It’s been a crazy few weeks, and we’re just starting the rollercoaster ride.

For the first part of March, it was continual changes, sometimes every few hours. Warnings, concerns about COVID-19 coming to the US. Then the first cases in New York and Seattle. Then things being cancelled and postponed. Conferences, large gatherings, regional services. General Conference for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was going digital only. Then all church was cancelled. More changes. More restrictions.

Now, businesses are closed, restaurants that can are doing curb-side delivery or drive-thru. Most have lost a lot of their business. Some have lost 75% or more of their income. Those businesses that can have gone online. Workers who can are working from home. A lot of small businesses and workers are suffering.

Steve started working from home on the 12th, although he’d voluntarily worked from home starting on the 11th. On the 13th, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints closed all church meetings, activities, and Temples. The following week, all bars and restaurants closed. Only restaurants with drive-thru or car-side pickup could stay open.

As of today, March 30, all non-essential businesses are closed and we are ordered to stay at home unless going out for essential services. Many museums, zoos, and parks like Disneyland, have virtual tours are online. All schools are online only through April.

The entire country has been asked to stay at home except for essential services, but not everyone is following it. Not even in the areas that are hardest hit, like Italy, Spain, and New York.

I’ve seen cases of hoarding. Two people in Tennessee bought 17,000 small hand sanitizers and were selling them online at an exorbitant price. I think they sold 300 before they were shut down. They are permanently banned from selling on Amazon, eBay, Facebook Marketplace, and other online stores. The government went after them. They had to donate their product to charity. A woman here in Utah had a garage full of toilet paper. She was selling it around $80 to $150 per package. There’s a state law against profiteering during a crisis. It’s a $1,000 fine per incident.

People are panic shopping. First, it was toilet paper and bottled water, hand sanitizers and disinfectant wipes. Now it’s peanut butter, canned food, etc. Shelves are empty. Some can’t buy necessities because they aren’t available.

That’s the bad side. There’s a good side. People are volunteering to shop for the elderly. Stores are letting those over 60 shop one hour before regular business hours. There’s a donation site for Utah bars and restaurants. One actor who owns a bar in SLC donated $100,000 to help others. There’s a webpage that lists all local dining establishments that are still open to carried service so that people can buy from them. There are small business loans being made available to help those businesses that can’t make payroll, or had too close. (Now we have a Federal relief bill coming in April as well.)

The Miller family, who owns the Utah Jazz, and a number of car dealerships, donated money to help the people who work at Vivint Home Arena and are now out of a job. Other arenas have athletes and owners donating money for their own sites as well. A local professional golfer is donating food to some K-12 schools to help feed them lunch and breakfast. Donations are being made for businesses, kids who need meals, the homeless. Lots of companies are donating money. Some large banks are donating money to help those out of a job. Musicians are doing free online concerts. Some sites like Audible have free books for children. Streaming services are offering one free month. Xfiniti is setting up Wi-Fi hotspots for free internet. The amount of service being done is incredible, and encouraging.

Breweries are now making hand sanitizer for hospitals to help meet demands. Just recently GM has switched its plants to making ventilators. Ford has offered to help. 3M is making medical face masks. A group of 300 engineers and medical researchers have developed an open source 3D-printed ventilator. A local company just received FDA approval to produce a test for COVID-19 that will give results in two hours instead of two days (a new one gives results in 5 minutes). Another has permission to start looking for a vaccine. Germany and China are working on a cure. It won’t be long, relatively speaking, before there’s a treatment (two Malaria drugs are showing efficacy against the virus in controlling the spread if someone is sick. Or something like that.) It’s a beginning.

Today, the FDA fast-tracked the use of two Malaria drugs to help slow the duration of the illness for those hospitalized. It’s effective in other countries. France just had a trial of the drug with 80 people with Coronavirus. It slowed the time the person was sick for all but two of the group. Those two died. One was over 74 and had underlying health issues. The other came in so sick they didn’t think he had a chance. That’s promising.

We were down to eight rolls of toilet paper for a family of four adults. My husband mentioned it on social media and a neighbor brought over a package.

The new heroes are medical personnel, grocery store workers, truck drivers, warehouse workers, firmness, and people who are working to keep utilities going and keep stores supplied. Medical and travel personnel who are overtaxed, or out of a job. It’s been incredible to see all the good.

In addition, air pollution in China decreased. The canals in Venice are clear and dolphins have been seen. In France, people are singing from their balconies and police are stopping to do impromptu sing-alongs. “Quarantine Christmas” is a thing. People are hanging out their Christmas lights and playing Christmas music to cheer people. Life has slowed down and we’re focusing more on helping others than being offended by them.

It’s scary, but we are all learning to scale back and to appreciate the little things.

