[Adrienne Arsenault] Consider what Canada looked like on the morning of March 11th.
It was the week before March break in most of the country.
Schools open, planes flying, streets busy.
Canada's first COVID death had been a few days earlier.
Total cases here, 100.
Total cases in the U.S., a thousand.
Total cases in Italy, 10,000.
That country, the advance warning of what was coming.
Maybe that morning COVID-19 felt distant to your lives.
That would change by nightfall.
That day the WHO declared it a pandemic.
We're deeply concerned.
[Adrienne] Then everything moved quickly and strangely.
An NBA game at around 8:40 pm was abruptly cancelled.
[Announcer] The game tonight has been postponed.
[Adrienne] Everyone ordered out because Utah Jazz player Rudy Gobert
had tested positive.
He by the way is a player provocatively touching all the reporters recording devices two days earlier.
A joke he said.
Not funny.
Over on another channel, the former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin
was rapping as a pink bear on The Masked Singer.
My fellow Americans.
[Adrienne] A performance interrupted in the U.S. by a presidential statement around 9:00 p.m.
A travel ban from Europe.
This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history.
[Adrienne] And just as the world was digesting.
A quick reminder anyone can get the virus.
Tom Hanks and his wife declared they had COVID-19.
Strange night.
The penny had officially dropped.
Consider the pace of the next few days.
March 12th, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau test positive for coronavirus.
The NHL suspends the season.
And Canada was getting to know the names, faces and measured, compassionate thoughts
of the medical officers of health.
Clearly worried about what was coming.
And I just know how stressful it is for our healthcare system
for my colleagues and for families that are dealing with this.
[Adrienne] The come home then stay put message
started coursing through the country on Friday the 13th of all days.
Today my advice is to postpone or cancel all non-essential travel outside of Canada.
Well nearly half a million Canadians abroad started working on trying to get home.
Schools and businesses here started shutting down.
For a moment, at least for the kids.
The idea of canceled classes felt like a novelty.
I get to go to my grandparents.
[Adrienne] Anxiety certainly crept in for the adults.
Monday, March 16th.
A declaration that would have seemed unthinkable weeks earlier.
We will be denying entry to Canada to people who are not Canadian citizens or permanent residents.
[Adrienne] And the economic costs of COVID-19 were moving in hard.
The Dow Jones lost nearly 13 percent.
The biggest one-day drop since the stock market crash of 1987.
Did we grasp a few weeks ago that the economy would get so bad so fast?
That the infection numbers would climb so fast?
That Monday morning Canada, had 425 cases.
The United States, 4,000.
Italy, 25,000.
Did we realize on a St. Patrick's Day without parades and a schedule without sports
that we were learning how to cheer for a new team?
This was the week we first got out the pots and pans for the health care workers.
Think of what that ritual has become.
That's the week COVID-19 became a prism through which we now look at everything.
Science soared in respect.
Traffic, where'd that go?
And generosity?
Maybe we always knew that well was deep in Canada.
One COVID legacy let's hope lingers.