom and told him not to come back until I'd heard from the principal. He stormed out, vowing never to return. As it turned out, he never did.
The following day--Thursday--Moe wasn't in class. I marked him absent and taught as usual.
Meanwhile, I remember a palpable feeling in the air, similar to when a blizzard is on the way. The numbers were shooting up in Michigan, and we'd had a case in our school district. Fewer of my students were scoffing at the virus now, and the big discussion was whether or not it qualified as a pandemic. The CDC was hesitant to call it one because they were afraid of panic. This struck me as an idiotic policy, and was the first among hundreds of bad calls, missteps, and utter incompetence on behalf of the CDC in handling COVID-19. This was The Big One, the event they'd been preparing for over decades. And when it finally arrived, they screwed it up from beginning to end and side to side.
"Do you think they'll close the schools?" students and teachers often asked.
"I think they will," I always said. "We won't finish the school year."
"Nah!" scoffed my colleagues. "It's a flu. We might miss a day or three, but that's it."
Also on Thursday, Darwin got the news that his brother had died down in Arizona. I made sub arrangements for Friday so I could be home for him.
That evening, Governor Gretchen Whitmer called an emergency news conference. She announced that she was closing places of congregation, including bars, restaurants, and all schools for the next two weeks.
This set off a flurry of work. Darwin was dealing with long-distance arrangements surrounding his brother's death (no one else in the family seemed willing to get involved, strangely) and I was dealing with work. Wherever Schools announced that on Monday, we teachers could come in and get stuff from our classrooms that would allow us to set up virtual teaching at home. After that, we were forbidden to return.
I didn't get a final class with my students because I was out on Friday. I noticed the sub had marked Moe absent. I wondered grimly what he was thinking of hand sanitizer now.
On Monday, I rushed into my room, snatched up my school laptop and other portable technology, along with copies of textbooks, and drove home. The district gave us one day--ONE DAY--to figure out how to use Google Classroom and put lessons up for our students. Everyone was floundering, even panicking. The big concern was how to use Zoom. I didn't want to touch it, and never did that year. Other teachers tried it, and got Zoom bombed. One teacher got porn bombed--a Zoom bomber shared a video of hardcore porn with the class. We were told to put up assignments and home-recorded videos for the students, but assignments couldn't actually count or be graded.
I worked for hours and hours and hours, recording and editing videos of myself, converting materials to Google Classroom. Darwin was still working in Albion at the time, and I ended up spending half the week down there. It was the strangest thing, teaching in Wherever from 50 miles away.
The end of the two-week closure coincided with the beginning of spring break. Everyone was saying that three weeks of closing down would give the epidemic (as the dumb-ass CDC was still calling it then) time to ebb, and we could go back to normal.
"No," I said. "We won't go back. This thing is just getting started."
I hated being right.
In the middle of spring break, the governor announced that schools would continue to be closed, first for the month of April, then into May, then until the end of the year. Graduation for everyone, including Max, was canceled. This was the single most upsetting part of the pandemic for me up to that point. After all the hard work, the arguments, the fighting, the coaching, the shepherding, the watching, the twice-yearly IEP meetings, I wasn't going to see Max walk down the aisle to get his diploma. It still upsets me.
We teachers were hailed as heroes due to our attempts to create workable lessons for at-home students, but we were too busy putting in twelve-hour days to notice. (Later, when schools were still closed for the fall, we were suddenly denigrated as lazy and incompetent because the teachers refused to risk their lives for their jobs.)
I never did see Moe again. I was too busy to care.
In June, my uncle Indul died from COVID-19.
Mask mandates were finally introduced, and became a political flashpoint because Trump stated he wouldn't be wearing one. The Republican party stood behind Trump and resolutely blocked methods that would slow or halt the spread of the disease.
A few months later, my uncle David and his step-daughter died from COVID.
Here we are, now. I've gotten both doses of the vaccine, and Darwin's had his first. Numbers are finally going down. We may be back to some version of normal by July. And it's never been more clear than ever that the Republican party wants nothing but power. They don't care about lives, they don't care about their constituents. They don't care. They must never, ever be allowed control of the government again.
And now we need to move forward.
No one was wearing masks in public much. We were avoiding handshakes and doing elbow bumps instead. But no one seemed overly worried.
I was terrified. I remember watching it show up in China and spread quickly. Cruise ships filled up with plague victims and were refused docking. Still, everyone, including Donald Trump, was saying it wasn't a big deal, and I was saying, "This is horrifying." Diseases like this spread like crazy, especially in a world of quick, cheap international travel. It only takes a single case in an airport to send a virus all around the world.
The latest (and ultimately false) information we had back then was that the virus spread on surfaces, like the flu does, so I set my students to work. Twice a day, every day, I sprayed my classroom tables down with bleach cleaner and had my students wipe them dry with paper towels. They grumbled and complained that it was stupid, that there was nothing to worry about. I ignored them.
