Dec. 31, 2019: 72 Days Before the U.S. Coronavirus Quarantine NOTE: Was this severe flu I had the Coronavirus? USA Today said on March 23, it’s plausible, but more research is needed. On April 11, the L.A. times suggested that COVID-19 was likely in California in December, under the guise of “an unusual flu season.” We will probably never know. I penned this blog 6 days before the New York Times published their first article about Coronavirus on January 6, 2020 (shown above) and their timeline puts the start of the story in China on Dec. 31, when the government admitted people were coming down from a “mystery disease.”  I really felt that what I had was unusual. The cough lasted for about 6 weeks after I caught whatever it was. I went to the doctor, but they couldn’t tell me what it was. It wasn’t the Flu, and it wasn’t Pneumonia, because I had vaccines for both in the Fall.

Blog: We went to Washington, D.C. for New Year’s Eve. Well, not really, but it was the last day we could tour the Newseum, the news museum there.

Suffice to say: It was awesome, I have a million pictures and videos to go through, but I’m sick.

Truthfully, I barely made it; I have some sort of flu, the worst I’ve had in years, but I insisted on going. With another day or two in bed I hope I feel better, but the cough is tremendous. A lot of my coworkers and friends are also sick. AccuWeather says it may be the “other flu” — Influenza B — that is causing the season to be so bad.

The worst part is: It killed my Christmas Break. I had all these high hopes of getting a lot of work done around the house, but as soon as I got back from Christmas at my wife’s parents-in-law, I got sick. But anyway, Merry New Year, it’s a new decade, and the Newseum was awesome. More later, I promise.

In any case, we got home late, in the dark, and drove over Seven Mountains during a snow squall. After I took this picture, it got much worse and snow covered the ground. My wife was terrified to drive.

But, we got home. And now… it’s almost 2020.  UPDATE: IT IS 2020.

*NOTE: This is part of my series “Coronavirus Quarantine” about my family’s (and the world’s) experience with COVID-19 during the stay-at-home orders and self isolation of Spring 2020. You can read all the blogs in reverse sequence by clicking here. Blogs before April 2020 were written after the fact, but the thoughts and photos are from the publish date indicated. For reference, a graph of cases and news interest in the U.S., and newspaper headlines from each blog publish date are included in each entry.