I feel like I landed in a different world

Have you ever seen the film, Blast from the Past? In this film a husband and wife secretly build an underground bomb shelter in the 1960s. They recreated their house and stocked the shelter with enough supplies for 30 years. During the Cuban Missile Crisis they seek refuge in the shelter and while they're down there a plane crashes into their house. They think its a bomb and so they set the locks for 30 years and live in the hidden shelter. When they went down, the wife was pregnant and so they raise the baby like his entire life is in the 60s. After 30 years, the now adult child goes out to procure supplies. I feel like I can relate to this character.

The cargo being loaded onto the plane

I was last out of Galena on February 16th, which is the day I flew back to Galena after my grandmother's funeral. In the ensuing months everything has changed. While I haven't lived under the ground and had some idea what life outside the village was like, I really didn't understand it.

The opposite side of the plane after I walked around behind it to board.

We've had a travel ban in Galena for a long time. Initially, I and everyone else stayed separate and distanced, but as time went by people relaxed more and more. With the testing occurring in Galena, but no positive results and the travel ban, most of us were pretty relaxed about everything. One store, Sweetsirs, requires masks and some people chose to wear masks, but I would hang out with friends and go to church and go swimming, etc. Life was really pretty easy. Then I flew to Anchorage via Fairbanks.
During the shutdown, Ravn went backrupt and shut down operations. As a result, it became much more difficult to get to Anchorage. I had to fly Wright's Air Service to Fairbanks, catch a cab to the main terminal and then fly Alaska Airlines to Anchorage. Alaska has greatly reduced their service. They used to have approximately one flight every hour. They day I flew, they had a flight at 8:20 am and one at 8:45 pm. That's it.
So, in Galena everything started off normal. I caught a ride to the airport and then hung out with people working there, related to people working there and people waiting for the flight. When the plane landed the employees went and loaded the cargo and checked luggage. Then they called us over. I walked behind the plane to the stairs and climbed into the plane. I noticed no one was wearing a mask. (There were already passengers on board from other villages. The plane flew Fairbanks to Galena to other villages then back to Galena and back to Fairbanks.) The pilot needed a volunteer to ride in the copilot's seat, so I joined her up there. She wasn't wearing a face covering either.

I got to ride here.

View from the plane, mid-flight.

View from the plane as we approached Fairbanks International Airport.

We landed in Fairbanks and I could start to see the difference. Wright's had removed the coffee maker and supplies. There also markings on the floor indicating six feet. (the only place in Galena with such markings in the post office.) Other than that, this place didn't feel to odd.
I called a Lyft and the driver showed up with a mask. He saw me removing one from my bag and said, "good you have a mask." I have a friend who drives for Uber in California and I know Uber provides her masks for customers who don't have one, so I'm guessing he had a mask for me if I didn't. (I knew about the masks, but I forgot to put on my seatbelt until part-way through the journey).
At the main airport terminal, it really began to feel like a different world. First, the airport was very empty. The Ravn counters were all closed, the boarding area had chairs turned backwards, blocking entrance into the seating area. There was a sign that said the restroom and this boarding area were closed, but I found that very frustrating because 1) the other restroom downstairs was within the roped off area for in-coming passengers to go through health screenings and 2) after I checked-in I went upstairs to go to the gate area and found TSA closed. This meant that until TSA opened there were no restrooms available. Another noticeable difference on the first floor were that the check-in counters that had belonged to United were completely stripped on any United markings and the screens now desplayed information about lost luggage.
After TSA opened I went upstairs to the screening area. I have TSA pre-check, but they had the pre-check and non-precheck in the same lane. The woman who checked boarding passes and ID had me scan my boarding pass myself, but she still held my ID and also made me move my mask out of the way so that she could see my face. She gave me a yellow card indicated that I was pre-check.
The display board (which I could only see after clearning security) only showed 5 departures and 5 arrivals, but upon further inspection, I realized there were two flights expected that day and my flight was the only flight departing still that day. The board was actually showing the flights for the next 24 hours.
Since my flight was the only flight departing that night, the passengers spread out throughout the waiting areas of all four gates. (Fairbanks International is a small airport after all.) The counter had six feet marked and there were two markings for boarding the plane, but that's where the ridiculousness began. I have received many emails from may airlines, including Alaska, claiming all there safety measures. I can tell you they are a joke. They had only two spaces marked out, but we had 80 people lining up to board the plane. They required face coverings and I saw them make a man put his on before boarding the plane, but 75% of the people I saw on the plane were either not wearing their mask properly or not wearing one at all. The plane was full. While it wasn't completely full, many of the pre-Covid 19 flights I have taken were a lot less full. They didn't do a safety demonstration (they spoke the material, but there was no demonstration) and there was no service on board. The flight attendants also hid until everyone was seated. Thus, their procedures may have helped improve the safety of the flight attendants, but given how full it was, I felt there was no protection for me, whatsoever. (They also announced they were cleaning more frequently, but since they didn't say they were cleaning after every flight this didn't even give me a modicum of relief.)

