NOTES FROM A PANDEMIC A year of life and death as seen through the nightly dispatches of Free Press editor Paul Samyn Preface Mar. 17, 2021 There were many, many things I didn’t see coming as February became March in 2020. I knew the novel coronavirus was real. I didn’t doubt the way it was infecting life from Wuhan to Rome and aboard cruise ships and international flights. But for the most part, SARS-CoV-2 was an offshore problem, a worry far removed from Portage and Main. Until it wasn’t. Until it was here. Until it began turning our lives upside down. Dis- rupting lives. Threatening lives and livelihoods. The Ides of March a year ago changed everything and everyone. Our newsroom moved to a war footing amid fears the Free Press might not survive. Our business plan already suffered from, to use the pandemic parlance, “a number of underlying conditions.” As we pivoted and socially distanced our way through the early days of the pandem- ic, we launched something else I wouldn’t have predicted: a nightly newsletter about COVID-19 that would last for more than a year. Our hastily conceived briefing needed an opening intro, something to add a personal touch to the pandemic news of the day, which at the time was often a wall of panic and statistics. That job fell to me. The first few nightly musings were pretty straightforward and simple, but as COVID-19 spread, so did the audience of the newsletter. The daily missive — a mix of hot-takes, political commentary, pandemic peculiarities, the odd dose of humour and dollop of inspiration, and more insights about our family than my dear wife ever wanted shared with the wider world — struck a chord with its readership. In short order, the nightly briefing note was reaching more than 100,000 readers — many of them far from Portage and Main and some with no personal ties to Manitoba. I didn’t expect the number of newsletter readers would soon surpass the number of people who receive our print newspaper on their doorsteps. I also didn’t foresee how much closer we would become to our readers at time of enforced social distancing. The newsletter frequently became a starting point for conversations, enabling me to hear about your fears and frustrations. Many a nightly opening was inspired by what you told me, what you wanted shared with the broader community, what you needed our reporters to chase down and deliver for the front page. All of which takes me to the final thing I didn’t see coming a year ago: this book that’s a collection of the nearly 300 entries to our nightly newsletter. By its very nature, Notes From a Pandemic is partly a diary of my journey, my reflections on COVID-19; however, it’s also a log of what we’ve all been through, what we’ve had to navigate and what we’ve endured. In the entries, you’ll find death and tears, because there have been too many deaths and too many tears. There is no shortage of confusion and uncertainty because con- fusion and uncertainty have been the defining elements of COVID-19. But you’ll also find hope, because so many have found a way to shine a light through this dark time, to make a difference when it was needed most. Throughout this collection, there is also a recognition of the importance of you, the reader, and heartfelt appreciation for those whose support makes our journalism possible. I still have no idea how I’ve managed to come up with something to write night after night, but the part I played in this newsletter has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my 32 years at the Free Press. As a way of saying thank you, we are making this ebook available free to everyone who turned to us for information they could trust about the story of our lives. We’ve all been through a lot because so much happened to our world. This ebook ensures you’ll have a record of sorts to the story of our lifetime with all the emotions and emptiness, the science and the cynicism, the lockdowns and the loss, the politics and the promise of better days. And now, on to the year that was, as captured by our nightly COVID briefing. Tuesday, Mar. 17, 2020: A newsletter is born This isn’t a bulletin I imagined we would be writing a month ago. But as we all know all too well, the novel coronavirus has changed things in ways we hadn’t previously imagined. So welcome to the first edition of our new COVID-19 briefing, a free newsletter we will be producing daily to be delivered to anyone who wants to keep up to date on the latest developments involving the pathogen. Our goal is a simple one that is consistent with our journalistic mission: providing you with information that matters from a source you trust. Any story we send you in this mailing can be read free of charge without running into the paywall that is critical to our financial future. Given how fast this story is moving, we believe this daily briefing will be an essential read. Please let me know what you think of this newsletter or send along any questions you believe our newsroom needs to answer about COVID-19. And feel free to share this newsletter by forwarding it to friends and family so they can be as informed as you. C M Y K PAGE A1 $ Million That empty feeling In Cash NHL suspends season indefinitely; IT PAYS TO BE A MEMBER easy decision, Mark Chipman says C1 scu.mb.ca/bonus FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 2020 FOUNDED IN 1872 ® CONNECT WITH CANADA’S HIGHEST READERSHIP RATE WEATHER: VARIABLE CLOUDINESS. HIGH -10 — LOW -18 ● COVID-19 PANDEMIC HITS HOME Manitoba announces three presumptive cases of coronavirus CAROL SANDERS AND LARRY KUSCH HE province’s first three pre- sumptive COVID-19 cases were Treported Thursday, as testing for the disease ramped up in Mani- toba. The novel coronavirus is “on the move and rapidly progressing,” Health Minister Cameron Friesen said Thursday morning at a hastily called news conference. Hours after announcing the province’s first presumptive case of coronavirus, two more cases in the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority area were reported. Two men, both in their 30s, were apparently “exposed to the virus through recent travel,” a Manitoba Health bulletin said. Manitoba’s first case involves a Winnipeg woman in her 40s, who recently travelled to the Philip- pines. Public health officials said pas- sengers on certain flights on March 7-8 may have been exposed to COVID-19: •Philippines Airlines Flight PR466 to Incheon, South Korea,from Ma- nila:rows 48 to 54; MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS • Air Canada Flight AC0064 to Vancouver International Airport Jerson Salas waits for a bus on Portage Avenue Thursday. Salas relies on Winnipeg Transit to get around — which makes social distancing a challenge. See story on A4. from Incheon: rows 30 to 36; •Air Canada Flight AC8624 to Win- nipeg from Vancouver:rows 24 to 29. “People who may have been on these flights in the rows indicated... When real-world drama, dystopian fiction meet are asked to self-isolate and moni- tor themselves for symptoms for 14 days since their last known contact MELISSA MARTIN split off from each other, accord- The novel coronavirus bears many a minute. or exposure,” a Manitoba Health ing to the general disposition of the risks, but it is not a destroyer. In the So hang on to this: most of us will be news release said. OPINION author: maybe, as society shut down, broadest possible view, we— in the OK. Some of us will get very sick, but If someone develops a fever higher humanity collapsed into a seething big sense, as a group — are going to recover; others will not, and we must than 38 C (100.4 F), cough, short- wreck of violence and desperation. get through this OK. Things suspend- do everything possible to reduce that ness of breath, difficulty breathing, VER since I was a girl, I craved Or maybe they held on together, ed now will be renewed; lives paused latter number. But some day this will or any other symptoms at any time the end of days, if only in fiction. built new foundations, and met the will resume. be over, and while we may remember during the 14-day period, they should EI read near every dystopian epilogue with faces turned to the But the coming weeks are still go- 2020 as the year the world lost, we’ll call Health Links at 204-788-8200 or novel I could get my hands on, every sun. ing to hurt, and they’re going to be be looking back from a vantage point 1-888-315-9257 (toll-free), or 911 if it feverish post-apocalyptic vision. That was what transfixed me most, scary, for one reason among many that doesn’t look so different than it is an emergency. Be sure to advise They were all the same story, but those answers to unimaginable ques- that all of a sudden, nothing feels did before. health officials about travel and/or seen through lenses tilted at slightly tions; exploring those was the genre’s right and nothing looks normal. In a This will be an incredible test of exposure history. different angles; the same broad true lesson.