I walked past the authorities in hazmat suits and masks, only to be motioned to proceed down a short hall to be screened again, this time in a small cubicle. After handing over bags and passport, explaining my entire situation over again—with liberal use of hand gestures and several attempts at finding a phrasing that translated—I was waved on (perhaps not entirely without exasperation), and I stepped into the second busiest airport in China…and total, vast, unrelenting emptiness.
So how, in 2020, Year of the Novel Coronavirus, did I end up in Shanghai Pudong International Airport on March 1st (or February 29th, depending on your position relative to that hazard to any iconized boat or plane traveling across a map of the Pacific, known as the International Date Line)?
Well, it wasn’t totally by accident. But neither was it entirely planned. Like many near-escapes from disaster, it began with events that are easy to forecast, but hard to predict. And some human error. And a bit of human obstinance too.
I was vacationing in Vietnam, that glorious land of phô, words with confusing diacritics, and a seemingly boundless supply of captivatingly terrifying motor scooter stunts played off as everyday life. I had a blast.
Mixed into that blast, was a sprinkling of half-hearted attention to the news (there was a mild impeachment issue going on in my home country, which I found to be fascinating in the way watching a monkey try to operate a flamethrower is fascinating). But mixed into the news were spartan discussions of an exciting new entry into the field of apocalypse contenders: the novel coronavirus. Ooooh!
I listened to intermittent updates on this emerging pathogen and thought, hmm, this seems like people are more worried than necessary; this sounds like the equivalent of another flu strain. Yep, I was one of those people.
And that easy-to-dismiss distance (even though I was far closer to the epicenter of Wuhan than most people I knew), combined with my vacation mindset, lulled me into a false sense of security. I neglected the emergency response side of my brain, tickling my subconscious and saying, “Hey, we should be ready for this to become a big deal, just in case…”
I did think more deeply about the outbreak from time to time, especially as the World Health Organization (WHO) elevated their concern in February and the US began to institute border control measures. But my mind was focused less on the potential for a major pandemic, and more on the little details of prevention and personal protection.
I thought about masks and how they potentially provided a pathway for transmission (from touching a contaminated outer side of the mask), and this made me feel more comfortable not wearing one. I thought about how I was mostly outside, not on crowded trains, and I felt safer. I saw all the security guards at big buildings taking temperatures as people walked in, and I thought it was overkill. In short, I was entirely too blasé about the whole thing, and my own personal preparedness.
And the virus continued to spread outside China.
Then I debated with others over the United States’ reaction. Where was the balance point with sealing ports of entry to the US? Certainly, screening was appropriate. But what about restricting travel to the US from Wuhan? China? Asia? Globally? I discussed the challenge of planning for an event like this, where you may not know you’re truly in the midst of a disaster until it’s too late. And yet, on a personal level, I continued to ignore the risk. True, I wasn’t being overly paranoid, but I was also being under-cautious.
The WHO declared pandemic status.
As the end of my trip approached, there was some debate about whether or not to buy different return tickets. China Eastern Airlines (which our round-trip tickets were purchased through) was no longer allowed to operate in Vietnam. But they were flying out of Bangkok. Could we still keep our originally planned flight from BKK to Shanghai to Los Angeles?
Then our flight was changed. Pushed back several days. What about flying out through Taiwan instead? Or Seoul?
Then Seoul had a major outbreak.
Okay, so maybe we should suck it up and buy expensive tickets for a 37-hour flight through Taiwan back to the US…
And here I’d like to take a second to say how fortunate I am that purchasing a different flight out was even an option. I don’t have much money, but many people who face disasters have none at all. The fact that part of my personal disaster planning and response process involved examining the option of booking a whole new return flight indicates I enjoy a luxury in my disaster planning not everyone has. Indeed, one that the vast majority do not. I certainly can’t just fly away from any disaster that occurs, but I do have the resources to plan and prepare to be very resilient. The economics of disaster preparedness, resiliency, and the socioeconomic factors that play into this is something Sam and I will absolutely be discussing in great detail in the coming weeks.
For my part, I never expected to be engaging in some accidental plague tourism (although it certainly led to emptier beaches and cheaper hotels, which wasn’t all bad). But I had planned for everything from minor medical issues (the highly predictable blisters or food poisoning) to some unforeseen need to leave early or even evacuate. So I had budgeted enough emergency money for a last-minute international flight for me and my partner. COVID-19 caught me by surprise, but I had planned for the similar, likely consequences of many disasters (including having to fly out early), so I was not exactly unprepared.
Ultimately, buying new tickets remained a backup plan, and my original flight through Shanghai was rescheduled but stayed on the flight boards. Whew. Now I just had to survive a connection through one of the busiest airports in Southeast Asia (Bangkok), and a 7-hour layover in an airport a few hundred miles from the epicenter of the outbreak (Shanghai Pudong).
I also used other resources I happened to have on hand. Part of planning is adapting; you gotta use what you have, whether it’s a full spacesuit or a single bandana.
In this case, I nailed it.
Not purposefully. I can’t stress that enough. This was sheer Cosmo Kramer-level good fortune. I had previously been living in California. Wildfires abounded. They might as well have been Starbucks, they were so common. Seriously, like half that state is the interior of Mount Doom. To be on the safe side, I kept some N95 masks in my backpack. My plan was to use them in the event I had to deal with smoke during an evacuation in California—or for a Halloween costume.
After moving out of California, I forgot to take those N95s out of my pack before starting my vacation travels. I noticed them as we were flying over the Pacific and thought, Huh, that’s where those were. I should have left them in my car. And then I found myself pulling them out in Vietnam.
So, that was how I found myself being directed through health screening checkpoints in Shanghai’s massive international airport wearing a well-traveled N95 mask while trying to explain my whole travel and health history in that gesture-laden universal language of communicating “please, I’ll do whatever you need me to, I’m not trying to be difficult, but I stupidly came here without learning the language beyond how to ask for coffee and the bathroom.”
Finally, after clearing the health screening, having temperatures read by infra-red thermometers multiple times (including on the plane), and all the standard security screenings, I stepped past a final cluster of space-suited airport and health workers and into the emptiest airport I have ever seen.
Shanghai Pudong airport is massive. Like several big malls packed onto a train station. And in those thousands and thousands of square meters, with multiple stories connected by seemingly unending escalators, there were maybe a couple hundred passengers. And probably a higher staff-to-passenger ratio than had ever been pictured by the airport’s designers.
I can’t emphasize how empty this airport was—or how clean; the only staff there were either doing health screenings or cleaning every surface in sight. For the paradoxical reason of its proximity to the outbreak, and subsequent near-shutdown, that airport was probably the safest place to be during the outbreak.
Travel was being slowed and stopped as I waited at the airport. In Bangkok, I watched flights through China drop off the boards like old post-it notes. Then I saw the end results first-hand. Two flights scheduled for the whole afternoon in China’s second busiest airport. Whoa.
Ultimately, I caught one of the few (“last” would sound better, but let’s not go overboard on the hyperbole) flights out of Shanghai, just before the peak of the coronavirus pandemic in Asia. Things went surprisingly according to my original travel plans. Some inadvertent preparedness (having N95s with me) paid off, and it was good to know I had a backup plan and the ability to purchase alternate tickets in the event things really went off the rails.
Planning for disasters, whether for personal resilience or community, state, national, or international response, is vital and nuanced. Chance will always play a part in how hard a disaster hits you personally, but your ability to adapt, remain calm, constantly reevaluate your situation and risks, and employ all your resources as effectively as possible will help keep you resilient in the face of any disaster.
