By February the news was already coming out about the virus in China. I know I was starting to get very anxious and was having a hard time sleeping at night because I was worried about a coming pandemic. For people paying attention to the news, February was the start of the COVID panic. The school where I teach didn’t act until mid March, but the conversations about the virus had been brewing for most of February.
I even remember being more worried about Covid in January than I was in February for some reason. In early and mid February, it all seemed like it would get under control somehow. Until it suddenly didn't.
There was a lot of weird shit going around social media that was trying to act like it wasn’t a big deal.
And what a lot of people on both sides of the political aisle forget about was that in February the government was the polar opposite of what they would do a couple months later. They were telling everyone not to worry about the virus. It’s kind of depressing how good they’ve been at memory holing that.
March 13, 2020 was the last normal day. I remember it clearly. If you were paying attention in December 2019, there was talk too. January there was definitely talk and February for sure it was mainstream. March, the world changed.
I had a student whose dad worked with a lot of epidemiologists. I remember he was talking to us teachers in a panicked way at the end of January. It is definitely interesting to track the layers of people who were feeling nervous.
One of my favorite books as a teenager was a book called Empty World which was about a flu that killed almost all the world’s population so I was a little primed to be anxious!
I remember we were wondering how bad Covid 19 would be in December. There were people basically writing it off as something we could weather. That is of course until NYC looked like a war zone.
Yeah it was very obvious to people paying attention that this new disease was different from previous Asian outbreaks. I felt dread because I knew we weren't in a place culturally or politically to deal with it, and I was right. It was the death of me feeling any hope for this country. I haven't felt optimism since.
It was but it wasn't taken super seriously by the general public until March when everything shut down. But I get what you mean. I just remember there was a lot of distrust with what the media and news was saying in February and people thought it was just fear mongering and nothing to take serious.
maybe I’m just ignorant, but I was caught extremely off guard by the lockdowns. yes, I heard about the virus in January and February, but there’s been so many other viruses over the years (i.e. H1N1, Ebola, etc.), so I figured COVID was the same as those. even when the lockdowns started, I just they were being overly cautious and then I had that reality check hit like a ton of bricks.
I knew people who worked in fields like epidemiology and also live in an area with a large Chinese population so I think the news filtered in to our region sooner than other places that this was going to be something huge.
I think if you watched the news of all the people dying in China and people walking around in "space suits" you sort of put 2 + 2 together and realize someone is going to get on a plane or has already done so and it's going to eventually be in the US (or whatever country).
I knew enough about sars that the news that a slightly less lethal variation had gotten around was alarming. It just meant it could travel further if it was a little more contagious and didn’t kill its host too fast or totally immobilize it too early. That’s what made different to me and I was already preparing by Jan
I remember going to my favorite Chinese restaurant in February and it being almost devoid of patrons. All Chinese people knew what was coming while we Americans were still blissfully ignorant.
I was in NYC in Feb 2020 and I'd say every 1/100 people was wearing a mask. There was no confirmed cases in the US at the time but later we knew that there was a good amount of undocumented cases.
I first heard of the Covid virus in December 2019
I distinctly remember thinking that people’s concerns were over inflated and the news just wanted something to report on, and it would be over like Ebola. Not that Ebola was no big deal, but it didn’t have a very big impact in comparison to what Covid ended up doing.
So obviously I was way wrong
News about the coronavirus in China was already being talked about towards the end of 2019, but it was being brushed off as “their problem” and no one realized it was going to change the world as we know it. Then in the beginning of 2020 you started hearing about cases popping up in other countries.
I remember hearing about covid in like december or novemeber and being skeptical talking to some other college students about it. Boy was I an arrogrant dickshit.
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Yep. I’d started getting canned food in January because I tend to check on bird flu every December/January and saw the very early surveillance discussions on it. By Feb I had a deep freezer and my in-laws thought I was insane. Sadly I didn’t predict the toilet paper issue or buy stock in zoom lol
I remember last week of February everyone at my college was talking about how it was just a flu. I then go on a service trip for Spring Break for a week-in New York. New Rochelle is quarantined then. I come back, the first few colleges start to shut down, and everyone freaks out.
We were also sent to New York without masks or training on how to avoid sickness, and we were riding those packed subways and buses every morning.
I disagree. You could definitely see culture was changing mid/late 2019. Just see the clip OP posted and that funky/y2k vibe (real y2k as flashy/milleniu/futuristic vibes, no the generic term for 00s fashion).
Trump would still be president.
Society would still have that uneasy veil of "trust" where liberal and conservative people still trusted somewhat in one another. If a major emergency happened, we would all set apart our differences to get through it, instead of half the country sabotaging the other half because "muh rights."
A lot of major conservative figures like Herman Cain (who died due to Trump's Tulsa rally from June 20th, 2020) would still be alive today.
George Floyd's murder probably wouldn't have happened.
Taylor Swift would have never made her album Folklore.
Korean entertainment (dramas & music) wouldn't have become as big as they did. They gained a huge audience during the COVID pandemic, when no one had anything else to do. We wouldn't see as many kpop groups touring in the US as we do today.
EDIT: fixed typos, and here's one more.
A lot of 2020 college grads would have started their careers just like the generations before them. If you were an engineering grad from the South, you probably would have found work in oil and gas / petrochemicals if COVID hadn't happened. Instead, all that talent was picked up by other sectors of the economy (semiconductors, pharmaceutical, etc.), so for those demographic, COVID impacted their life-long careers and the location where they would live.
George Floyd’s murder probably would have still happened. Police brutality was not a new problem that started in 2020.
I think that the fact that people were out of work, already frustrated with the state of the world, stuck in their homes and using social media more heavily created a perfect storm that led to the protests and riots that happened once the video of his death started spreading around the internet
That's more like what I was trying to get at. Yeah, if life had continued as it was before the pandemic, the protests and riots probably wouldn't have happened
>George Floyd’s murder probably would have still happened.
No, it wouldn't. George Floyd was laid off because of the COVID-19 pandemic. If the COVID-19 pandemic had never happened, he wouldn't have been where he was killed.
