On February 19, Zach Edler and more than a dozen other people set out on a twenty-five-day adventure: rafting the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.
When they left, Bernie Sanders had a double-digit lead heading into that night’s Democratic debate in Las Vegas. Cases of coronavirus were showing signs of decline in mainland China.
On March 14, when they pulled their rafts out of the river, a man who worked for a rafting company asked them, “Have you been in contact with the outside world?”
They had not.
Except for a few one-way text messages sent to their families on a satellite phone, they had not heard anything in more than three weeks. No cell service or news. Not even a passing word from fellow travelers.
Then the man told them what they didn’t know: coronavirus had exploded in the US and around the world. Italy was under lockdown; the stock market was plummeting; professional sports were suspended; many schools were closed. Tom Hanks had the virus.
‘How’d we go from paradise to hoarding rice and beans?’
“Half of us thought he was joking,” Edler said. “It’s like, here’s an old river guide pulling our leg. I mean, I’ve heard some pretty big tales out on the river.”
However, as a nurse named Sarah Knaack said, “I think the girls believed it right away. He said it in this real ominous way but then he just walked away to see about lunch and we were left nervously joking with ourselves totally unsure what was going on.”
The group packed up their rafts and gear and drove out. Ninety minutes later, they picked up a cell signal and the texts poured in. “It was this feeling of disbelief,” Ms. Knaack said. “It’s like, ‘How’d we go from paradise to hoarding rice and beans?’”
Another rafter searched Amazon on her phone for toilet paper and saw it wasn’t…
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