(I'm posting this just a bit early — I hit one year on the 15th, but I don't want this to overlap too much with reports.)
This has been a hard year for all of us. We've gone through a year filled with stress, anxiety, and uncertainty. A year worrying about loved ones, ourselves, and others in our community. We've handled it in our own ways, trying to make some sense out of our situation, and to reclaim control over our lives.
These reports are how I reclaimed control, how I handled the stress and worry for those I cared about, and how I strived to make a difference.
Early 2020, we began to hear about a newly-encountered virus found in China. I remember the day this popped up on my news feed. We didn't know much yet, but what we did know wasn't good.
Living in the Bay Area, there's a lot of travel to/from China, so we were paying close attention. It wasn't long before all hell broke loose there, and not much longer before it arrived where I live.
In March, cases in Santa Clara County began to ramp up quickly. We felt the tension in the air, saw the numbers on the local dashboards rise at a frightening rate, and the Bay Area just... stopped.
The whole tech industry closed their doors overnight, told their employees to stay home. The freeways were empty. Very few cars on the road, anywhere. It felt apocalyptic. It wasn't long before people started to know someone who was sick.
So I stayed home. I'm fortunate that my job can be done almost entirely online. I run my company, and I didn't really need to go anywhere, especially with tech shutting down. So I stayed home, and I watched.
Butte County hadn't been hit yet in the same way. This was still something mostly seen just in the news. A couple cases here and there, but not much activity. Still, I knew it was coming, and while I knew that the Bay Area's shutdown, and the subsequent travel restrictions, were keeping much of the state safe from our outbreak, it wouldn't be for long.
I feared for my family and friends.