March 13, 2020: The Start of the Covid Pandemic

My Mom and I had gone shopping at the Woodland Mall in Grand Rapids.    There were hardly any people in the mall. I took pictures of the nearly empty mall, as I knew this would rarely happen.   I wasn't worried about Covid across the world, as I didn't think it would affect me. 

Mom and I also went to the Old Goat Restaurant in Grand Rapids which was delicious.

Then, we went to the Leigh store by Talbots on Burton St.    I was wandering around the upscale store.    My coworker, Angie Cregg, called me on the phone to tell me something big was going to happen at work.      She swore me to secrecy.     We were texting back and forth.   Then, the big email came out from the Administrator saying the County Offices would be closing the following Monday for 2 weeks, as the Covid disease was starting to hit Michigan and people were not sure about this new disease.     At first, I thought it was so awesome to not have to go to work for 2 weeks.   Another week went by and we were told only essential services would be open which included the Sheriff's department which made me so mad, as I saw all of the other departments closed.  I didn't think it was fair to us.   In the beginning, Angie and I worked two days a week.   This happened for about 2 weeks.   Then, we got further emails asking us to be at work every day, but we couldn't be at work the same time.    It was one week on and one week off.   Each of us had to do the other person's jobs while we were in the office and I thought there is no way we could do that with the amount of customers we had in our office.   Angie was doing the Freedom of Information Requests and impounds and I was doing the criminal histories, jail files, and background checks.      

We were given this special spray to spray down everything in the office which we did everyday.    I still wasn't too worried about this unknown disease.    On the other hand, my coworker Angie was deathly afraid of getting it, so she wanted our mail to be put in different rooms of the office each day and then we would give it to the inmates.   I thought that was such a dumb thing to do.  I wasn't going to spray down the mail and everything and move mail to a different room each day, but we did it for a short time.   

The Governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, would give updates on the TV about the number of new positive Covid cases, as well as the number of deaths.