Nobody Told Me There'd Be Days Like These
On March 11, 2020, my son texted me to see if he could stay after school for his volleyball practice. At first I said yes, but then his mom and I decided it wasn’t a good idea. He wasn’t happy. He was even less so when we picked him up and headed to the grocery store to stock up on frozen goods (luckily, we were already flush with toilet paper). The missed volleyball season didn’t mean much in terms of training since the season would soon be canceled. But it meant a lot in terms of everything else, as it was the last time my son, and everyone else, had a chance to do something normal for a long time.
From my book, Please Scream Inside Your Heart, here’s a quick look back at the day everything changed. We had no idea what we were in for in the near term. And we certainly had no idea how much our country and world would change in ways entirely unpredictable.
Nobody told me there’d be days like these.
There’s almost nothing that can make a virus seem more real faster than finding out that someone you know has it. Someone everyone knows got COVID-19. Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, announced they had tested positive for the virus and would be getting treatment under quarantine in Australia.
The NCAA announced that its wildly popular March Madness tournament would be played in front of arenas that would be empty, other than essential personnel and limited family members.
We’d learn that this NCAA plan was overly optimistic within hours. Fans at an NBA game in Oklahoma City were waiting inside of their arena for their home team Thunder to face the visiting Utah Jazz. What could be weirder than something from Utah being named after jazz? This. Fans sat in Chesapeake Energy Arena waiting for the game to start. Thirty-five minutes after the scheduled tipoff, the PA announcer told them that game had been postponed: “You are all safe. And take your time leaving the arena tonight and thank you for doing so in an orderly manner.” Within twenty minutes of that announcement, we learned that, following a positive test for a Jazz player named Rudy Gobert, the NBA would postpone its entire season. On the same day, the NHL made the same decision. Out of nowhere, we were confronted by a new rule of thumb. Every gathering is a clusterf-ck.
Update: it’s still March 11.
President Trump, who two days earlier was still blaming the fake news and the Democratic Party for inflaming virus concerns, gave only his second Oval Office address. It was an ineffective presidential address, but by giving it at all, Trump acknowledged a crisis he had heretofore denied. For him, that was a pivot. He didn’t, however, pivot when it came to substance, and he certainly didn’t pivot when it came to his bedside manner. Viewers of the address learned about a partial European travel ban at the same time European officials learned about it. This was on top of a partial China travel ban already in effect. (Side note: the virus was. already. here.) There was no clear plan, and no soothing, not even for his favorite constituent, the stock market. Market futures began to plummet as he spoke, and the next morning, the Dow suffered its biggest drop since 1987.
Trump canceled trips to Colorado and Nevada, “out of an abundance of caution” (a phrase that would be repeated by everyone in every industry until it became clear that it wasn’t an abundance, it was just caution). New York City canceled the Saint Patrick’s Day parade. Seattle closed its schools for at least fourteen days. San Francisco banned large-group gatherings. Disneyland officials decided to close the park later in the week. Fox News execs prepared an internal email sent out the next day that would announce the implementation of several safety measures, including a directive that any staff member who was able to work from home should begin doing so. (Their viewers received no such warnings. On air, the lies about the virus continued apace. At least in this one way, it was just another Wednesday.) In Washington State, ten long-term-care facilities reported virus cases. Late-night shows recorded in front of empty studios. Twitter announced all employees would be required to work from home. Twenty-three states declared a state of emergency. US State Department employees were barred from nonessential travel. The WHO, for the first time, labeled COVID-19 a global pandemic. The US had 1,267 COVID-19 cases, and the death toll was at 37.
Donald Trump on March 11: “I think we’re going to get through it very well.”
+ “By early February, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver began buying extra toilet paper. ‘My wife was laughing at me and saying, ‘Why are you doing this?’ Silver told ESPN. ‘I go, ‘This is what we’re talking about every day at work. It’s only toilet paper, but let’s get the extra toilet paper.’ She told me I was being an alarmist.'” ESPN: ‘He’s got it’: An oral history of the NBA’s COVID-19 shutdown — and how it changed sports forever.