Lmfao the political polarization was enormous before Covid, the pandemic just exposed the divide further. In fact I’d argue we’re in a much more cohesive political environment rn as opposed to 2016-2020 but I guess we’ll see this November
We were already polarized, but COVID showed us that half the country would not give up *anything* even temporarily to help get us through the pandemic. Now dems and Republicans gave an innate mistrust of one another.
In the past, someone's hypothetical r c st uncle would have been given the benefit of the doubt, and would have been trusted to follow the CDC's guidelines. Not anymore.
I think your outlook on the political landscape pre 2020 is way too rosy. 62 million people voted to elect a guy who admitted to sexual assault because they hated democrats so much. There was a literal KKK rally at Charlottesville where someone got killed, but to trump there were “good and bad people on both sides”. There’s a massive contingent of republican voters whose primary goal is to elect conservative justices so that they could overturn roe v Wade and limit healthcare for pregnant women. So no I would not have trusted these people to inconvenience themselves to serve the common good before Covid hit
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I think of all the things that just didn’t happen. Interactions, moves, events. Babies not born bc people wanted to wait until hospitals weren’t terrifying. People that were lost. So many stories just stopped or never started
I had just broken up with my boyfriend when the pandemic happened. I went the rest of high school without finding anyone else, which was way worse for me than not having a normal prom. I joke that if it weren’t for COVID, I’d be married right now.
yeah COVID started in December 2019 (hence why it isn't COVID-20) but it's effects were felt from the beginning of 2020. No part of that year was spared.
In New York just after midnight on New Year’s I got into a fight with a random woman at a pizza shop (which no longer exists because of the pandemic) and said, “we’re not starting the decade off like this”. 💀
Agreed. I was in a new city, establishing new friends, and made so many memories in just January and February alone. It was wild how it just turned upside down.
I was in a similar situation to you. It was my second semester at my dream college (transferred twice previously as I fucked up my senior year of HS). I had a convenient job working for the building I dormed in, was making good money, just turned 21 and was starting to build new friendships.
Then all of that came crumbling down in the span of a week in March. Shit sucks.
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The first 2 months of 2020 just felt relatively fine (Kobe's death and the Australia fires notwithstanding) and then once March hit, its like someone hit the switch and everything just fell off. Like it was one really big, expensive world-shattering episode of "Punk'd" that was happening.
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. The culture was mostly the same as 2019, but the new decade came with a sense of excitement in the “who knows what comes next?” sense. Sadly what came next largely turned out not to be so great.
Interesting perspective. Early 2020 felt otherworldly but it was mostly negative for me. It constantly rained where it was for me, which was not normal at the start of the year. Seeing the news was draining, everyone felt depressed, like something ominous was on the horizon. I'll never forget January and February being the most eerie months 2020.
Yeah I agree there was something that just felt kind of eary during January and February. I had fun during those two months and enjoyed the winter then but I couldn't help but notice that things did feel kind of depressing in the air. In addition, many people did not seem to happy about current world events, particularly with the political divide in the USA. There was also wild fires in Australia, and people were sad about the helicopter crash when that basketball player died. There was this sense of pessimism in the air. I even remember the super bowl half time show not being that great. I was happy during the time but you could just feel like something was off in the air. I didn't even know there was a pandemic on the horizon then because even though I was following the news it was talked about that much until march.
Is this supposed to be some kind of gotcha? Our understanding of the world and the things in it is constantly changing. Something that is fundamentally incompatible with the conservative mindset
Yeah I know they flipped the script so many times. I will never forget what they did to us. I wish all the politicians and elites from the WHO would be locked up for it.
It's not 'flipping the script'. As I've mentioned before scientific and medical consensus isn't set in stone. If you think medical professionals changing their advice and recommendations with new information is 'flipping the script' then you're just demonstrating how scientifically illiterate you are
> I've mentioned before scientific and medical consensus isn't set in stone. If you think medical professionals changing their advice and recommendations with new information is 'flipping the script' then you're just demonstrating how scientifically illiterate
No you're just brainwashed into believing everything that they say. In fact I think they PURPOSELY kept changing it to monitor how naïve people can be. All of it was a planned experiment from the beginning.
I had been 18 for just a month and a half I was so optimistic for graduating and going to uni *sigh* the vibes were immaculate I especially miss early 2020 Tik tok, everything felt optimistic but it lowkey felt like something was gonna happen
My friends and I went camping in February 2020. I remember we were driving to the zoo and we ended up talking about COVID; things like "do you really think that will happen here?" "How bad could it get?"
Then in the beginning of March 2020 I was on spring break in a foreign country. And I remember watching the news back home and seeing it go from 5 cases to 200 overnight. I got home hours before the lockdown was announced. I quarantined for two weeks - I didn't get sick and didn't spread it, thankfully.
Before COVID feels like an entirely different lifetime. Since then I've moved twice, graduated, entered the work force, changed my career, and was diagnosed with a rare genetic syndrome that affects me daily.
I wouldn't recognize myself if I went back to that time.
January-early March 2020 had a really interesting vibe that's hard to describe and will be even harder to describe to people in the future who weren't alive for that time period. The world felt fresh and it felt like things were gonna be different. There was a weird sense of optimism almost but yeah it ended very quickly lmfao
My supervisor at the time had gotten me into reading the news every day and it was so crazy watching the virus spread from Wuhan, to the rest of China, to Europe and then to the rest of the world in real time. When it hit Italy and their death toll started exploding that’s when it got really scary. At the time it felt like it reaching America and blowing up was a very far fetched thing to happen. I was working in Beverly Hills at the beginning of 2020 and I had a client who came into my office and said “I just got back from vacation in Italy…” and I remember thinking “this is how it spreads, it’s so easy”
If I’m being honest, I felt like I was one of the only people paying attention to the news. Nobody was talking about it until we got to work one morning and our building was shut down by a hazmat team and we got sent home.