Approach into Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport

When I landed in Anchorage, it felt even weirder. Here I ran across signs directing travelers from out-of-state into inspections. Since I was from in-state I skipped these, but there was no one even giving instructions and I could easily see an inter-state traveler who meant to go the right way missing it. Someone who wanted to not fill out the paperwork and not submit could easily have bypassed all screenings. Downstairs there was a designated area for people getting Covid tests. I skipped that and picked up my checked baggage without issue.
Going places around Anchorage feels so otherworldly, honestly, more so than the airport. I the new barriers and signs about masks and policies. It's always difficult to come from a small community like Galena to a larger one like Anchorage, but this time I feel like the whole world has changed in the four months since I was last here. I always feel a little off-kilter and unsure how to respond. I don't remember things like looking for cart-cleaning stations and thus why my trip makes me think of the movie Blast from the Past. I feel as much as an outsider from a previous time as the son in the movie.

How goods get to the bush (especially during the coronavirus)

I have a very astute five-year old niece with a great memory. She lives in North Carolina and when I visited for Christmas she asked me to visit more often and I explained to her that I couldn't because it takes me five airplanes to get from my house to hers (she was only four at Christmas). She not only has not forgotten that fact, but has asked many questions related to it. If we're Facebook friends then you know that my parents were here not that long ago for the Iditarod Trail Race (a dog sled race from Anchorage to Nome). When my parents arrived home, my niece went with my sister to pick them up and asked them "did it take you five airplanes to get here from Aunt Kristin's?" The answer of course was yes.
Now at this point, you might be thinking, "that's pretty good, but I don't see how it relates to the post topic." Well hang on. Here's where my niece's thinking becomes amazing for a five year old. She heard that they were shutting down flights because of the coronavirus and so she asked my sister, "if it takes five airplanes for Aunt Kristin to get home and they are stopping the planes, how will her stores get food?" Now, I'll admit that that isn't an exact quote, but the idea is the same nonetheless, and was posed by a five year old. It's funny too because my other sister recently asked me essentially the same thing. So I figured I would try to answer this question for everyone.
First, everything in the bush is really expensive and nothing is truly fresh. It takes a long time for goods to get here. 90% of all goods sold in the state of Alaska come through the Port of Anchorage. I recently heard on the news that at least for one of the two main cargo shipping companies, their container ships all come out of Tacoma Washington. That means that for 90% of the goods coming into the state they have to first ship to Tacoma. Then after our goods ship to Anchorage, they then come to Galena by a variety of methods: 1) by air from Anchorage, 2) by land to Fairbanks and then by air to Galena or 3) by land to Nenana and then by barge to Galena. Option three is only available during the summer (approximately June through September depending on the ice on the river) and is how most hazmat items get here including (although probably not actually from Nenana) all of the fuel supply. One of my friends recently told me, "at least gas is cheap now." I replied, "Not here. Our gas is still $6.65 a gallon." This is because the gas here arrived last summer on the barge. We aren't affected by price swings only by the price in the summer (and of course due to the extra shipping our gas is always going to be a lot more expensive than other places). The barge is also how we get vehicles, building supplies, etc.
Since it is winter, my niece's concern is very valid. The City of Galena has prohibited all non-emergency passenger travel (essentially anything that isn't a medical emergency) into and out of the village. This means that we are only receiving cargo planes. Usually, passenger planes also carry mail and cargo, but at this time we are only receiving (to my knowledge) cargo flights. Thus, my dear neice can rest assured we are still getting airplanes with food.
