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Two Republican PACs take different approaches to defeating Donald Trump.

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We tend to mark defining moments in our history with the “Where were you when …” question. It makes sense: The moment is frozen in time, and it’s unforgettable. I was in seventh-grade art class when a teacher entered the classroom and announced that the Challenger had exploded. Almost 20 years ago, I remember my husband answering an early morning (on the West Coast) phone call and reaching for the TV remote. I didn’t know what to expect other than it had to be bad news, but I was definitely not expecting to see the Twin Towers burning.

Pandemics, however, are a different kind of beast. We’d all heard the horrifying accounts from China, we’d read the stories about cruise ships stuck at sea, unwelcome at many ports. But there was so much uncertainty, and it was a slow buildup. So where were you when it became very real? 

It was March 11. I was folding laundry, and Donald Trump was workinghis way through his Oval Office speech. But that wasn’t the big moment. No, for me at least it was when the news alerts started blowing up my phone. Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz had tested positive, and the NBA was suspending its season. The league wasn’t going to attempt to play games without fans, or any other half measures. A full-on shutdown.

The one glimmer of hope that emerged after the initial confusion was that the season wasn’t canceled, just on hold. If it all blew over, maybe we could have games again in a few weeks, or a month. 

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  1. Mary Schubert

    A big thank you to Andrew Sullivan. I hope the Democrats are listening.

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  2. C Winter

    As a huge Milwaukee Bucks fan who has probably watched every game, shutting down the NBA was painful since the Bucks had the most wins at that point and we believed this was going to be our year. Starting up again isn't the same. I don't feel the same thrill.

    The first time I became worried about about the coronavirus was when I came across a Twitter thread by Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding on January 25th that started out in all caps "HOLY MOTHER OF GOD..." Said it could turn into pandemic similar to 1918 because it was highly contagious and possibly spread asymptomatically.

    https://threader.app/thread/1220919589623803905

    Many other docs and public health experts were sounding the alarm as were members of congress begging the administration to start preparing for it and alert the public but blockhead was worried what the news would do to the stock market so buried his head in the sand and pretended it didn't exist.

    There needs to be an investigation similar to the 9/11 commission to find out why the response was bungled so badly, and when this story is finally told in full and criminal negligence and rampant grift is revealed our country is going to have a reckoning.

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    Butch Earl

    I'm a rare American (granted with a lot of Canadian blood) that grew up thinking baseball, football, golf, tennis, basketball, auto racing were all things people did until the ponds froze. However, I am having a real tough time getting used to hockey in August. We'll see what happens.

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    Some Viking

    1. Driving back from a ski trip later in February and hearing on NPR a story about the problems that were hitting Italy and S. Korea—and then my subsequent suggestion to my (stubborn) parents that they get travel insurance for their planned trip to Jordan
    2. Governor Polis (sadly a correct move) shutting down ski season—that’s when I knew it was really hitting here in Colorado

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    Man-Eating Cow

    Two defining moments of the pandemic for me.

    The first was when I read that Japan had closed its schools. Education is practically the state religion there; I knew then that it was serious.

    And then my employer was among the first to order us to work from home if we possibly could.

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    Victor Clairmont

    Thanks for the update for Rachel as always!

    I was on a phone conference with the clergy of my church when, we by unanimous vote, decided to shut down our church 2 weeks before Murphy in NJ ordered lock downs.

    But I really understood it early on, since I follow Chinese news and am a foreign policy junkie. My church, mostly islanders from the Caribbean also understood pretty early. The rumors began to really pop up late December, and then in early January about this virus in Wuhan. I have Chinese friends from college I still keep in contact and they were concerned. I was sitting at my PC at home and looking at the news, and I saw how in late January, going into the first weeks of February, they were burning bodies in Wuhan. We knew it, because we could see via satellite imagery that the heat given off by Wuhan was abnormally high, and it corresponded with rumors that they were burning bodies and the cremations funeral homes were on overdrive during the Chinese outbreak. And of course the party denied it, which made everyone even more suspicious, as they have lied about previous outbreaks.

    That's when the gut instinct picked up. Though like I said, it wouldn't be until awhile later that when we shut down our church (and nursing home services) that it really set in. The first lock down in NJ was March 2nd, we closed our church around February 20th. The problem was though we were not sure if this would be like SARS (which burned through the population and vanished) or like some of the other pandemics from China that didn't hit the west nearly as bad. But we erred on safety. Shutting our church down for a few weeks is a small price to pay if we were wrong.

    Well, we still have our church shut down in NJ even with government officials allowing reopenings. We probably will open back up in the fall or next year. We have an older congregation and we meet online at the moment. Currently in NJ with the second highest death rate after New York, our congregation has had 0 infections or deaths that we know to date. Of course, it's one thing to shut down a small church, it's another to shut down a whole economy.

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      Rachael Larimore vertical-nib Author

      It sounds like your church is being very responsible! Good luck.

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  7. Butch Kamena

    That night the NBA shut down really did feel like the tipping point. My oldest son was in the arena in Sacramento waiting for what would have been the final game, when it, too, was called off. The next day the high school my kids had graduated from announced it was shutting down. And suddenly it seemed our whole world was shut down.

    Though I've eased the sports fix on Australian rules football, it is really good to have the NBA back. It is a bit strange, with the bubble, regular-season games in August, and the unease I have over the politicization of it, but's it is back.

    Mind, can't share your opinion of that game seven. The best is still Boston-Phoenix Game 5 in 1976.

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      Rachael Larimore vertical-nib Author

      That is fair. I'm not sure i could have handled it if Game 7 of the 2016 Finals went to OT. I'm sure my blood pressure was very high with it being a close game the whole time.

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      DougAz

      I was at that crazy 3OT game 5 in 76 in the Garden. As fabulous a game as it was, my all-time best was 1974 Game 6 double OT. Celtics vs Bucks (Alcinder, Oscar). Also at the Garden under the basket. Nothing since ever topped Hondo (Havlicek) mano et mano vs Lew Alcinder (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). Bucks won 6. Best game I've seen.

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