The Coronavirus, or COVID-19, or SARS-CoV-2, or whatever you want to call it, has turned the world on its head. What started out as a weird sickness on the other side of the world has all of a sudden landed on our own doorstep. Now, most of the world is on lockdown as we wait to see just how bad things are going to get and when this will all be over.
Last Saturday, the Champ and I left home for a week long March Break vacation to Myrtle Beach. The trip had been planned for nearly two years and the plan was to visit with our parents - who spend their winters in South Carolina.
I am able to admit now that we probably shouldn't have gone. But, before we left, the Canadian government had not yet closed the border and had only recommended against non-essential travel. We knew things would get worse, but we naïvely thought we could fit our trip in before it did. We also thought that, because we would be staying with family instead of at a hotel or resort, the risk of infection was minimal. Besides, there were only six confirmed cases in South Carolina at the time.
We were wrong.
The first layover of our trip was in Toronto. After landing at Pearson Airport, we decided to grab a bite to eat. The first thing we noticed was how deserted the terminal was. Despite being a Saturday morning and the first day of March break, the place was next to empty. It was during our layover in Toronto that a friend made us aware of a text from the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs.
In addition to pissing me off, the tweet scared the shit out of us. We immediately visited the Government of Canada Travel Advisory website and found no mention of the Minister's advice. Further, we had registered as "Canadians Abroad" before leaving home and had not received any of the promised email notifications. We considered calling an end to our trip.
We didn't.
Our next stop was in Atlanta. The scene at the airport there could not have been more different than in Toronto. The terminal was packed and there were no indications of a global pandemic. We found a nice quiet bar at the very end of the terminal and had a couple of drinks. I didn't know whether to be comforted or terrified by the Americans' lack of concern. We just wanted to get to Myrtle Beach.
We finally landed in Myrtle Beach around midnight and it was great to see the Champ's parents. Again, the locals seemed unfazed by the spread of the Coronavirus. There had been no confirmed cases in the city up to that point. Maybe we could get our trip in before things got out of control.
Wrong.
On our first day we went to the local open-air outlet mall. Things were "business as usual". A couple of the international chain stores were closed or on modified hours, but every other store was open. The mall was busy, but not packed, with families Sunday shopping. We returned the Champ's parents' condo to get ready for dinner with my father and step-mother - it would be the first time they would meet.
Dinner went off without a hitch and, again, you would have never have known that the world was about to shut down. Our parents got along just fine and we had a great meal (a beautiful New York strip steak and a giant Long Island Iced Tea for me).
But when we got back to the condo things started to go sideways. Our parents had decided that they were going to cut their vacations short and head back to Canada early. They had been told that they would have no insurance coverage ten days after Donald Trump declared a state of emergency and there was even talk that Justin Trudeau was going to close the border. Confirmed Coronavirus cases in South Carolina had doubled since we arrived and there were two confirmed cases right in Myrtle Beach. Around this time, the Americans' indifference to the world falling apart around them started to get scary.
I emailed my travel agent and asked her to look into early flights home. We bought tickets to fly home two days later, on Wednesday, three days before we were scheduled to leave.
Right around this time I also started coughing up my lungs. The tickle in the back of my throat moved into my sinuses and chest. Now I was scared. Online information about the symptoms of COVID-19 was anything but clear and consistent. The one thing that seemed pretty straightforward was the fact that Coronavirus comes with a fever. I didn't have a fever - and I checked my temperature just about every hour for two days. I was nearly convinced that I just had a chest cold.
Nearly.
We stayed inside and avoided any unnecessary human contact for the next two days...
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