That having been said, for many of us (myself included) we do not rely on the store too much for food. I use the store to pick up little things to finish out recipes and also to buy things that spoil rapidly like eggs (actually eggs have a pretty long shelf life), sour cream, cottage cheese, etc. Otherwise, whenever I go to Anchorage or Fairbanks I come back with 100 pounds of luggage that is usually food. I also mail nonperishable food and other supplies from Anchorage and when I shipped a car out here last summer I had it packed with everything from food to canning jars, paper towels and new pillows (I got stopped by an Alaska State Trooper within two miles of the barge terminal and he asked I was moving). I also have a lot of moose meat in my freezer. A lot of people here hunt and fish to have food for the year. I don't do either (I'm not here during fishing season), but last year was given some salmon by some friends (I at all of that last year) and this year was provided with some moose meat (I don't remember how much but I think it was about 35-40 pounds) in roast and ground form.
 I would guess that I could eat from my current storehouses for 5-6 months if I have to. Now, I really wouldn't want to, at least not without buying more eggs because I like a lot of things that need eggs and also without more vegetables. I have a number of fresh vegetables my parents brought up that I am trying to finish off before they go bad. I also have long lasting things like onions, sweet potatoes, and potatoes as well as some frozen vegetables, but I don't have my usual access to fresh fruit a vegetables - school lunch. I usually eat school lunch which in addition to having often fantastic made from scratch meals, also includes a salad and fresh fruit bar everyday (assuming the cargo plane with the supplies comes in which doesn't always happen). By getting plenty of fresh fruit and veggies at lunch I don't worry as much when I run out of them at home in between my trips to town because I know I'm still getting something everyday. I make all my own bread, pizza dough etc. and in a worst case scenario situation have enough flour, yeast, peanut butter and homemade raspberry jam that I could survive a couple of months on just those items (although I sure hope I never have to do that). Many people here are the same. I know a lot of families that make trips to town in the summer to buy a year's worth of supplies and then drive it to the barge in Nenana.
Other people get supplies in different manners. We all use Amazon, although we don't get two-day prime delivery, ours usually takes 1-2 weeks. Sometimes as long as 4. (I had a Shutterfly order that took 7 weeks to arrive). Right now Amazon is showing that what few items I can buy (a lot of Amazon stuff won't ship here and as you all know at this time a lot of stuff isn't available on Amazon) will arrive at the beginning of May. Unfortunately, those estimates are usually a week to 10 days off so I suspect a lot of things won't arrive until mid-May (here's hoping I'm wrong on that). Some people order from Fred Meyer (a store that sells everything like a Walmart Supercenter, but is owned by Kroger) in Fairbanks and then pay Fred Meyer a fee to deliver it to an airline that will then fly it out here. After it is delivered to the airline they receive an email and then call the airline and pay the shipping for the item. Others do in fact rely on the store. We have two stores in town and the last time I went shopping with about a week ago for eggs and the price had gone up. That store usually has much cheaper eggs than the other and a few days prior I had bought 18 eggs for $4.93 after tax. Last week, the store only had eggs by the dozen and they were $5.04 after tax (the other store's eggs have regularly been $5.05 for a dozen after tax so I guess this doesn't count as price gouging). I hope for the people that don't have a storehouse of food, that the stores are able to stay stocked in food. So far, the Port of Anchorage says things are still flowing without issue there and so hopefully our supply chain will remain undisrupted because ours is a very precarious supply chain.