+ If you missed it last week, here’s David Wallace-Wells in the NYT (Gift Article): How Covid Remade America.
+ NYT Upshot (Gift Article): 30 Charts That Show How Covid Changed Everything – In March 2020.
+ The defining photos of the pandemic — and the stories behind them.
+ Scheduling note: NextDraft will be off on Wednesday because I am getting some oral surgery. It will be a nice break from the daily news!
Vaccine But Not Heard
To many of us, the rapid arrival of the Covid vaccines achieved an oxymoronic status of legendary proportions: It was a scientific miracle. But somehow, the life-saving (and normality returning) work of vaccines did not increase trust in vaccines. In fact, many Americans seem less sure of their value today than before the pandemic. Consider the case of Peter. “Peter said that he has doubts about vaccines too. He told me that he considers getting measles a normal part of life, noting that his parents and grandparents had it. ‘Everybody has it,’ he told me. ‘It’s not so new for us.’ He’d also heard that getting measles might strengthen your immune system against other diseases, a view RFK has promoted in the past. But perhaps most of all, Peter worried about what the vaccine might do to his children. ‘The vaccination has stuff we don’t trust,’ he said. ‘We don’t like the vaccinations, what they have these days. We heard too much, and we saw too much.'” Tom Bartlett in The Atlantic (Gift Article): His Daughter Was America’s First Measles Death in a Decade. This is the story of a personal tragedy. It’s also the story about a trend that threatens more of them. “A recent poll found that nearly one-third of all Republican and Republican-leaning voters, for instance, think that routine inoculations are ‘more dangerous than the diseases they are designed to prevent.'”
+ NYT (Gift Article): Kennedy Links Measles Outbreak to Poor Diet and Health, Citing Fringe Theories.
+ Meanwhile… National Institutes of Health to cancel grants designed to study vaccine hesitancy.
Chronic Boom
Poor diet and health is not a measles story. But it is an American one. The excellent Eli Saslow follows a nurse as she makes home visits to her patients in Mingo County, W.Va. NYT (Gift Article): She’s a Foot Soldier in America’s Losing War With Chronic Disease. “She had worn out five cars while visiting patients on the back roads of Mingo County, and over time she had come to recognize every pothole, every scar on the hillsides left from logging, deep mining and mountaintop removal. It was a place where every resource, including the residents, had been exploited for a profit. Sam turned into Williamson, population 3,042, where two local pharmacies had distributed more than 20 million opioid painkillers over the course of a decade, though the drugs didn’t so much numb people’s pain as exacerbate it. Now the downtown was largely vacant except for rehab centers, budget law offices and a methadone clinic. She drove by a liquor store offering three-for-one shooters of vodka and a gas station advertising two-liter bottles of soda for a dollar each. ‘Every business is either trying to kill you or selling a cure,’ she said.”
+ Meanwhile… USDA cuts more than $1bn in local food purchases for schools, food banks.
Lethal Weaponization
In the grand scheme of things, this is a small story. It’s just about one guy in a country of hundreds of millions and a few guns in a nation flooded with them. But what it represents is something far broader. It’s the new way things work in Washington. DOJ Official Fired After Refusing to Restore Mel Gibson’s Gun Rights. “Oyer refused to add Gibson to the list, and was then asked if her position was ‘flexible.’ She said it was not. ‘He then essentially explained to me that Mel Gibson has a personal relationship with President Trump and that should be sufficient basis for me to make a recommendation and that I would be wise to make the recommendation,’ she said. ‘I literally did not sleep a wink that night because I understood that the position I was in was one that was going to either require me to compromise my strongly held views and ethics or would likely result in me losing my ability to participate in these conversations going forward.'” (That’s the basic choice facing everyone in the administration these days.) Sidenote: Isn’t it interesting that Trump is targeting campuses and protestors for acts of antisemitism but Mel Gibson is getting special treatment from him?
