What a difference a week makes.
Just a week ago, I joined presidential hopeful Joe Biden on a campaign stop in Michigan. The location was a community medical centre in the western part of the state. A smiling Biden – himself a full 77 years of age – toured the facility, meeting medical staff and patients.
He joined journalists in a meeting room that had been turned into an ad hoc press centre. Nowhere was there any sign of precautionary measures to combat coronavirus – no hand sanitiser, no information signs, no indication of a growing public health emergency.
Neither did the former vice-president take any questions nor mention coronavirus during his press remarks, which focused entirely on his healthcare plan ahead of November’s election.
Trump's stilted, confusing 10-minute address raised more questions than answers, but it did have the effect of waking America up to the crisis
A week later things are very different.
The US has gone from being a country largely in denial about the threat of the coronavirus outbreak, to a nation on edge.
While localised cases of coronavirus in Washington state and a stranded cruise ship off the coast of California did garner media attention in recent weeks, life had been continuing as normal.
After leaving Michigan I flew to New York to cover the planned visit of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. Though the airports were slightly quieter than usual, Times Square was as packed as ever. The opening night of Riverdance in Radio City Music Hall did have some empty seats, but the concept of social distancing had yet to hit America's shores.
The turning point in the United States was Donald Trump's address to the nation last Wednesday night when he announced curbs on travel from the EU Schengen countries. His stilted, confusing 10-minute address raised more questions than answers, but it did have the effect of waking America up to the crisis, much as Varadkar's national address the following morning did in Ireland.
But even still, journalists were permitted to cram into the small Oval Office for 30 minutes on Thursday morning as the Taoiseach met Trump. Two days later the White House began taking temperatures of journalists entering the complex, with at least one reporter ejected due to an elevated temperature.
The past few days has seen a major shift in attitude and practices.
With an absence of leadership from the Trump administration – the president told the nation on Sunday to “relax ... it all will pass”, despite having declared a national emergency on Friday – individual states have taken their own measures, an approach that fits with the federal system of government in the United States.
Twelve states have announced some form of school closures. This includes in New York city, the largest public school system in the country with 1.1 million students. Massachusetts has restricted social gatherings to 25 people, and has ordered restaurants to offer only delivery and takeout.
Illinois became the latest state to shut restaurant and bars, but not before thousands of revellers took to the bars of Chicago to mark St Patrick’s Day on Sunday despite the cancellation of the parade. Supermarkets across the country are reporting long queues and empty shelves as toilet paper anxiety takes hold. Airports have been struggling to cope with hordes of returning passengers before the start of the travel ban.
Here in Washington DC, the daily churn of government life is beginning to close down. Many employees have been advised to work from home, and the metro is running at reduced capacity. Remarkably, the US Senate has cancelled its planned recess this week and is in session – despite the elderly age of many of its members. Restaurants and bars this weekend were emptying, and all schools have been closed.
Another visible industry in this hyper-health conscious city – the ubiquitous gyms, yoga and barre studios – is also bowing to the inevitable, and announcing closures. Instead, the cherry-blossomed thoroughfares near the National Mall are replete with joggers and walkers, as the adjacent Smithsonian museums lie empty.
As Americans hunker down, cable news is running non-stop coronavirus coverage. Top national immunologist Anthony Fauci has become the face of the crisis for a terrified nation. "I've said many times, and I'll repeat it – the worst is, yes, ahead for us," he said at Sunday's press briefing. Trump, who had just said that the virus was something we have "tremendous control" over, had already left the podium.
For Americans facing a colossal lack of testing kits as coronavirus spreads, the desperation is not so much a desire for a cure or a vaccine, but a need for facts – a scarce commodity in Trump’s America.
