Oral history of Mar 11

Wired gathered together a bunch of people to talk about the events around March 11th when right after the pandemic had been declared, the NBA cancelled its season, and the president addressed the nation.

My own memory of this time was more slow paced, I’d not paid much attention to the NBA news, and have a hard time listening to Trump. . I’d just recovered from being sick — a possibility that I had Coronavirus, caught from my wife who’d done a bunch of traveling — but I’d just been preparing to go back to the office. But things were clearly changing, community meetings, and volunteer shifts being cancelled, and my own organization announcing our office closure for the following week (through mid April). We were cancelling all events, and all travel. There was still a hope that it was going to be a short termed thing, and maybe we were over-reacting. My wife had been prescient in the direction we were headed, that it would be neither of those things..

This people in the Wired piece are a mix of reporters, sports people, and politicians telling their memory of March 11th and when things became real for them (two of them eventually coming down with illness).

When did it become real for you?