It was right about this time, five years ago. I woke up one morning with a raunchy cough, a head full of mucus, and an aching body that felt like a sack of potatoes.

“This is weird,” I thought.

I seldom get sick, and when I do it’s usually in the November-to-December transition when temperatures here in NYC drop and my thermoregulatory systems go haywire. By February, I’m usually adjusted to ‘winter mode,’ and reasonably healthy. So I was surprised by the timing and intensity of the thing that hit me.

“Whatever this is, I’d better get over it quick,” I said. “The Integrative Healthcare Symposium is coming up, and right after that is Natural Products Expo West. These are important shows, I need to be ON!”

I did manage to rebound in time for IHS—the east coast’s top gathering of holistic, functional, and integrative medicine practitioners. By then, news reports—and plenty of rumors—were circulating about a new and nasty virus from Wuhan, China. It had already spread across Asia, and was making its way around the globe.

At first, I didn’t pay too much heed because, after all, there are always new, weird pathogens emerging from somewhere or other. H1N1, Chikungunya, Ebola, Zika…scary outbreaks that came and went, taking their tolls but ultimately becoming footnotes in the annals of public health history.

In the back of my mind, though, I wondered if it was this new virus that had laid me low.

By early March, in the week leading up to ExpoWest, the situation had intensified. The news was abuzz about the spread of the just-named “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)-CoV-2 coronavirus.” It was moving fast. Officially recorded US cases surged from a handful, to several hundred, to tens of thousands in a few weeks’ time.

And people were dying. The world’s public health authorities were on high alert. Words like “pandemic” and “public health emergency” peppered the news. Other words, like “plandemic” spread across social media. Government agencies and political leaders were weighing—and fighting fiercely over–response strategies.

I was still hoping it would all blow over quickly. I was not in a mood to worry about—or write about—an epidemic. And besides, I had to get on a plane and go to Expo!

If you’ve never been, Natural Products Expo West is the world’s largest natural products trade show. It’s Woodstock meets stock market meets Spring Break.

People from across the entire natural healthcare ecosystem gather for 3 days of unfettered commerce and camaraderie. It’s a vast sea of “better for you” foods, organics, dietary supplements, personal care products, organic pet foods, ‘green’ household products, natural fiber clothing. If it can be marketed as “natural,” it’s there at Expo.

Exhibitors run the gamut from the world’s biggest food conglomerates to the latest mom n’ pop mushroom-flavored tortilla chip startup. They’re there to impress buyers for every imaginable retail niche from Whole Foods to Norm n’ Nancy’s Natural Market in Peoria. Raw materials companies showcase their latest herbal extracts and probiotic ingredients. Top holistic health thought leaders and influencers riff on clinical trials and consumer trends. Supplement companies compete over who can pack the most nutrient punch into a gummy.

Expo West is huge. The show is a cornerstone of Anaheim’s economy. Roughly 80,000 people had gathered in 2019, and the 2020 numbers looked equally robust. 

But an imminent global health threat was looming. Executives at New Hope Natural Media—the show’s venerable producer—faced a tough decision.

In the week leading up to the show, the producers acknowledged that the new virus was a serious concern, that they were closely monitoring federal and state guidelines, and that some companies were erring on the side of caution. But airports and hotels were still open, and many registrants wanted to carry on. After all, exhibitors had already trucked their massive displays and product samples out to Anaheim. People from all over the world had purchased plane tickets. The momentum was intense.

The day before the show, New Hope sent an email saying Expo West 2020 was on. So, I boarded a plane for LAX. I had just landed, and was headed to Crystal Cove beach for a few hours of pre-show revelry with colleagues, when I got the text: Expo West was cancelled.

That’s when I knew something very, very big was afoot. Something life-changing. Whatever this was, if it was serious enough to shut down one of the world’s biggest trade shows, it was going to rock our world in ways I had not really experienced before.

I did drive to Crystal Cove that afternoon. We watched a magnificent sunset. We joked about how “Expo West” had become “Expo Rest.” We drank Coronas with lime, giggling like Beavis and Butthead….”Corona…heh heh.” We talked, half in jest and half in earnest, about our preferred immunity supplements. We tottered between mirth and anxiety.

