Covid fears, then and now: On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the start of the "two week" shutdown

The Covid lockdowns began five years ago this month. By early March 2020, ominous stories about this mysterious respiratory ailment – this novel virus – were becoming all too common, and it had already impacted Lunar New Year celebrations in Chicago. Of course, initially, we were encouraged to keep on doing our usual activities. A February 3, 2020 Block Club Chicago article quotes Lori Lightfoot, then Mayor of Chicago, as saying, at a news conference ahead of the Chinatown Lunar New Year Parade, that there was no reason for people to wear masks. She said public health officials had determined the risk to Chicagoans to be very low. Quoting now from the article: “‘As you can see, I’m not wearing a mask, and I won’t be because I don’t think it’s necessary,’ Lightfoot said.”

According to the article, only “two [Covid cases had] been reported in Chicago, [though] more than 17,000 cases of the virus have been reported worldwide, resulting in 360 deaths.” Despite the Mayor’s encouragement, however, the article notes that attendance for the parade was down – a bit – from what would ordinarily have been expected.

Things changed in a hurry.

And, of course, the same people who were saying c’mon down to Chinatown and party were, only weeks later, insisting that we stay inside our homes, locked up tight, for two weeks “to stop the spread.” And, yet, things hadn’t really spread much at all at that point.

The first death in Illinois was not announced until March 17, 2020. There were only a dozen new cases reported in the entire state on March 16. I am relying on myself for these numbers: I wrote about Covid frequently on For What It’s Worth; in writing those posts, I supplied links to the IDPH or City health authorities whenever possible. Unfortunately, all those links to the public health authorities have apparently expired or been removed. But my links survive.

In March 2020, I was scared. Maybe you weren’t scared, but I was. I know this was my thought process: How awful must this onrushing plague be that we have to suspend our lives, and basically close down the world? My imagination was in overdrive.

Part of the reason I was worried was because things went down so fast: On March 11, exactly five years ago today, I reprinted a press release from the Chief Judge’s Office that basically said the court was monitoring the changing situation but, while a couple of tours were canceled, and employees were encouraged to stay home if sick, the court’s business would continue.

The very next day, March 12, I reported a whole new round of cancellations of bar functions, including the cancellation of a CBA March Madness social, which could not very well have gone forward inasmuch as the NCAA had canceled March Madness itself.

My wife’s Catholic school effectively closed for the year with dismissal on Friday, March 13, as did all the other schools in the Archdiocese of Chicago. The public schools shut down then as well. The public celebration of Mass was suspended. Major League Baseball was suspended. And, only a couple of days after saying it would keep the doors open, the Circuit Court of Cook County announced that it was shutting down... sort of... for 30 days.

My second post on March 14 looked at the loopholes in this initial closure order, requiring discovery to proceed in civil cases, for example (remember, if you can, that at that time, most of us thought ‘Zoom’ was something cars did while speeding). One anonymous commenter grumbled that the court closure order “does little to decrease the number of people coming to court on the criminal side other than eliminating jurors.”

Although afraid of the virus, I was a little skeptical, too. Not as skeptical as one anonymous commenter who groused that the court closure order “is what happens when your judiciary is composed of a bunch of former government hack lawyers or low end insurance defense bottom feeders.” Over the next couple of years, the anger among some FWIW readers about the court closures would only grow. Some readers would demand that the courts reopen or they would vote ‘no’ on every single retention judge.

My skepticism, in those frightening early days of the shutdown, was much more tentative: Only 46 cases had been reported in Illinois as of March 14. Was sheltering in place for two whole weeks an overreaction? A doctor I’d known since we were both in undergrad was kind enough to try and explain why this virus was very serious indeed:

It's 20 times as likely to be fatal [as ordinary flu]. But the disaster is occurring because 20% of those who are able to survive still need inpatient medical care, often on a ventilator. That's unheard of even in a bad flu year. How many people do you know who have been hospitalized with flu, let alone on a ventilator? Not 20% of them, for sure.