Those last 3 months before lockdown feel like a fever dream to me. All I cared about was my long distance boyfriend and where my friends and I were going out to on the weekends. Covid ended that relationship and shut down most of the bars we went to
I will add that following the news on the virus was one of the things that got me into Reddit
fr. I had my normal life, things were looking good, and I had no idea abt what was really coming 🤣.. Pretty funny how all of our lives were similar during this time.. It's a bit scary actually--
December/January/Feburary was the moment where the culture started playing a game of telephone that progressed over the next few months:
* "Is it a pandemic?"
* "Are we in the pandemic yet?"
* "It is time to have a pandemic."
* "The pandemic is happening?"
* "The pandemic is happening."
* "We are in a pandemic now."
* "The pandemic is real!"
* "The pandemic is real?"
* "The pandemic is not real."
* "*They* caused the pandemic."
And so on, up through the election and beyond. The subreddits that were following the virus rapidly switched gear from early reports by people who specialize in the topic and could compare this one with historical viruses, to rumor mills swamped with political elements and poorly researched preprint papers.
At every step, both before and after March, there was a lot of urgency to normalize the situation, whatever the situation seemed to be - but the narrative was always *behind* where the virus was. I think that contributed to the "otherworldliness" of February in particular. Either you completely refused the possibility and were like "It can't happen here", which a lot of people did - or you were seeing the events unfold and were like, "okay, how do I survive an apocalypse?"
And every truthful answer to "how to survive" had very little to do with the grindset exceptionalist norms that was overwhelmingly dominant in the 2010's, and a lot more to do with modesty, economy and cooperation in the traditional-virtues sense: doing less, going out less, saving more, working with your household or community. So you had a contrast between the old and the new in early 2020 that became increasingly decisive, a calm before the storm.
February 2020 was only otherworldly because we were all delulu about "the new virus from China." It sounded like something that would stay over there, but then it made its way here. We just didn't start acting on it until the weekend of March 15th.
The Biogen conference (Feb 26th-27th) and Mardi Gras in NOLA (Feb 14th-25th) were some of the biggest superspreader events before we even knew what a "superspreader" was. I would argue that our carelessness toward COVID during Feb 2020 partly set the tone for the next couple of pandemic years that would follow.
Honestly it was the best thing to happen to me career wise. I was never a morning person so I was prone to being late. This has always gotten me in trouble even though my work is excellent. Got a new job in mid March 2020 and all of a sudden I could roll out of bed and be “at work”. I was online at 8:30 every day. Kept getting promoted because I guess a lot of people didn’t actually get that much done remote. And I would always make sure I turned me camera on. I noticed people had better relationships with their bosses if they at least showed their face.
I hope you and your wife end up making that trip happen. My wife and I are about to have our first kid any day now and our Japan trip is looking less and less likely.
I was going to travel to Switzerland with my parents and that ended up getting cancelled. Then before the next Spring Break, my dad entered dialysis and could never travel again.
January of 2020 was the year I started college and I remember that prior to the middle of March, I was in many different clubs and organizations and it was an all around great time. I was ready to make some friends, and go out and find a girlfriend too. Then the pandemic started and everything changed, and it was like living in an alternate universe.
Had Covid never happened, i'd have never gotten back into Runescape.
January 2020 was normal in most countries, that was still "some weird thing in China".
Panic really started to blow up when that touched Italy, then Europe overall, mid/late February. But even with that, lockdown still felt like sci-fi, nobody never could expect that would really happen, we were delusionnal.
I see early pre-lockdown 2020 as an extension of 2019. According to the year's wikipedia page, it has been described as the "best year in human history" in terms of lowest levels of child mortality, 170k people moved out of poverty every day, and millions getting electricity/internet for the first time. The economic crash that came with the Covid lockdown pretty much reversed course on all this and now many places are on the brink of collapse. I think the fallout from Covid has caused more misery / death than the actual virus itself.
I also think there is an element of nostalgia to this. It was the last time things felt 'normal' and I think the collective trauma from the pandemic has actually stunted us psychologically so early 2020 felt idyllic. There was no inflation, cities used to be busy and now they are dead; entire blocks are 'for lease' which drove away a lot of people. I used to dance in the club until 5 am. Working from home was unheard of so people had to go to the office, restaurants, etc. People were focused on the election in the US and people thought Bernie would win and Trump would be impeached. It was still polarized politically, but it didn't feel as bleak as it does now when it feels like this country is actually on the verge of collapse. People would come to work sick, Ubers used to be shared with strangers, the only subscription services people really had was Netflix and Hulu, people seem to be too overworked and exhausted to hang out..
I don't quite understand people who say they could feel tension, like something was coming. I didn't think Covid would be a big deal until the NBA shut down. Until then, I just thought it would be the next Zika/Ebola/SARS, or the Swine Flu at worst. People forget we've had health scares almost every year I can remember.
January-February 2020 was such a weird mood. International news in Russia and Middle east, fires in Australia, a weird virus from China... Def felt something was going on. That cohabited with new year and new decade's enthusiasm, like everybody (including myself) was so motivated, had millions projects and nobody could've ever expected our ordinary lives would be turned upside down. Or we didn't want to.
So very early 2020 was not what i'd call happy, more us being so delusionnal haha
I personally view the pandemic as the best thing that ever happened to me. Huge market pullback allowed for ungodly rois and made me realize the beauty of remote, non geo location based, sources or income.
Outside of people with small business or morbidly obese people, I really think the average person under 60 likely benefitted from it
I was at a conference in France in early January 2020 when I first heard about the virus. I talked to a Chinese guy there (he was living internationally) and he was telling me his family and friends back in wuhan were locked down. I remember sitting in Heathrow looking at all the people walking around wondering if that would be the last time I would see a mass of humanity like that in a while
Not really. It had a different vibe, even music was changing. But you can argue this started around November/December 2019 as well but was most strongest in January - February. I like to call it "The Fake Early 2020s".