And wouldn’t you know? Because so many people suddenly cancelled their travel plans, we were able to book a coveted Crystal Cove bungalow for a few nights. There’s only a few dozen of these ramshackle but charming accommodations, and they’re usually booked out years in advance. If this was to be the end of the world, we were going to enjoy it.

After a couple of nights my Expo pals and I parted ways. My flight back to NYC wasn’t until Sunday, and I figured the airports would be total chaos, so I opted to stay in California. “It might be a long, long time before I get to travel again,” I reasoned. So, I rented a cabin in the hills near Ramona and amid ancient pines, I pondered a newly uncertain future.

That was a wise decision. It would be another 2 years before I went anywhere.

I returned to a city vastly different from the one I’d left 8 days prior. Anxiety permeated the air. The normally vibrant streets of Greenwich Village were so quiet at night that I could hear the traffic light outside my apartment click from green to red. The shelves at Trader Joe’s were as empty as the streets. We all hoarded whatever groceries and supplies we could cram into our urban abodes.

I quickly got used to the ambulances, which became the most common street sound. New Yorkers really were dying. The ominous shrieks of emergency vehicles was countered only by the cheerful clatter of pots and pans and bells every evening at 7, when we poked our heads out to thank the doctors, nurses, emergency teams, sanitation crews, public employees, and other essential workers who stayed at their jobs, often facing daunting even deadly tasks.

Sharing a narrow island, 13 miles long, with 1.6 million other humans during a rapidly spreading communicable scourge brought the principles of epidemiology to life in a way no textbook could.

The days were fraught with weird risk/benefit calculations (“Do I really need to wipe down my groceries with alcohol?” “Is it really necessary to have a set of “outdoor” clothes and shoes that I put on when I go out and leave at the door when I come home?” “Do I believe the people who say ‘This is just a bad flu, and if you’re healthy you’ll be fine?’ Or the others who say ‘This is lethal. Take all precautions, avoid all but the most necessary risks.”?)

A new lexicon seeped into our conversations: PPE, N-95, WFH, social distancing, essential worker, webinar, hand sanitizer, remote learning, Zoom, spike proteins, supply chain disruption, cytokine storm, herd immunity. A few months later, it was Delta, then Omicron, stimulus check, PPP loan.

We learned that 20 seconds is the amount of time it takes to sing a full round of “Happy Birthday,” and that we should be singing it every time we scrubbed our hands (with soap), which we should do many times each day.

Then came the first wave of tests–streetside kiosks at first, and mobile vans, where we could line up to have our nares swabbed, the results emailed or texted to us within a few days….just enough time for those results to possibly be irrelevant. Rapid home test kits—a marvel of virology and applied technology when you think about it–were still a few months away.

Streetside dining followed closely after streetside testing. Summer was coming and restaurants were desperate to reopen. By the time the roses started blooming, NYC’s streets were cluttered with improvised outdoor eateries. some elegant, others as gritty as the pavements they occupied.

By then, everyone had become virologists—at least in their own minds. Everyone claimed to know what was fact and what was disinformation. Everyone had strident opinions about what everyone else should—or should not—be doing to: A) stay healthy, B) end the pandemic, C) get back to ‘normal’.

Perspectives and attitudes about public health questions became proxies for political ideologies. Dialog about serious scientific and technical matters degenerated into ludicrous zero-sum moral battles. A certain very public immunologist with a long and storied career as a government scientist was canonized as a savior by some, and vilified as an antichrist by others.

And that was before the emergence of the first Covid vaccines, which amplified public rancor to levels Americans had not experienced probably since the civil rights movement….or perhaps the civil war.

It was astonishing to see how the pandemic of respiratory disease very quickly spawned a pandemic of distrust, the ramifications of which are still rippling through our national psyche.  

But in March of 2020, much of that drama had yet to unfold. All we knew then was that our life routines had been severely disrupted, the situation was changing fast, and many of our givens had suddenly become unknowns.

When I wasn’t reading or writing about the pandemic, I often walked the streets of my city, taking pictures of what I saw—and what I didn’t see. We all have stories of how the Covid pandemic affected us. These photos give a glimpse of mine.

END