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@BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
I was aware of COVID-19 since November 2019. As a comparison, the first MSM news in this regard appeared somewhere around January. I got to know about it beforehand thanks to... well, sources.
For context, I was, at the time, residing in a hostel-like shelter. And I'm Brazilian. Brazil has this nationwide event, Carnaval, something I dislike because I always got a repulsion when it comes to overly crowded places and parties, two known traits of carnivals, meaning that a pandemic would just make things worse. So I tried to warn my neighbors and everyone around me. While they didn't call me crazy, at least not explicitly/directly, they dismissed my warnings with the typically Brazilian way of thinking: "relaxa, Deus é brasileiro" ("calm down, God is Brazilian"). During the carnival days, I was the only weirdo to stay in the shelter: literally everyone else went "partying".
The... sources... I used to follow, started telling about the likelihood of a full lockdown quarantine (even before WHO announced the pandemic), and how that could mean closed grocery stores, food out of stock or extremely rationed. This, alongside having watched all those (fake) videos where someone was puking red liquid inside a train (allegedly because of COVID-19), made me full panicked at the time so I began stockpiling rice, beans, noodles, sugar, salt, mineral water, all inside a wardrobe in my bedroom (the house was shared among the co-living, except for the bedrooms, which were individual). I'm extremely slim and I don't eat much, so this means my stockpiling wasn't just for me: I was thinking about my dismissive neighbors too, I was stocking food for them, should they need it.
Meanwhile, Brazilian MSM was only telling us about "suspected cases" before announcing the first Brazilian confirmed case conveniently during the last carnival night. Days later, March 11th (oh, how can't I get to forget this hauntingly specific number... 11.3 33), WHO announced the pandemic.
What happened after that, especially after the first lockdown mandates, was quite curious: I began calming down (bc, well, it happened, it finally arrived as I was told, there was nothing I could do, so, whatever) while all my neighbors went full panicked. I remember seeing 'em rushing back from work, visibly scared, to prepare their laptops for WFH, while I was calmly doing remote DevOps job the way I was used to years prior to the pandemic. As someone who's used to indoors since I was born, I tried to counsel and help them, talk with them, handing 'em food and water, etc. But they went so, SO panicked, that I once witnessed, hearing from afar from inside my bedroom, what almost became a murder case inside the house during a fight between them bc of their disagreements on whether they should stay home alongside some tantrum involving romantic jealousy.
Six years later, I still remember these days so clearly... Can't get to forget it or let it go: it was never gone.
@BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
Oh, I also used to be in the last semester of a compsci degree back then. I couldn't help but to continue attending the classes, so I rushed to purchase PFF2 face masks the very next day after the carnival ended. Prices went through the roof because, seemingly, many people were trying to do the same, purchasing masks like it was the end of the world (and it turns out, it really was, this world was never the same again), alongside the low stock (because masks were already demanded worldwide). I managed to purchase a pack of seven masks that was returned from someone who decided to give up on their trip to Italy on that exact Monday, and I used it to go to the university. I was the only one wearing a mask across the entire university. Colleagues pejoratively nicknamed me "coroninha" ("lil corona(virus)") and I didn't care. A few weeks later, the uni temporarily shut down classes.