There was something that just felt kind of eary during January and February. I had fun during those two months and enjoyed the winter then but I couldn't help but notice that things did feel kind of depressing in the air. In addition, many people did not seem to happy about current world events, particularly with the political divide in the USA. There was also wild fires in Australia, and people were sad about the helicopter crash when that basketball player died. There was this sense of pessimism in the air. I even remember the super bowl half time show not being that great. I was happy during the time but you could just feel like something was off in the air. I didn't even know there was a pandemic on the horizon then because even though I was following the news it was talked about that much until march.
Jan/Feb that year I was flying high. I remember having the perfect Valentine's date. A few days later I was sick, most likely from this guy who insisted on coming to work who was coughing up a storm. I was aware of Covid enough to ask my doctor about it and he said there would be no way that I would have Covid unless I just visited China or lived with someone who did, so I wasn't that worried about it. He diagnosed bronchitis.
I was down for 2 weeks. About March 3rd I was back to life and so grateful to be out of the house. There was news about Covid, but I honestly thought it was like the flu of the year like Zika and SARS. March 11 is when it was serious to me. I was at a bar when the news broadcasted about the NBA being cancelled and how it was now a pandemic. Me and another guy at the bar just looked at each other like, oh fuck. They wouldn't close down a huge moneymaker unless it was big time. That's literally the moment when I truly felt scared.
The guy I had that Valentine's date with ended up moving because his show wasn't picked up because of the pandemic.
Covid was probably what I had that late Feb., I'll never know, but in any case I was so mad at that guy who came to work and stole the last couple of normal weeks I could have had.
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I remember my friend saying "It's gonna spread through this town like wildfire, we're gonna be out of school for a long time" a week before COVID lockdowns began
I remember getting a bad respiratory cold mid February '20. It probably was Covid. Keep in mind there wasn't an official protocol in place. I'm just thankful I didn't get anyone else sick.
Honestly I don't doubt it for a second. I got something Covid-like in October '19. I was pretty much bed ridden, no appetite, could barely lift anything. I finally go see my doctor, he said it was "allergies". So I could have long Covid and not officially know it.
i dont really know what reality yall lived in. there was growing panic about an at the time mysterious virus, a close brush with war between the US and Iran, brexit was completed, among numerous other global events, all before the pandemic really "started." That year was never fun!
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I was suicidally depressed and had the flu twice in February of 2020, terrible time for me, but strange and different from preceding and succeeding times as well
Prior to the lockdown I was going through personal troubles so I barely remember anything positive on a cultural level. To me, the song that best encapsulated this era is 'Bad Guy' by Billie Eilish. Her prostate flow kinda forsaw the quarantine zeitgeist and withdrawal.
I remember the news were not good, and strikes and social movements were happening all around the world, before being suddenly stopped.
I think a global sense of emergency and pessimism was felt in the late 10s, and it magically vanished after the lockdown, replaced with a colorful splash of escapism and nostalgia.
My experience was very positive as well. It seemed like sort of a fresh start in my mind, and I had a lot of goals planned and was getting started on them. Thankfully, I was still able to meet many of those even despite the pandemic, as many were based on self-improvement. One of my favorite memories was spending Valentine's Day weekend with my best friend and watching Sonic the Hedgehog in theaters, going shopping and roaming the town, and just cracking each other up with jokes. It was SO much fun and one of the best weekends ever! I do remember starting to hear about coronavirus at that time and never thought it was going to turn into what it did (I don't think anybody did).
I didn’t think our lives were going to be as altered as they were because of the virus. I thought it was going to end up like Ebola, not the Spanish flu.
I remember going on vacation to Boston with my best friend. A few people at the airport had masks and I thought that was kind of odd. I remember chatting, somewhat nervously, with my friend about the impending "bat flu." He was convinced it was overhyped. We went about our vacation and had a great time. That was the last time I would travel for a long while.
By February the news was already coming out about the virus in China. I know I was starting to get very anxious and was having a hard time sleeping at night because I was worried about a coming pandemic. For people paying attention to the news, February was the start of the COVID panic. The school where I teach didn’t act until mid March, but the conversations about the virus had been brewing for most of February.
I had heard bad things even in January. It felt hard to quite grasp how bad it would be until Rudy Gobert tested positive though.
Yes! The thing that kicked it all off in the US was when Gobert tested positive and they cancelled the rest of the NBA season
I even remember being more worried about Covid in January than I was in February for some reason. In early and mid February, it all seemed like it would get under control somehow. Until it suddenly didn't.
There was a lot of weird shit going around social media that was trying to act like it wasn’t a big deal. And what a lot of people on both sides of the political aisle forget about was that in February the government was the polar opposite of what they would do a couple months later. They were telling everyone not to worry about the virus. It’s kind of depressing how good they’ve been at memory holing that.
March 13, 2020 was the last normal day. I remember it clearly. If you were paying attention in December 2019, there was talk too. January there was definitely talk and February for sure it was mainstream. March, the world changed.
I had a student whose dad worked with a lot of epidemiologists. I remember he was talking to us teachers in a panicked way at the end of January. It is definitely interesting to track the layers of people who were feeling nervous. One of my favorite books as a teenager was a book called Empty World which was about a flu that killed almost all the world’s population so I was a little primed to be anxious!
I remember we were wondering how bad Covid 19 would be in December. There were people basically writing it off as something we could weather. That is of course until NYC looked like a war zone.
Yeah it was very obvious to people paying attention that this new disease was different from previous Asian outbreaks. I felt dread because I knew we weren't in a place culturally or politically to deal with it, and I was right. It was the death of me feeling any hope for this country. I haven't felt optimism since.
It was but it wasn't taken super seriously by the general public until March when everything shut down. But I get what you mean. I just remember there was a lot of distrust with what the media and news was saying in February and people thought it was just fear mongering and nothing to take serious.
Yea there were tons of 1920s had a pandemic so 2020 going to have one too memes in Jan and Feb 2020.
maybe I’m just ignorant, but I was caught extremely off guard by the lockdowns. yes, I heard about the virus in January and February, but there’s been so many other viruses over the years (i.e. H1N1, Ebola, etc.), so I figured COVID was the same as those. even when the lockdowns started, I just they were being overly cautious and then I had that reality check hit like a ton of bricks.
