Before We Knew Its Name: My Story of the Beginning of COVID

 Before We Knew Its Name: My Story of the Beginning of COVID

There is something I have wanted to write down for a long time.

Not because I can prove that I knew COVID was coming.

I couldn't.

Not because I can prove that I had COVID before it was officially recognized.

I can't.

But because I was there before we knew what was happening, and I remember what that felt like.

And I worry that children who were very young during the pandemic will grow up knowing the history without understanding the experience.

So this is my little piece of that history.

October 2019

I was working in Tofino.

There were bad coughs going around, and then I became really sick myself.

I went to the doctor on October 3, 2019.

I recently found the actual medical note.

It says:

Sore throat. Cough. Sinus infection. Facial pain. Longer than six days. Sinusitis.

There was no swab.

I remember the cough being really bad.

The doctor gave me medication, and eventually I recovered.

At the time, there was nothing particularly mysterious about it. It was an illness. People got sick. We didn't have COVID in our vocabulary.

But looking back now, I sometimes wonder.

Was it COVID?

I don't know.

There is no test result waiting for me in an old file that can answer that question.

And I don't want to pretend that my memory is scientific evidence.

It isn't.

But the illness happened.

The medical visit happened.

And I remember how sick I was.

Back to Vancouver

I left Tofino sick and returned to Vancouver.

I saw my child.

Then other people became sick.

I sometimes wonder whether I passed whatever I had to them, and whether it went further from there.

But again, I don't know.

That is the uncomfortable part of looking backward.

We can reconstruct dates.

We can find old medical records.

We can remember where we travelled.

But we can't necessarily reconstruct which virus moved from one person to another.

And at the time, none of us were thinking that way.

There were no masks on people coughing in public.

There were no COVID signs.

There was no social distancing.

There was no pandemic vocabulary.

Life was still normal.

Mexico

I went to Mexico.

People from all over the world travelled to places like Zipolite. International visitors came and went constantly.

I recovered.

Life continued.

And then came January 2020.

Suddenly, people seemed to be getting sick everywhere.

We thought it was a bad cold.

What else would we have thought?

We didn't yet understand what was happening.

Then my friend, who taught ESL online, started talking about what was happening in Italy.

Something was very wrong.

People weren't simply getting ordinary winter colds.

Hospitals were becoming overwhelmed.

The news became increasingly frightening.

I remember thinking:

Maybe I should go home.

But I had plans.

I had a ticket for the end of March.

I had a big trip around Mexico planned.

I wasn't ready for my life to suddenly change.

None of us were.

Then everything happened at once

One flight was cancelled.

I had to buy another ticket with WestJet.

It cost me around $600.

Suddenly people were frightened.

Airports felt different.

The atmosphere changed.

The world seemed to be holding its breath.

I came home.

And even though I wasn't sick anymore, I isolated myself.

I didn't know what was happening.

I didn't want to infect anyone.

I didn't want to be part of the problem.

I remember thinking that I was doing the responsible thing.

Meanwhile, people were still going to work.

We were all trying to figure out what the rules were while the rules themselves seemed to change every day.

The announcement

Then Justin Trudeau told Canadians that they should apply for emergency financial assistance.

I applied the same day.

That moment is burned into my memory because it was the beginning of something much bigger for me.

The pandemic didn't simply become a public-health event.

It changed my life.

My finances.

My work.

My housing situation.

My sense of security.

Things I had taken for granted suddenly weren't secure anymore.

And the effects didn't simply disappear when the emergency was over.

Some of them stayed.

What I don't know

I don't know whether I had COVID in October 2019.

I don't know whether the people around me had it.

I don't know whether anything I encountered in Tofino, Vancouver or Mexico was connected to what would later become the pandemic.

And I don't want to invent answers.

There is already enough misinformation surrounding COVID.

What I do know is what I experienced.

I was seriously sick in October 2019.

I have the doctor's note.

No swab was taken.

I travelled.

People around me became sick.

Then, by early 2020, the world began changing.

And suddenly the thing that had seemed impossible became reality.

Why am I writing this now?

Because memories disappear.

Because children who were five, six or seven years old in 2020 may remember masks and empty streets but not understand why everyone was so frightened.

Because young people born during the pandemic will grow up hearing arguments about it without necessarily knowing what ordinary life felt like.

And because history isn't only made by presidents, prime ministers, scientists and governments.

History is also made by ordinary people who suddenly find themselves living through something nobody expected.

I don't know whether my October 2019 illness was COVID.

Maybe it was.

Maybe it wasn't.

I may never know.

But I know I was there.

I remember Tofino.

I remember being sick.

I remember coming home.

I remember Mexico.

I remember hearing about Italy.

I remember the cancelled flight.

I remember buying another ticket.

I remember isolating even though I wasn't sick anymore.

And I remember the moment when ordinary life stopped feeling ordinary.

Maybe that is what I really want to preserve.

Not a theory.

Not an accusation.

A memory.

Because someday, the children who lived through COVID will be the ones telling their own children what happened.

And I hope they remember that before the history books were written, there were millions of ordinary people standing in the middle of it, wondering:

What the hell is happening?

Reflective questions:

1. What do you remember about the world before COVID had a name?

2. When did you first realize that something much bigger was happening?

3. What memories from those early months do you hope future generations never forget?

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