‘All Politics is Local’ is an opinion column written by John Lyons, a member of West Hartford’s Democratic Town Committee.

By John Lyons

Each month I examine national issues and offer my thoughts on how West Hartford ‘s residents are impacted. You’ll be surprised at how much seemingly small out-of-sight issues have a big impact on all of us.

Five years ago this month, the world shut down as a pandemic washed across all the continents on the globe. Originating in China, the Novel Coronavirus (as it was initially called) was first discovered in late 2019 and got to the USA in either very late 2019 or very early 2020 with the first confirmed case in Washington State diagnosed in mid-January.

Those weeks and months were crazy, but the world would change more later as politics entered the discussion and social media influencers took over the stage.

In mid-January of 2020, it became clear that something was wrong in China. Medical experts were trying to keep the illness contained to prevent its spread. Early indications were 3% or more of people who got the disease died, a larger percentage were impacted long term or permanently, it spread incredibly easily and there was no known prevention, treatment, or cure.

My recollection of learning about the virus was around the beginning of the fourth week of January. There was a case in Washington state that I had hoped would be contained. Then there was a case in Chicago, Illinois, and the moment I heard about that case, I knew it was spreading and any hope of containment was likely over.

I recall telling my wife that our lives were about to change and my kids calling me crazy in subsequent conversations about it.

In very late January, my wife and I ran into friends at Savoy who were having dinner with other friends of ours (and some folks we did not know) sitting at a large round table in the back toward the pizza oven area. I asked my wife if I should say something, and she said not to. I distinctly remember tearing up while driving home that night not knowing when we would be socializing again and not knowing how bad it was going to be. By then, some folks were giving others a wide birth when walking outdoors and things like hand sanitizer, sanitary wipes, and masks were selling at a brisk rate.

The science was rudimentary at that time. They knew it transmitted easily from person to person and (thankfully) the scientific community had already mapped its genetic sequence in several different places so the work on treatment and prevention could begin while most of the USA was still more or less unaware of the coming crisis.

By Feb. 1, the U.S. had designated the virus as a public health emergency. Cases had popped up in several states and human-to-human transmission in the U.S. had been confirmed. The medical community had already developed testing for the virus and had begun production of tests. Early on the tests were slow to market and somewhat unreliable but progress was quickly happening. Those genetic sequencing maps were coming in handy. At the same time, drug companies by now were well into using the genetic mapping to develop counter measures and preventative measures to help slow down transmission and fight the virus.

These things would become highly charged political issues in the coming years.

By mid-February, the World Health Organization had designated the virus “Coronavirus Disease 2019,” or COVID-19 for short.

I remember that late January night so well likely because we ran into people we knew, and the future seemed so ominous, but February was a bit of a blur. I had to look up lot of the medical facts I mention in this piece from the month of February to confirm my memory. But later February and early March come into sharp focus. I didn’t need to look anything up from about March 5 on as it sticks with me like it was last week.

I remember shopping and buying lots of rice, hand wipes, and lotion to stock up. I loved the alcohol wipes!

It seemed like cruise ships attracted the virus like a nightlight attracts mosquitos. Almost every ship was seeing cases, often arriving back at shore with some dead passengers. Italy was also in a dire situation with not enough hospital beds, a shortage on ventilator breathing equipment, and no morgue space for the thousands of deceased victims of COVID-19.

Once the calendar turned to March, there was worldwide recognition that COVID-19 was a huge crisis. Tens of thousands were catching it through human to human transmission, hospitals in some cities were running out of space and equipment was not available to treat the more seriously ill from the disease.

Starting Monday, March 9, things developed at a dizzying speed with big COVID-related breaking news constantly. Individual sporting events were being cancelled and almost immediately after, seasons were being cancelled.

Wednesday, March 11 was one of the most memorable with huge news stories broken all day long: Tom Hanks diagnosed with COVID; a little later, the NBA cancelled the remainder of their season; later, Trump spoke to a scared and confused nation in one of those moments where every TV in America it seemed was tuned to his speech. It was during that press gathering that the nation was told things would get much worse before they got better.

Locally, on March 12, Ronni Newton and I hosted the very first We-Ha.com roundtable TV show with an infectious disease expert and someone from the Health District. The conversation included what I think was one of the first in the region’s discussion of “flattening the curve” and the sacrifices that were going to have to be made to accomplish that task.

Just before going live, Ronni would receive word of probably the biggest story to impact West Hartford in decades, the closure of all schools in town starting at the conclusion of the day on the 13th and the implementation of “distance learning” which would be the norm for the better part of 15 months for many students. The breaking stories were endless on March 11 and 12, I recall we shared the news of the cancellation of the MLB season with our viewers as our phones buzzed with constant alerts. We had something like 11,000 live viewers that night which was a massive audience given the cable distribution for the station.

One of our guests that night that helped us field audience questions was Patti Albee, the founder and administrator of the Neighbors and Friends page on Facebook. It was that evening that we she made the decision to turn on moderator approval for all posts going forward, a seemingly momentous and very difficult decision for her to make regarding her page which had nearly half the population of West Hartford as membership at the time.

The president would announce a “whole of government” approach to fighting the pandemic and launched “Operation Warp Speed” which pulled many public and private organizations together along with academia to develop a vaccine and find ways to fight the virus.

Next month, we will look at the post-pandemic period and how politics and social media influencers were able to split the country on the origins, cause and treatments of Covid.

The views expressed represent the opinion of John Lyons, and are not intended to represent the opinion of We-Ha.com or the West Hartford Democratic Town Committee.

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