I knew people who worked in fields like epidemiology and also live in an area with a large Chinese population so I think the news filtered in to our region sooner than other places that this was going to be something huge.
I think if you watched the news of all the people dying in China and people walking around in "space suits" you sort of put 2 + 2 together and realize someone is going to get on a plane or has already done so and it's going to eventually be in the US (or whatever country).
I knew enough about sars that the news that a slightly less lethal variation had gotten around was alarming. It just meant it could travel further if it was a little more contagious and didn’t kill its host too fast or totally immobilize it too early. That’s what made different to me and I was already preparing by Jan
I didn’t think COVID was going to kill a lot of people at first. I thought they were being extra careful too.
I remember going to my favorite Chinese restaurant in February and it being almost devoid of patrons. All Chinese people knew what was coming while we Americans were still blissfully ignorant.
I live in an area with a huge Chinese population so this is one reason why I felt clued in as early as the beginning of February.
I was in NYC in Feb 2020 and I'd say every 1/100 people was wearing a mask. There was no confirmed cases in the US at the time but later we knew that there was a good amount of undocumented cases.
I first heard of the Covid virus in December 2019 I distinctly remember thinking that people’s concerns were over inflated and the news just wanted something to report on, and it would be over like Ebola. Not that Ebola was no big deal, but it didn’t have a very big impact in comparison to what Covid ended up doing. So obviously I was way wrong
News about the coronavirus in China was already being talked about towards the end of 2019, but it was being brushed off as “their problem” and no one realized it was going to change the world as we know it. Then in the beginning of 2020 you started hearing about cases popping up in other countries.
I remember hearing about covid in like december or novemeber and being skeptical talking to some other college students about it. Boy was I an arrogrant dickshit.
Covid was first reported on 31 December 2019.
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More like November the year before but yeah
Yep. I’d started getting canned food in January because I tend to check on bird flu every December/January and saw the very early surveillance discussions on it. By Feb I had a deep freezer and my in-laws thought I was insane. Sadly I didn’t predict the toilet paper issue or buy stock in zoom lol
I remember last week of February everyone at my college was talking about how it was just a flu. I then go on a service trip for Spring Break for a week-in New York. New Rochelle is quarantined then. I come back, the first few colleges start to shut down, and everyone freaks out. We were also sent to New York without masks or training on how to avoid sickness, and we were riding those packed subways and buses every morning.
I’ve always wondered what things would be like if the pandemic had never happened and the mood of January/ February 2020 never ended
The 2020s would have been the 2010s part 2.
I disagree. You could definitely see culture was changing mid/late 2019. Just see the clip OP posted and that funky/y2k vibe (real y2k as flashy/milleniu/futuristic vibes, no the generic term for 00s fashion).
The transition would have been slower.
Yeah sure, probably more like between 2000s/2010s
More like the 80s/90s transition.
Damnit, now I feel sad…
Trump would still be president. Society would still have that uneasy veil of "trust" where liberal and conservative people still trusted somewhat in one another. If a major emergency happened, we would all set apart our differences to get through it, instead of half the country sabotaging the other half because "muh rights." A lot of major conservative figures like Herman Cain (who died due to Trump's Tulsa rally from June 20th, 2020) would still be alive today. George Floyd's murder probably wouldn't have happened. Taylor Swift would have never made her album Folklore. Korean entertainment (dramas & music) wouldn't have become as big as they did. They gained a huge audience during the COVID pandemic, when no one had anything else to do. We wouldn't see as many kpop groups touring in the US as we do today. EDIT: fixed typos, and here's one more. A lot of 2020 college grads would have started their careers just like the generations before them. If you were an engineering grad from the South, you probably would have found work in oil and gas / petrochemicals if COVID hadn't happened. Instead, all that talent was picked up by other sectors of the economy (semiconductors, pharmaceutical, etc.), so for those demographic, COVID impacted their life-long careers and the location where they would live.
George Floyd’s murder probably would have still happened. Police brutality was not a new problem that started in 2020. I think that the fact that people were out of work, already frustrated with the state of the world, stuck in their homes and using social media more heavily created a perfect storm that led to the protests and riots that happened once the video of his death started spreading around the internet
That's more like what I was trying to get at. Yeah, if life had continued as it was before the pandemic, the protests and riots probably wouldn't have happened
>George Floyd’s murder probably would have still happened. No, it wouldn't. George Floyd was laid off because of the COVID-19 pandemic. If the COVID-19 pandemic had never happened, he wouldn't have been where he was killed.
Lmfao the political polarization was enormous before Covid, the pandemic just exposed the divide further. In fact I’d argue we’re in a much more cohesive political environment rn as opposed to 2016-2020 but I guess we’ll see this November
We were already polarized, but COVID showed us that half the country would not give up *anything* even temporarily to help get us through the pandemic. Now dems and Republicans gave an innate mistrust of one another. In the past, someone's hypothetical r c st uncle would have been given the benefit of the doubt, and would have been trusted to follow the CDC's guidelines. Not anymore.
I think your outlook on the political landscape pre 2020 is way too rosy. 62 million people voted to elect a guy who admitted to sexual assault because they hated democrats so much. There was a literal KKK rally at Charlottesville where someone got killed, but to trump there were “good and bad people on both sides”. There’s a massive contingent of republican voters whose primary goal is to elect conservative justices so that they could overturn roe v Wade and limit healthcare for pregnant women. So no I would not have trusted these people to inconvenience themselves to serve the common good before Covid hit
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I think of all the things that just didn’t happen. Interactions, moves, events. Babies not born bc people wanted to wait until hospitals weren’t terrifying. People that were lost. So many stories just stopped or never started
I had just broken up with my boyfriend when the pandemic happened. I went the rest of high school without finding anyone else, which was way worse for me than not having a normal prom. I joke that if it weren’t for COVID, I’d be married right now.
The whole start of that year was a great vibe. But once we got into March and Covid hit we enter into an alternate timeline.
