The Good Old Days: March 2020
March 16, 2020 feels like 100 years ago. It feels like yesterday. We'd been having meetings at city hall discussing what we were then calling the Coronavirus and what we'd do if faced with it. That Monday morning we found out an employee had COVID-like symptoms. During the end of the previous week he'd been in several cross-departmental meetings, so the potential for exposure to other employees was very strong. We sat in the Mayor's conference room discussing what we should do and whether we should close city hall. I remember the breaking point being that if this person ended up having COVID and we knew he was symptomatic it would be a disaster. (He ended up having the flu but at that time the tests took forever). We closed city hall. I went home late that morning and sat at my dining room table working. We didn't have Zoom or Teams or any of the video conferencing platforms we're so proficient with today. I will never forget how quiet the house was and how odd