Extra, Extra
Everything is Tariffic: Trump threatens to double tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum in response to electricity duties. The market continues to slide. But one stock is getting some help (if it actually helps). Trump says he’ll buy a Tesla to support Elon Musk as the stock tanks. In other Elon news, he just called Sen Mark Kelly (a former Navy pilot and NASA astronaut) a traitor for calling for resumption of military aid to Ukraine. Seriously dude, go cybertruck yourself.
+ Drug Test: “Some were shot by vigilantes on motorbikes. Others had bullets in the head, execution style. In killing after killing, the police would only describe the victims as ‘drug suspects’ who had resisted arrest, a charge that rarely stood up to even minor scrutiny. And yet the slaughter continued with impunity, at the behest of the man who was elected president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte.” Duterte, the former Philippine president, was arrested on Tuesday in Manila and was flown to The Hague to face International Criminal Court charges of crimes against humanity. (Here’s a news quiz for you. Can you name the world leader who said this to Duterte? “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing.”)
+ Forecast Away: “As hurricane forecasts improve, that translates directly into saving lives. When Hurricane Andrew hit Florida in 1992, causing around $27 billion in damage, most forecasts could happen only a day or two in advance of a hurricane. Now, forecasts five days in advance can be as accurate.” Wow! That seems like a great advance! FastCo: He flew into the eye of Hurricane Helene and helped improve forecasts. Then Trump fired him. It’s a tough time to be a weather expert if you work (or worked) for the federal government. But some people are hiring. Hedge Funds Paying Up to $1 Million for Weather Modeling Experts.
+ Regime Change: “Wynn-Williams sees Zuckerberg change while she’s at Facebook. Desperate to be liked, he becomes increasingly hungry for attention and adulation, shifting his focus from coding and engineering to politics. On a tour of Asia, she is directed to gather a crowd of more than one million so that he can be ‘gently mobbed.’ (In the end, she doesn’t have to; his desire is satisfied during an appearance at a Jakarta shopping mall with Indonesia’s president-elect instead.) He tells her that Andrew Jackson (who signed the Indian Removal Act into law) was the greatest president America ever had, because he ‘got stuff done.'” The NYT (Gift Article) on Sarah Wynn-Williams insider account of the ethical fall of Facebook. “Careless People,” a memoir by a former Facebook executive, portrays feckless company leaders cozying up to authoritarian regimes.
+ This is Your Brain on News: The U.S. is making more seizures of illegal eggs than fentanyl at its Canadian and Mexican borders.
+ Ash Backwards: “Can you do me a favor? Can you stop scattering your dearly departed’s ashes all over my favorite golf course? I want to play Pebble Beach, not your grandpa. For that matter, stop dumping your meemaw’s sandy ‘cremains’ on Disneyland rides. Last year, somebody on Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance pulled the stunt, forcing the ride’s shutdown for cleaning. What are parents in the next car supposed to tell the kids when a cloud of human ash hits them in the face?” Rick Reilly in WaPo (Gift Article): Please. Stop. Spreading. Human. Ash. In. Public.
Bottom of the News
“When the Minnesota boys’ high school state hockey tournament wraps up each year, John King retreats to his basement in White Bear Lake, Minn., so he can pore through footage of mullets, bleached mops and caterpillarlike mustaches. The resulting video montage — his ‘All Hockey Hair Team’ — was released on Sunday, taking its annual place as a cultural touchstone in Minnesota and beyond. Without a whiff of irony, it pays tribute to the ‘lettuce,’ ‘ramen’ and all-around ‘flow’ that players show off during their introductions, helping the tournament become a phenomenon on social media and beyond.” NYT (Gift Article): No One Loves Hockey Hair More Than This Guy.
+ Here’s a look at his 2025 Minnesota State High School All Hockey Hair Team.