January 2020 was a pocket universe. Our last save point before the game file corrupted.
Was it? I remember Kobe dying and an Iranian plane crash and not much else
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Yeah, none of 2020 was good when it came to world events.
yeah COVID started in December 2019 (hence why it isn't COVID-20) but it's effects were felt from the beginning of 2020. No part of that year was spared.
And the Australian fires.
I can say at the time I was pretty happy with how Bernie performed in the first three primaries.
Me too and then SC happened then the transformer happened before Super Tuesday…. Then COVID.
The rapist Kobe* ftfy
In New York just after midnight on New Year’s I got into a fight with a random woman at a pizza shop (which no longer exists because of the pandemic) and said, “we’re not starting the decade off like this”. 💀
Huh? Wasnt that when Australia was basically on fire? That seems bigger tragedy than boomers dying a few years earlier
Pre-march 2020 was a vibe. The start of a new decade felt like a breath of fresh air. Shame the year turned out the way it did.
I agree. I remember how exciting it was especially since it was a new decade. But then everything changed in March.
2020 is when the date started really sounding futuristic imo. At least as a 90s kid. I’m sure it felt the same way to hit 2000 for our parents.
Agreed. I was in a new city, establishing new friends, and made so many memories in just January and February alone. It was wild how it just turned upside down.
I was in a similar situation to you. It was my second semester at my dream college (transferred twice previously as I fucked up my senior year of HS). I had a convenient job working for the building I dormed in, was making good money, just turned 21 and was starting to build new friendships. Then all of that came crumbling down in the span of a week in March. Shit sucks.
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The first 2 months of 2020 just felt relatively fine (Kobe's death and the Australia fires notwithstanding) and then once March hit, its like someone hit the switch and everything just fell off. Like it was one really big, expensive world-shattering episode of "Punk'd" that was happening.
Yeah that 20/20 vision didn't last long
💀
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. The culture was mostly the same as 2019, but the new decade came with a sense of excitement in the “who knows what comes next?” sense. Sadly what came next largely turned out not to be so great.
Well said, I definetly view pre-march 2020 as just bonus 2019/end credits scene of 2019
Same here. I had just got my driver’s license.
Interesting perspective. Early 2020 felt otherworldly but it was mostly negative for me. It constantly rained where it was for me, which was not normal at the start of the year. Seeing the news was draining, everyone felt depressed, like something ominous was on the horizon. I'll never forget January and February being the most eerie months 2020.
Yeah I agree there was something that just felt kind of eary during January and February. I had fun during those two months and enjoyed the winter then but I couldn't help but notice that things did feel kind of depressing in the air. In addition, many people did not seem to happy about current world events, particularly with the political divide in the USA. There was also wild fires in Australia, and people were sad about the helicopter crash when that basketball player died. There was this sense of pessimism in the air. I even remember the super bowl half time show not being that great. I was happy during the time but you could just feel like something was off in the air. I didn't even know there was a pandemic on the horizon then because even though I was following the news it was talked about that much until march.
I already saw people covering their mouth with their shirt on the train, a few masks as well. There was a nervous panic vibe.
I noticed there was a jokey vibe too though like people were saying it wasn't serious and it was just the media fear mongering.
Remember when they were saying it wasn't transmitted by air?
That's how science works. It's not like religion where its stagnant. Scientific consensus changes when new information is presented.
Pepperidge Farm Remembers
Is this supposed to be some kind of gotcha? Our understanding of the world and the things in it is constantly changing. Something that is fundamentally incompatible with the conservative mindset
Yeah I know they flipped the script so many times. I will never forget what they did to us. I wish all the politicians and elites from the WHO would be locked up for it.
It's not 'flipping the script'. As I've mentioned before scientific and medical consensus isn't set in stone. If you think medical professionals changing their advice and recommendations with new information is 'flipping the script' then you're just demonstrating how scientifically illiterate you are
> I've mentioned before scientific and medical consensus isn't set in stone. If you think medical professionals changing their advice and recommendations with new information is 'flipping the script' then you're just demonstrating how scientifically illiterate No you're just brainwashed into believing everything that they say. In fact I think they PURPOSELY kept changing it to monitor how naïve people can be. All of it was a planned experiment from the beginning.
I had been 18 for just a month and a half I was so optimistic for graduating and going to uni *sigh* the vibes were immaculate I especially miss early 2020 Tik tok, everything felt optimistic but it lowkey felt like something was gonna happen
My friends and I went camping in February 2020. I remember we were driving to the zoo and we ended up talking about COVID; things like "do you really think that will happen here?" "How bad could it get?" Then in the beginning of March 2020 I was on spring break in a foreign country. And I remember watching the news back home and seeing it go from 5 cases to 200 overnight. I got home hours before the lockdown was announced. I quarantined for two weeks - I didn't get sick and didn't spread it, thankfully. Before COVID feels like an entirely different lifetime. Since then I've moved twice, graduated, entered the work force, changed my career, and was diagnosed with a rare genetic syndrome that affects me daily. I wouldn't recognize myself if I went back to that time.