On Wednesday, I brought in a giant bottle of hand sanitizer and told my students that everyone who entered the room needed to use it, even if they said they'd just washed their hands. This excited some commentary, especially from "Moe," a nasty-minded student from a right-wing family. Moe was a big kid with a loud mouth who had clearly been raised to believe that if a big person just shouts at people, they'll be cowed into submission. He was a bully and weasel both, who tried to get me into trouble by peddling false stories about me to the principal. These stories ended in showdowns in the office, and Mick upped his attempts to get me into trouble.
So after a bathroom break, Moe strode into the class and bypassed the sanitizer. I stopped him and told him to use it. He made a huge, vocal deal about it. "This thing is a fake! It's nothing! This is stupid." I ordered him out of the classroom and told him not to come back until I'd heard from the principal. He stormed out, vowing never to return. As it turned out, he never did.
The following day--Thursday--Moe wasn't in class. I marked him absent and taught as usual.
Meanwhile, I remember a palpable feeling in the air, similar to when a blizzard is on the way. The numbers were shooting up in Michigan, and we'd had a case in our school district. Fewer of my students were scoffing at the virus now, and the big discussion was whether or not it qualified as a pandemic. The CDC was hesitant to call it one because they were afraid of panic. This struck me as an idiotic policy, and was the first among hundreds of bad calls, missteps, and utter incompetence on behalf of the CDC in handling COVID-19. This was The Big One, the event they'd been preparing for over decades. And when it finally arrived, they screwed it up from beginning to end and side to side.
"Do you think they'll close the schools?" students and teachers often asked.
"I think they will," I always said. "We won't finish the school year."
"Nah!" scoffed my colleagues. "It's a flu. We might miss a day or three, but that's it."
Also on Thursday, Darwin got the news that his brother had died down in Arizona. I made sub arrangements for Friday so I could be home for him.
That evening, Governor Gretchen Whitmer called an emergency news conference. She announced that she was closing places of congregation, including bars, restaurants, and all schools for the next two weeks.
This set off a flurry of work. Darwin was dealing with long-distance arrangements surrounding his brother's death (no one else in the family seemed willing to get involved, strangely) and I was dealing with work. Wherever Schools announced that on Monday, we teachers could come in and get stuff from our classrooms that would allow us to set up virtual teaching at home. After that, we were forbidden to return.
I didn't get a final class with my students because I was out on Friday. I noticed the sub had marked Moe absent. I wondered grimly what he was thinking of hand sanitizer now.
On Monday, I rushed into my room, snatched up my school laptop and other portable technology, along with copies of textbooks, and drove home. The district gave us one day--ONE DAY--to figure out how to use Google Classroom and put lessons up for our students. Everyone was floundering, even panicking. The big concern was how to use Zoom. I didn't want to touch it, and never did that year. Other teachers tried it, and got Zoom bombed. One teacher got porn bombed--a Zoom bomber shared a video of hardcore porn with the class. We were told to put up assignments and home-recorded videos for the students, but assignments couldn't actually count or be graded.
I worked for hours and hours and hours, recording and editing videos of myself, converting materials to Google Classroom. Darwin was still working in Albion at the time, and I ended up spending half the week down there. It was the strangest thing, teaching in Wherever from 50 miles away.
The end of the two-week closure coincided with the beginning of spring break. Everyone was saying that three weeks of closing down would give the epidemic (as the dumb-ass CDC was still calling it then) time to ebb, and we could go back to normal.
"No," I said. "We won't go back. This thing is just getting started."
I hated being right.
In the middle of spring break, the governor announced that schools would continue to be closed, first for the month of April, then into May, then until the end of the year. Graduation for everyone, including Max, was canceled. This was the single most upsetting part of the pandemic for me up to that point. After all the hard work, the arguments, the fighting, the coaching, the shepherding, the watching, the twice-yearly IEP meetings, I wasn't going to see Max walk down the aisle to get his diploma. It still upsets me.
We teachers were hailed as heroes due to our attempts to create workable lessons for at-home students, but we were too busy putting in twelve-hour days to notice. (Later, when schools were still closed for the fall, we were suddenly denigrated as lazy and incompetent because the teachers refused to risk their lives for their jobs.)
I never did see Moe again. I was too busy to care.
In June, my uncle Indul died from COVID-19.
Mask mandates were finally introduced, and became a political flashpoint because Trump stated he wouldn't be wearing one. The Republican party stood behind Trump and resolutely blocked methods that would slow or halt the spread of the disease.
A few months later, my uncle David and his step-daughter died from COVID.
Here we are, now. I've gotten both doses of the vaccine, and Darwin's had his first. Numbers are finally going down. We may be back to some version of normal by July. And it's never been more clear than ever that the Republican party wants nothing but power. They don't care about lives, they don't care about their constituents. They don't care. They must never, ever be allowed control of the government again.
And now we need to move forward.
