Life… Before, During & After the
Great Pandemic of 2020 Wendy Daray - GroupManager
Well, it has been just about eight months since I was asked to write my first article for our newsletter. If you recall, it was about “change”, but who would have thought there would be so much of it and in such a short period of time. We went into 2020 with big dreams and aspirations of what the new year had in store for us. January kicked off the year with a great bang, and a fresh new attitude on everyone’s mind that this was going to be the year they would rule the world. Mid-January arrives, and we start hearing things about some virus they named after a beer... so of course here come all the memes… February rolled around, the Kansas City Chiefs became the World Champions defeating the San Francisco 49ers with a huge comeback in the 4th quarter. ASHRAE hosts their annual AHR Expo in Orlando, Florida and people start to wonder why the crowds are a lot lighter than they have been in the past. Late February we receive news of the 1st case of a suspected local transmission of the virus in the US. Still unsure and skeptical of what the virus’ effects were, life as we knew it went on. March blows in, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere…Bam!!! What once was the normal way of life is now over. We are hit with the coronavirus pandemic that turned the world upside down and sent everyone into a panic mode. Before you knew it, you could not find toilet paper, hand sanitizer, Lysol (which by the way, I still cannot find), bottled water was almost impossible to locate, and if you could find any of these items, you had to cut off an arm or a leg, and spend an entire paycheck just to be able to get them. Businesses were forced to close, airlines cancelled flights across the US, restaurants had to close, unless they could offer curbside pickup, which means people now had to actually cook a meal for themselves, schools had to shut down, moms and dads instantly became home school teachers and quickly found out, they really aren’t “smarter than a 5th grader”. Families were not allowed to visit their elderly parents or grandparents, all the animals in shelters were suddenly scooped up, social media pages were blowing up, there was nothing else on the news except how many cases were now confirmed. We were all forced back into pre-k, where we had to learn how to wash our hands, cover our mouths when we cough, and take a bath in hand sanitizer every time we touched something. State officials put “Stay Safe Work at Home” orders in place, which created a whole new demand for supplies. Suddenly there was a shortage of