Coronavirus

I've decided to write a blog about this virus because I have a very unusual perspective. While, I don't currently live in China I not only have a lot of friends who do, but I also lived through the last coronavirus outbreak in China.
I first moved to China is August of 2002. In January 2003, I traveled to Hong Kong for a retreat. Little did I know, at the end of 2002 a coronavirus that became known as SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) had jumped from bats, to civet cats to humans. This leap to humans occurred a an exotic animal marked in Guangdong province (also know in English as Canton). It was completely covered up by the Chinese until the outbreak reached Hong Kong. Matter of fact, living in China I was under the belief for a long time that this virus had begun I Hong Kong rather than on the mainland (Guangdong province borders Hong Kong and many people from Guangdong travel regularly to Hong Kong because foreign products are available there without the heavy import tariffs found on the mainland).
As the virus continued to spread and sicken many more people, the government downplayed its severity. People were led to believe that it wasn't serious and that the outbreak was much smaller than it really was. We lived on in peaceful oblivion.
Eventually, SARS began to kill people in other countries and the Chinese government had to admit to the scope of the problem. At this point, things got crazy. I was teaching English at an English training  center run by an iron and steel company (my students were engineers, accountants, human resource officers and so forth for the company) and we were first told to wear masks whenever we went out and to wash our hands. Bathrooms across China began to have soap provided (you may be reading this and going, "what? No soap?" Most public restrooms in China didn't have soap and after the outbreak passed the soap was once again removed. Hand dryers were also installed (after SARS passed these were disconnected - paper towels, in general and rarely been available in China). I remember my students and I went out to a local park one day. When we returned we lined up to wash our hands in the bathroom. As he was waiting in line on of my adult students spit on the floor (spitting on the floor, the sidewalk, just about anywhere was once a big part of life in China, but in preparation for the 2008 Beijing Olympics the government worked hard to curb this practice and while it still happens, it isn't as common as it once was). I was in shock and I remember scolding him for it (kind of funny since at only 24 my students were all older than me)
As the outbreak worsened, so did the controls. Eventually, the iron and steel company suspended classes. I was instructed not to go shopping. For grocery shopping I must wear a mask and it would be better if I shopped at outdoor markets rather than supermarkets so that I would have less exposure to people. I was also told not to take the bus or go in other people's houses, but as long as they weren't sick I was allowed to have visitors to mine. I was given a thermometer and required to measure my temperature daily.
Life quickly got boring. Mostly my only company was my 67 year-old teammate. A wonderful woman, but not someone I had a lot in common with. Over time I developed a schedule. I would get up early in the morning around 6 am and go play badminton outside with the neighbors before they went to work. Then I would come in and read until lunchtime (which my teammate cooked) Then I would sleep all afternoon. I would get up around the time my neighbors would come home and I would go out and talk with people until dark. We would stand at a distance and all wear masks, but it really helped my Chinese to spend a couple of hours every evening talking to people. When it got dark out, I would go inside and use AOL messenger to chat (in text form) with friends back in the States (even though it was 2003 I only had dial-up Internet). Rinse and repeat.
My classes were canceled for a month around the end of that month I had a German friend come to visit. He decided that having this opportunity was a once-in-a-lifetime chance and so he didn't cancel his trip. His flight into China was so empty that everyone on the plane had an entire row of seats to themselves. I told my foreign affairs officer with the training center that I had a friend coming to visit from New Zealand (he's German, but he was studying in New Zealand at the time), but I didn't learn for two years that there was a translation problem. When I told my foreign affairs officer that my friend was a physicist he mixed that English word up with physician and translated it to the bosses as a doctor friend. It turns out that the iron and steel company didn't put him under a mandatory quarantine because they thought, "if the western doctor isn't worried, neither are we."
By the time my friend arrived, it felt like things were improving. While he was there my teammate, a student and my friend and I traveled by public bus to a monastery. He and I went on a bike ride with a Chinese friend of mine and then we went out to eat afterwards (we went out for a Chinese hotpot which was the only type of restaurant open because in a hot pot you get a boiling broth that you use to cook the food at your table). However, towards the end of his stay, I received a phone call from the nonprofit organization in the States that I was teaching through. They had decided to cancel the rest of our program that year. Most of that decision was because we had had less than half of the program and there were no longer enough weeks left for the students to take enough classes to receive their certificates. As long as we remained under 50% of the course-time the students would be able to take the course again.
