Items

• 2020-03-13

  A Mad Panic

  My girlfriend and I took a trip to Sedona, Arizona, during ASU's spring break this past year. There was a good amount of news regarding the rising pandemic, but it didn't seem to scare us too much at this point. ASU sent out an email stating that classes were under the question of returning after spring break, but we didn't take it all too seriously, thinking this whole thing would blow over as Ebola did. We had an amazing time and enjoyed dining and shopping at all of the fine shops and restaurants in Sedona. We didn't have a care in the world. We just enjoyed each other's company and enjoyed the many sights of Sedona. As we were packing up to return home, my girlfriend's parents called us in a panic that all of the grocery stores surrounding their home were empty or close to empty. There were no paper products, and the food isles were nearly cleaned out. We had not prepared for this at all. We just didn't think that we needed to prepare for Covid-19. On the way home, we stopped at every single grocery store, Walmart, convenience store, and target to find much of the same thing... people by the hundreds stocking up on everything in the grocery store. We got as much as we could and rushed home to consolidate our goods with her parents to find that we needed to make another trip tonight. We barely had anything to prepare for the virus, and that led to a stressful few nights of stocking up as much on as we could find. This marked the start of the panic, but we didn't even know for sure that we should be panicking about the virus. A few days later, the announcement came that school would be going online for the next few weeks. A week after the announcement from ASU, the president shut down the country. This was the start of the quarantine, and it still feels like we are quarantining to this day.