In addition, on March 18 at 7:09 AM, Utah had a 5.7 earthquake. The epicenter was three miles from my home. I was awake, as I usually go to bed when my husband goes to work. It a bad habit, and I want to break it, but the night before, he’d been up until 1:30 and wasn’t sure he’d wake up in time to go downstairs. I do like that he’s working from home right now, but he gets up at 6:30 and starts work at 7. And me, being concerned he’ll sleep through his alarm, stays up.

With my higher level of stress over money, the shortages, and everything, I didn’t react like I should. I sat in the middle of the bed, listening to my dolls, audiobooks, CDs, and books fall to the ground. I couldn’t get out of bed as my floor was covered. And, being blind, I wasn’t going to try and climb over the boxes on the cedar chest at the bottom of the bed, either. I had to pick up the stuff on the floor and stack it on the bed to get out. Not really a major problem, though.

We lost some glassware, a monkey-pod bowl that was my mother-in-law’s, a few other small things. About twenty percent of the books fell, almost all the CDs and audiobooks, a large number of DVDs. Considering I have maybe 2000 books, it wasn’t bad. The foundation is good. A week later, a bookshelf collapsed, but we were able to box up the old books and store them. We were blessed.

Utah has an annual “Great Shake Up” to prepare for a big quake. 5.7 is significant, but not “big.” I think many of us had grown complacent. The big quake won’t happen soon. We don’t need to prepare. And this hit. We now we see where we fall short, where we need to do better.

In the first hour after the quake, I received texts and phone calls from friends, family, and neighbors, asking if we were okay. One neighbor went door-to-door checking on people. Our neighborhood has a Facebook group. People were reporting cul-de-sacs where they’d checked on people who were okay. Problems were reported. One woman lost a lifetime of knick-knacks and treasures when her curio cabinet fell over. Another lost all of her mother’s china. Another family lost the glassware in their kitchen. One house lost the chimney. It damaged the roof. But there were no injuries. Most were home, and safe. All but one of the bridges in the valley were undamaged. UDOT knows where to make repairs and upgrades for the next quake.

A number of older buildings were damaged. Magna Main was closed as most of the buildings had external damage. Some significant. But the interior damage was minor. At least as of the day after reports. Cleanup will take a while. Downtown Salt Lake has a number of buildings with damage. Most older buildings, with brickwork. The Broadway building may not survive, but it’s older. It has a crack up the front, we’ll see when inspectors finish if it can be repaired. It was in need of work before.

The Salt Lake Temple is undergoing renovations to help it survive a major earthquake. A few blocks of stone at the base of the spires were dislodged, and Moroni lost his trumpet, but it’s otherwise okay. Temple Square had no real damage. A couple of buildings used by the Church were damaged, but they will be repaired. A dozen meetinghouses in the Magna area were damaged. But as no one is going to church right now, there’s time for repairs. Donations are already being taken to help with the rebuilding. A local Burger King franchise owner donated 370 rolls of toilet paper to help those affected in the area.

People are reaching out online to help others. Emily is really stressed about everything, especially the earthquakes. She wanted a video game, Animal Crossing, but we can’t get it right now because we’re spending more on food, and Jacob is temporarily out of a job. She went on an Animal Crossing site and said that she was anxious, couldn’t get the game, and wanted some memes to cheer her up. People asked her for her Venmo account and donated money for her to buy the game. They really helped her to feel better.

Even though things are still ramping up, and the worst is yet to come, I think there is a lot we can learn from this. We can learn to be kinder, to not take sides, but to help our neighbor, regardless of who he or she may be. We are coming together as a community, a nation, a world. I know it won’t last, but I hope that some lessons will stick. To paraphrase the Parable of the Ten Virgins, how much oil do we have in our lamps? This isn’t the end of the world, but it is a wakeup call. We now see where we are unprepared, and we have time to change, to do better, to be better. We will come out of this forever changed, but hopefully better than when we came into it. I know that I will be more resilient, I will be more determined to keep going. I can handle more than I think I can. And I have a network of family, friends, and community who are there to brace me up. That’s a wonderful reminder of how truly blessed I am.

I know I’m supposed to have a three-month supply of food and necessities. I don’t. This was a personal wake-up call. I need to make this more of a priority in the future. I’m not sure where I’ll put it, but I need to do something. Maybe I’ll clean out the closet under the stairs. I also need to put string along the front of my bookshelves and CD racks. And I need to secure more furniture to the wall with straps for the next quake—even if it’s not in my lifetime. Just to follow safety precautions.

More and more states and countries are shutting down, telling people to stay home, to shelter in place, to keep six to ten feet from others. To flatten the curve. If we listen, if we are diligent, and if we are patient, we’ll be okay. But we have to remember these lessons once the quarantine ends. We need to keep moving forward, and we need to remember what we have learned so far about kindness and helping our neighbor.