Despite the reason for canceling the rest of our program, they wanted us out within the week. Through email, I used a Beijing-based travel agent to book our flights out. For my flight, I had to spend a night in a hotel in Seoul, South Korean. There were so few flights I couldn't make the trip from Beijing to North Carolina in one day (my family wouldn't let me go to Alaska until I had been out of China for at least two weeks because SARS affected the elderly more and they didn't want me anywhere near my grandmother until I was clear of the incubation period). However, when our foreign affairs officer went to an agent to buy our plane tickets to Beijing, he discovered another problem: the flights from Baotou to Beijing had been reduced to 1 per day. My teammate's flight was schedule for the very next day and so she had to fly out that evening (I believe the flight departed at 5). He tried to call us from the agent's office, but two of our students were contacting all our other students from the entire year to plan a goodbye lunch for the next day. One was using the phone in my apartment and the other was using the phone in her apartment. After trying, unsuccessfully, to reach us for several minutes he began biking to our apartments as fast as he could. He got there completely out of breath and could barely sputter out that she had to leave on a flight that was departing in only a couple of hours (and the airport was a 30 minute drive away). He arranged transportation to the airport while the students and I helped my teammate pack at lightning speed. When she got to the airport and had a problem with an item in her bag she had no idea where it was because she hadn't packed. We got her to the airport about 45 minutes before departure time, but she made her flight (Back then you had to go to a separate counter and pay an airport tax. Then take the receipt to the check-in counter, but they let her check-in while our foreign affairs officer went to pay the tax).
That night I went to a goodbye dinner with the training center leaders and the next day I went to lunch with the students. The staff at the restaurant were all wearing masks, but we were not. Looking back I think its funny that the last things I did before leaving because of SARS was go out to two different restaurants with large groups of people.
I also had to leave Baotou a day before my flight because of the flight situation (there were trains running, but since it was a 14 hour train ride, they were deemed too risky). We arranged for my nonprofit's staff in Beijing to arrange a hotel for me. Unfortunately, when we were approaching Beijing there were thunderstorms and my flight was diverted to Tianjin. We sat on the ground for about an hour in Tianjin and the uncle of the girl traveling beside me let use his cellphone to notify them of my late arrival. I then took a taxi to the campus of the school were these staff members taught. My flight had put me beyond curfew when the gates to their school would be locked so they had to get permission to be let back onto campus after taking me to my hotel (I arrived before that, but too late for them to take me to my hotel and return in time). The next morning, I took a taxi to the airport and departed China. I had a hotel in Seoul paid for by the airline and then I continued to Dallas. My flight from Dallas to Greensboro was delayed by two hours and by the time we departed I was so exhausted I slept through take-off. All told, it took me three-days to make it from Baotou, Inner Mongolia China to North Carolina.
In some ways my experience was very similar to what is happening now and in many ways it is different. During SARS, all but one of the gates into my apartment complex was locked at all times. I have friends in China who describe a similar situation today. School was canceled. This was announced during a Chinese holiday and schools are not yet schedule to be back in session, but it has already been announced they will be fettered. When I was there during SARS there was not much in the way of social media and the government covered things up longer. Internet access was also much scarcer and things like doing online classes were not a possibility. I have friends who will be expected to teach their classes online starting from the day school was supposed to start. SARS couldn't infect people until they were symptomatic, this new virus appears to be contagious for days (or longer) before a person displays any symptoms. SARS infected about 8000 people in total. The numbers for this virus are already over 5000 and it is still early. At this point in the SARS outbreak China was still covering it up.  The good news is this virus seems to be less fatal, but since it takes people a long time to die, that may not actually be accurate. During SARS many patients need ventilators and the hospitals in China ran out (this was a big reason my family wanted me back home. If I contracted the virus I could get better care at home).
Many people have asked me what I thought about the quarantine of Wuhan and other cities in China. I don't think it will be effective at all. China is a country very concerned with face (I usually write nothing along these lines for fear of having my visa revoked or not being issued future visas). During SARS they lost a lot of face in the global community. I believe these large quarantines and the shut down of everything from festivals to trains to work units (most companies have been ordered not to re-open after the Chinese New Year holiday) is more about this then actually being a useful method. After all, they announced they were going to shut down transportation to Wuhan more than 24 hours before they did so. Many people, who may have contracted the virus, fled. Patient's have been found all over China and many western sources believe the infection rates are actually much higher than reported (they believe that this is due to lack of test kits). I'm afraid China's economy is going to tank, but I'm not that worried about the virus harming my friends. From what I've seen this coronavirus is not nearly as deadly as the flu, which kills thousands of people each year in the U.S. alone, but it is highly contagious and the fear levels are high. I try to reassure my friends living in China. I don't think it will really turn into a deadly outbreak like the Spanish flu or the plague have in centuries past. I do think they are going to have some scary times because there is a lot of panic and hype. I honestly think the downplaying and lack of social media during SARS made it at least emotionally easier to handle (I am not saying that I agree with the cover-up, just that the hype on this one is scaring people unnecessarily). To any friends in China who made read this: stay strong. Look for routine because the destruction of daily routines is part of what makes this so scary. From one coronavirus outbreak survivor to future coronavirus outbreak survivors I tell you: You can make it through this. It really will be okay.