Also, among those who survive, many will have permanently impaired lung function. The Hong Kong flu of 1968 left a few people respiratory cripples, but if you look at the number of new infections vs. people who are counted as recovered in Hubei province, for such a high percentage to still be sick this far out -- they may be young, but they will never feel like it again.

Also, flu hits you like a ton of bricks. It may kill you, but you're home in bed from the first few hours you're sick. These folks are walking around shedding virus for days before they realize they've got something more than seasonal allergies going on.

The idea that one could spread the disease for days before developing serious symptoms was particularly chilling. And, for me at least, that served as a reasonable explanation as to why it might make sense to shut the world down awhile, since isolating after actually getting sick would not help ‘stop the spread.’

But, of course, we didn’t shut the world down. Not right away. Not in Illinois. We had to conduct the 2020 primary first.

I was not happy about this. In my mind, at least, there was a critical distinction between the March primary and the November election. The latter would have to be held, regardless of the circumstances – if we could hold a national election in 1864 with the nation ravaged by civil war, we could surely conduct an election in November 2020. But a primary? We could postpone it to August without a backward glance (and, in fact, as you will recall, we did postpone it from March to late June in 2022). The morning before the 2020 primary I wrote:

Why are we doing this?

Every other social activity has been curtailed in the last week.

Sure, I understand momentum and money, lots of money, behind the election machinery. But there was a lot of money, much more money in fact, in pro sports, and in the collegiate tournaments. And momentum? The build-up to the NCAA basketball tournaments is more astounding every year. But the tournaments got cancelled anyway.

My youngest son is an assistant baseball coach at Illinois Tech (what we used to call the Illinois Institute of Technology). First, his spring training trip got cancelled. Then, his season. It's a D-III school, so the seniors on his team who were robbed of their final season were spared the discomfiture of crying before prying television cameras, as some local athletes, in higher profile programs, were not. But there were tears, just the same. And now my son is cleaning out his desk at school (he teaches in a south suburban middle school) trying to set his students up to learn from home for the foreseeable future.

My oldest son travels for a living. That went by the boards. For relaxation, he watches sporting events. He was planning on using some miles for a Spring Training trip to Arizona to see the budding White Sox powerhouse. Gone, all gone. With their busy schedules, he and his wife don't cook a lot at home; they dine out regularly.

Yesterday, that was taken away, too.

I could go on, but everyone reading this has their own stories, some far more serious. We are all disrupted. All at sea.

Eventually, of course, we got through this. Most of us. And, except for those still struggling with Long Covid, the whole experience seems like an increasingly distant dream. Even though the “two weeks” kept going and going and going... the Energizer Bunny was surely jealous....

But it may be important, as the fifth anniversary of the “two week” shutdown is upon us, to recall how we felt way back then.

As a history buff, I was initially receptive to the idea that this novel virus had originated in a Wuhan “wet market.” There was apparently evidence to show that prior pandemics had originated in China in similar ways – back in the early days of the two-weeks shutdown, possibly even in the actual first two weeks, I remember reading that even the deadly “Spanish Flu” outbreak of 1918 had been traced to a Chinese wet market.

And I recall registering no disagreement with the consensus that the theory... already swirling around the more disreputable corners of the Internet... that the virus had escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan... was tin-foil beanie poppycock.

The fact that there was (and, I guess, still is) a Wuhan Institute of Virology, that had been studying corona virus in bats for a decade or more prior to 2019, and located within a 40-minute drive of the Wuhan wet market (according to the BBC) was just an unhappy coincidence. How many times do we have to be reminded? Coincidence is not causation.

Except sometimes it can be, apparently.

The FBI, in early 2013, announced that it was convinced the Covid virus escaped from the Wuhan lab (see, “FBI chief Christopher Wray says China lab leak most likely,” BBC, March 1, 2013). At that time, as the linked article indicates, the World Health Organization and some other American intelligence agencies disagreed with that assessment. The CIA, in an assessment prepared for the outgoing Biden administration, but released just after President Trump was sworn in, has apparently agreed that the Covid virus escaped from a Wuhan lab, according to the AP, the agency has “low confidence” in its conclusion. (See, “The CIA believes COVID most likely originated from a lab but has low confidence in its own finding,” by David Klepper, AP, January 26, 2025.)