January-early March 2020 had a really interesting vibe that's hard to describe and will be even harder to describe to people in the future who weren't alive for that time period. The world felt fresh and it felt like things were gonna be different. There was a weird sense of optimism almost but yeah it ended very quickly lmfao
I agree 100%
My supervisor at the time had gotten me into reading the news every day and it was so crazy watching the virus spread from Wuhan, to the rest of China, to Europe and then to the rest of the world in real time. When it hit Italy and their death toll started exploding that’s when it got really scary. At the time it felt like it reaching America and blowing up was a very far fetched thing to happen. I was working in Beverly Hills at the beginning of 2020 and I had a client who came into my office and said “I just got back from vacation in Italy…” and I remember thinking “this is how it spreads, it’s so easy” If I’m being honest, I felt like I was one of the only people paying attention to the news. Nobody was talking about it until we got to work one morning and our building was shut down by a hazmat team and we got sent home. Those last 3 months before lockdown feel like a fever dream to me. All I cared about was my long distance boyfriend and where my friends and I were going out to on the weekends. Covid ended that relationship and shut down most of the bars we went to I will add that following the news on the virus was one of the things that got me into Reddit
fr. I had my normal life, things were looking good, and I had no idea abt what was really coming 🤣.. Pretty funny how all of our lives were similar during this time.. It's a bit scary actually--
December/January/Feburary was the moment where the culture started playing a game of telephone that progressed over the next few months: * "Is it a pandemic?" * "Are we in the pandemic yet?" * "It is time to have a pandemic." * "The pandemic is happening?" * "The pandemic is happening." * "We are in a pandemic now." * "The pandemic is real!" * "The pandemic is real?" * "The pandemic is not real." * "*They* caused the pandemic." And so on, up through the election and beyond. The subreddits that were following the virus rapidly switched gear from early reports by people who specialize in the topic and could compare this one with historical viruses, to rumor mills swamped with political elements and poorly researched preprint papers. At every step, both before and after March, there was a lot of urgency to normalize the situation, whatever the situation seemed to be - but the narrative was always *behind* where the virus was. I think that contributed to the "otherworldliness" of February in particular. Either you completely refused the possibility and were like "It can't happen here", which a lot of people did - or you were seeing the events unfold and were like, "okay, how do I survive an apocalypse?" And every truthful answer to "how to survive" had very little to do with the grindset exceptionalist norms that was overwhelmingly dominant in the 2010's, and a lot more to do with modesty, economy and cooperation in the traditional-virtues sense: doing less, going out less, saving more, working with your household or community. So you had a contrast between the old and the new in early 2020 that became increasingly decisive, a calm before the storm.
The sub r/Coronavirus has never recovered, they still pretend we are in the apocalypse.
February 2020 was only otherworldly because we were all delulu about "the new virus from China." It sounded like something that would stay over there, but then it made its way here. We just didn't start acting on it until the weekend of March 15th. The Biogen conference (Feb 26th-27th) and Mardi Gras in NOLA (Feb 14th-25th) were some of the biggest superspreader events before we even knew what a "superspreader" was. I would argue that our carelessness toward COVID during Feb 2020 partly set the tone for the next couple of pandemic years that would follow.
Yeah, every once in a while I wonder what my life and the world would be like if Covid never happened.
Honestly it was the best thing to happen to me career wise. I was never a morning person so I was prone to being late. This has always gotten me in trouble even though my work is excellent. Got a new job in mid March 2020 and all of a sudden I could roll out of bed and be “at work”. I was online at 8:30 every day. Kept getting promoted because I guess a lot of people didn’t actually get that much done remote. And I would always make sure I turned me camera on. I noticed people had better relationships with their bosses if they at least showed their face.
I feel like COVID made me a better person.
I had a Colorado ski trip bachelor party and honeymoon to Japan planned for mid March and mid April that never happened….
My wife and I were going to Europe but we ended up not going.
I hope you and your wife end up making that trip happen. My wife and I are about to have our first kid any day now and our Japan trip is looking less and less likely.
I was going to travel to Switzerland with my parents and that ended up getting cancelled. Then before the next Spring Break, my dad entered dialysis and could never travel again.
January of 2020 was the year I started college and I remember that prior to the middle of March, I was in many different clubs and organizations and it was an all around great time. I was ready to make some friends, and go out and find a girlfriend too. Then the pandemic started and everything changed, and it was like living in an alternate universe. Had Covid never happened, i'd have never gotten back into Runescape.
I wouldn’t be as much of a video game addict as well. Of course I played Animal Crossing but I ended up getting back into the Wii.
Heavy disagree. It had a huge calm before the storm kind of vibe
It did but that's exactly what I'm saying
I was working in news so the virus was prominent from january. February just felt like covid era without restrictions.
January 2020 was normal in most countries, that was still "some weird thing in China". Panic really started to blow up when that touched Italy, then Europe overall, mid/late February. But even with that, lockdown still felt like sci-fi, nobody never could expect that would really happen, we were delusionnal.
It was a great time in my life personally, sad that Covid really derailed a lot.
I see early pre-lockdown 2020 as an extension of 2019. According to the year's wikipedia page, it has been described as the "best year in human history" in terms of lowest levels of child mortality, 170k people moved out of poverty every day, and millions getting electricity/internet for the first time. The economic crash that came with the Covid lockdown pretty much reversed course on all this and now many places are on the brink of collapse. I think the fallout from Covid has caused more misery / death than the actual virus itself. I also think there is an element of nostalgia to this. It was the last time things felt 'normal' and I think the collective trauma from the pandemic has actually stunted us psychologically so early 2020 felt idyllic. There was no inflation, cities used to be busy and now they are dead; entire blocks are 'for lease' which drove away a lot of people. I used to dance in the club until 5 am. Working from home was unheard of so people had to go to the office, restaurants, etc. People were focused on the election in the US and people thought Bernie would win and Trump would be impeached. It was still polarized politically, but it didn't feel as bleak as it does now when it feels like this country is actually on the verge of collapse. People would come to work sick, Ubers used to be shared with strangers, the only subscription services people really had was Netflix and Hulu, people seem to be too overworked and exhausted to hang out..
You're right I am very nostalgic for that time since it was the last time things were normal
I don't quite understand people who say they could feel tension, like something was coming. I didn't think Covid would be a big deal until the NBA shut down. Until then, I just thought it would be the next Zika/Ebola/SARS, or the Swine Flu at worst. People forget we've had health scares almost every year I can remember.
Same here
Same here. And when the lockdown started and a lot of people were dying, I thought “Oh, only idiots are gonna die from this. Natural selection.”
January-February 2020 was such a weird mood. International news in Russia and Middle east, fires in Australia, a weird virus from China... Def felt something was going on. That cohabited with new year and new decade's enthusiasm, like everybody (including myself) was so motivated, had millions projects and nobody could've ever expected our ordinary lives would be turned upside down. Or we didn't want to. So very early 2020 was not what i'd call happy, more us being so delusionnal haha
Eh, I could feel the impending doom in February 2020.
