They say that hindsight is 20/20. Who are they, and how do they know these things? I have no idea. I just know when you’ve visited two of the biggest hot-zones of COVID-19 in the U.S. just before their outbreaks, you’re in no hurry to get back out into the world.
As it turns out, we visited San Francisco and New York City just weeks or even days before the novel coronavirus started to work its way through the populations of both cities.
We dodged a bullet, or actually two, as our activities in both cities didn’t follow the current social distancing guidelines (we weren’t being rebels; social distancing just wasn’t a thing yet).
San Francisco
Our trip to San Francisco was from January 29 to February 2. The first documented cases in the area were on March 8. If you assume that it’s about two weeks between people getting infected and the start of hospital visits, we were out of there only two weeks before the virus started to spread.
Besides staying at a hotel bordering the Tenderloin, we were around large crowds for most of our trip. I went to see Mystery Science Theater 3000 LIVE, and we both went to see Hamilton (For Sharon’s 9th time). We also visited a very crowded Sushi Bar near our hotel and the Tonga Bar in the Fairmont. Needless to say, we were exposed to a bunch of people.
Sure we looked like we were having a blast because we were. We had no idea that by mid-March, the entire area would be on a lockdown that’s still in place.
New York City
The next trip on our schedule was to New York City. We spent from February 14 to 18th in Manhattan. The first documented cases in New York were also on March 8.
That’s close enough that when I called my doctor for a scheduled appointment, they needed to look at the calendar to see if they still wanted me to come into the office. I think I made the cutoff by less than a week.
What did we do for the weekend? Our friend got us tickets to see Hadestown and besides that, we were busy rehearsing for our show at Lincoln Center. Not much social distancing when you’re singing in a choir.
The rest of the time we were going to dinner and visiting some of our favorite NYC bars.
Final Thoughts
We’ve been #stayhealthy #stayathome #washyourhands from early on. If we had known this was going to be a pandemic, I’m not sure we’d have even taken the trips that we did. But since we barely missed two of the hot-zones by a matter of weeks, we’re in no hurry to get back on the road. We’re more than happy to stay home with each other and our dog. Dobby is very happy that her pack is spending so much time in the house. I also think Sharon’s happy to have the pack home as well.
Once again! #stayhealthy #stayathome #washyourhands!
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