An assessment recently released by the Director of National Intelligence maintains that the Intelligence Community (the IC):

assesses that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, probably emerged and infected humans through an initial small-scale exposure that occurred no later than November 2019 with the first known cluster of COVID-19 cases arising in Wuhan, China in December 2019. In addition, the IC was able to reach broad agreement on several other key issues. We judge the virus was not developed as a biological weapon. Most agencies also assess with low confidence that SARS-CoV-2 probably was not genetically engineered; however, two agencies believe there was not sufficient evidence to make an assessment either way. Finally, the IC assesses China’s officials did not have foreknowledge of the virus before the initial outbreak of COVID-19 emerged.

Almost five years down the road, you’d think that our superspies would have put more pieces of the puzzle together. The majority of the IC is absolutely certain sure that Covid was not developed as a bioweapon and was not genetically engineered. The certitude on this point is amazing, inasmuch as a virus that leaves “folks are walking around shedding virus for days before they realize they've got something more than seasonal allergies going on” sure seems like a useful component for a bioweapon. But, alright... if the Wuhan lab was not genetically engineering a virus or researching a bioweapon... then what was going on in the lab in Wuhan and how did this “novel” virus... that supposedly no one knew anything about five years ago... come to be in that lab in the first place?

Well, the IC has an explanation for its failure to figure this stuff out: It’s all the fault of the Chinese government. From the linked summary: “China’s cooperation most likely would be needed to reach a conclusive assessment of the origins of COVID-19. Beijing, however, continues to hinder the global investigation, resist sharing information and blame other countries, including the United States. These actions reflect, in part, China’s government’s own uncertainty about where an investigation could lead as well as its frustration the international community is using the issue to exert political pressure on China.”

It is very convenient to blame the Chinese... our great trading partner... and trading competitor... our rival in the renewed Space Race... and a likely potential opponent in a war, should things come to that.

There’s just one problem with blaming only the Chinese, and you’d think our superspies might have noticed it: It seems established now that the U.S. Government was actually funding research at the WIV because, according to this July 24, 2023 article in the British Medical Journal:

“The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced on 17 July that it would suspend and then end funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China to protect the public interest.

A memo was sent to the House of Representatives oversight select subcommittee which has been investigating US grants to WIV. The memo details a lengthy record of failed communications between US agencies and the Wuhan institute. It said that WIV repeatedly refused to provide requested laboratory notebooks, electronic data records, and other information about safety and security.

Granted, this is from a publicly-available summary of the article, not from the article itself (I am not a subscriber to the BMJ). Also, cutting off government funding to the WIV in 2023 does not prove that American taxpayers were funding Covid research in 2020, prior to the apparent escape of the virus from the lab. But what were we funding in Wuhan? And why didn’t we know about this five years ago? Somebody in the government knew.

In 2020, I was scared. In 2025, I am curious. Who knew what? How “novel” was this virus really? If the Covid virus that shut down the world in 2020 was not a bioweapon and was not manufactured, then what was being tested in Wuhan? Why? How? What was the government actually funding? Did we get what the government paid for? Five years on, one would think we’d know more about this than apparently we do.

And all these many unanswered questions arise independently of any consideration of questions surrounding the development, distribution, and efficacy of the Covid vaccines....

I suppose one reason for the lack of curiosity is political: THEY are interested in these things, therefore WE must not be.

What a load of road apples.

I say WE are just as entitled to answers here as THEY are. And I mean actual answers to hard questions, not meek acquiescence to whatever pap our “betters” hand out for us. Maybe WE are more entitled to complete and truthful answers; after all, WE are the ones who wore masks, just as we were asked to, even outside; and who lined up eagerly for the shots, as soon as we could; and who endured family parties on Zoom and who cried, on the inside or outwardly, each time we disconnected....