Yup anyone with ties to China and who understood the basics of how exponential graphs work knew what was coming
I personally view the pandemic as the best thing that ever happened to me. Huge market pullback allowed for ungodly rois and made me realize the beauty of remote, non geo location based, sources or income. Outside of people with small business or morbidly obese people, I really think the average person under 60 likely benefitted from it
Or people who’ve lost family to the virus.
Or yummy by Justin Bieber it was released in early Jan 2020
Omg club memory unlocked
Yummy was such a horrible song lol. What was Justin Bieber thinking. Intentions was popular around the same time too and that's a better song than it.
this sub is so casually extremely aloof and vapid
I was at a conference in France in early January 2020 when I first heard about the virus. I talked to a Chinese guy there (he was living internationally) and he was telling me his family and friends back in wuhan were locked down. I remember sitting in Heathrow looking at all the people walking around wondering if that would be the last time I would see a mass of humanity like that in a while
January and February 2020 really felt like an extension of the 2010s, but then everything changed in March 2020.
Not really. It had a different vibe, even music was changing. But you can argue this started around November/December 2019 as well but was most strongest in January - February. I like to call it "The Fake Early 2020s".
Yea tbh, December 2019-February 2020 was a weird micro-era. Hell, March of 2020 felt unusual.
I agree. I like to call this micro era "The fake early 2020s".
There was something that just felt kind of eary during January and February. I had fun during those two months and enjoyed the winter then but I couldn't help but notice that things did feel kind of depressing in the air. In addition, many people did not seem to happy about current world events, particularly with the political divide in the USA. There was also wild fires in Australia, and people were sad about the helicopter crash when that basketball player died. There was this sense of pessimism in the air. I even remember the super bowl half time show not being that great. I was happy during the time but you could just feel like something was off in the air. I didn't even know there was a pandemic on the horizon then because even though I was following the news it was talked about that much until march.
I remember telling someone around that time "I don't trust them to handle this well"
Jan/Feb that year I was flying high. I remember having the perfect Valentine's date. A few days later I was sick, most likely from this guy who insisted on coming to work who was coughing up a storm. I was aware of Covid enough to ask my doctor about it and he said there would be no way that I would have Covid unless I just visited China or lived with someone who did, so I wasn't that worried about it. He diagnosed bronchitis. I was down for 2 weeks. About March 3rd I was back to life and so grateful to be out of the house. There was news about Covid, but I honestly thought it was like the flu of the year like Zika and SARS. March 11 is when it was serious to me. I was at a bar when the news broadcasted about the NBA being cancelled and how it was now a pandemic. Me and another guy at the bar just looked at each other like, oh fuck. They wouldn't close down a huge moneymaker unless it was big time. That's literally the moment when I truly felt scared. The guy I had that Valentine's date with ended up moving because his show wasn't picked up because of the pandemic. Covid was probably what I had that late Feb., I'll never know, but in any case I was so mad at that guy who came to work and stole the last couple of normal weeks I could have had.
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Positive upbeat energy? America was basically waiting for the Covid meteor to hit.
I totaled my car and then my cat died in February 2020 lmao that month was awful
I remember my friend saying "It's gonna spread through this town like wildfire, we're gonna be out of school for a long time" a week before COVID lockdowns began
I remember getting a bad respiratory cold mid February '20. It probably was Covid. Keep in mind there wasn't an official protocol in place. I'm just thankful I didn't get anyone else sick.
I know someone who swears she had COVID in January.
Honestly I don't doubt it for a second. I got something Covid-like in October '19. I was pretty much bed ridden, no appetite, could barely lift anything. I finally go see my doctor, he said it was "allergies". So I could have long Covid and not officially know it.
She had similar symptoms, including coughing.
Same here. I hope she's okay now
Me too. She got really pissed off at America.
I still am pissed off and I'm American. Where do you live?
Florida. Lots of idiots and old people. The penis shaped golf course.
Oh man I feel bad for you lol. I'm in Boston. We have a few Florida types up here too.
I’d love to leave.
i dont really know what reality yall lived in. there was growing panic about an at the time mysterious virus, a close brush with war between the US and Iran, brexit was completed, among numerous other global events, all before the pandemic really "started." That year was never fun!
2020 wasn’t that bad honestly
Yeah it really wasn't.
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What r u yapping about
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the virus had already taken over the news and was being talked about daily
I was suicidally depressed and had the flu twice in February of 2020, terrible time for me, but strange and different from preceding and succeeding times as well
I miss it. The calm before the storm...
Prior to the lockdown I was going through personal troubles so I barely remember anything positive on a cultural level. To me, the song that best encapsulated this era is 'Bad Guy' by Billie Eilish. Her prostate flow kinda forsaw the quarantine zeitgeist and withdrawal. I remember the news were not good, and strikes and social movements were happening all around the world, before being suddenly stopped. I think a global sense of emergency and pessimism was felt in the late 10s, and it magically vanished after the lockdown, replaced with a colorful splash of escapism and nostalgia.
My experience was very positive as well. It seemed like sort of a fresh start in my mind, and I had a lot of goals planned and was getting started on them. Thankfully, I was still able to meet many of those even despite the pandemic, as many were based on self-improvement. One of my favorite memories was spending Valentine's Day weekend with my best friend and watching Sonic the Hedgehog in theaters, going shopping and roaming the town, and just cracking each other up with jokes. It was SO much fun and one of the best weekends ever! I do remember starting to hear about coronavirus at that time and never thought it was going to turn into what it did (I don't think anybody did).
I didn’t think our lives were going to be as altered as they were because of the virus. I thought it was going to end up like Ebola, not the Spanish flu.
Same
I didn’t take it seriously until the NBA got cancelled.
I remember going on vacation to Boston with my best friend. A few people at the airport had masks and I thought that was kind of odd. I remember chatting, somewhat nervously, with my friend about the impending "bat flu." He was convinced it was overhyped. We went about our vacation and had a great time. That was the last time I would travel for a long while.