At first, Gaby Gonzalez didn’t take her friend seriously when he began canceling plans because of the new coronavirus. For a while, the 24-year-old even considered meeting up with other friends Saturday in the Lower Greenville neighborhood to drink green beer, despite Dallas’ St. Patrick’s Day parade being canceled.
Then elected officials across North Texas, the rest of the state and the nation began taking the rare step of banning large gatherings and urging individuals — especially those over 60 years old — to stay home and limit interaction with people.
Gonzalez thought of her grandmother, whom she visits often and will turn 80 this month.
“Now I understand the gravity of the situation,” she said.
Her new plan — heeding the advice of health experts — is to stay home and work on her dream of becoming a teacher.
In a few dizzying days, North Texas residents went from being passive onlookers of a global pandemic to active participants in a regional effort to turn back the virus. Many are now worried about their health, the economy and the well-being of their neighbors.
Since Monday, the stock market has whiplashed dramatically, the NBA and other major sports leagues have suspended their seasons and travel has come to a near screeching halt. Doctors’ offices, clinics and grocery stores have been overrun by those who fear the worst.
Public health workers and elected officials are hoping the foundation they’ve laid will be enough to save the region from becoming a hot zone incapable of saving itself. They are urging the public to heed their dire warning to stay home unless absolutely necessary.
“It’s a very intense feeling when you have to be the ultimate decision-maker on this,” said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, who earlier this week issued a prohibition on events with more than 500 people. But echoing his repeated calls to North Texans to comply with his order to slow coronavirus’ spread, he says: “It’s everybody’s job.”
How 10 hours changed Dallas
Jenkins and Dr. Phil Huang, director of the Dallas County health department, long feared “community spread,” or being unable to trace where a newly infected person picked up the virus.
In preparing for the inevitable, they began researching how other cities and counties already hit hard by the virus had reacted.
In an interview Saturday with The Dallas Morning News, Jenkins said he and Huang settled on following San Francisco’s lead. The Bay Area metropolis on Wednesday limited gatherings to fewer than 1,000 individuals.
Early afternoon Thursday, Jenkins was notified by the health department that it was monitoring individuals with no travel history. But a positive test was still hours away from confirming the inevitable.
Jenkins didn’t wait.
In short order, he hosted a conference call with business and civic leaders, including the Dallas Regional Chamber, Visit Dallas and representatives from The Dallas Citizens Council.
“I was told a ban would lead to hourly workers who are living hand to mouth being laid off,” he said. “That weighed heavily on me in making the decision.”
After a phone call with the governor and other health officials, Jenkins said he began calling religious leaders. All were united behind the proposed ban.
In between phone calls and waiting for the test results to come back, Jenkins prayed for wisdom. He worried about how he would keep the virus away from the county’s oldest residents while making sure its youngest, who rely on meals from schools, would continue to be fed if there was a shutdown.
He continued to remind himself to stay calm.
“People just don’t make good decisions when they’re angry,” he said.
At about 5:45 p.m., the health department had confirmed a positive test. It also had completed its interview with the person now living with COVID-19. It was clear the virus was now spreading throughout Dallas County among people who had not traveled outside the region.
About 30 minutes later, Jenkins hosted a conference call with mayors and city managers to update them on the situation. They stood behind Jenkins’ decision and agreed to reconvene at about 8 p.m. to review the written declaration and order.
At Dallas City Hall, Mayor Eric Johnson and his team were reviewing their options. For more than a week, the mayor’s group had been researching what other major cities were doing and had done in the past — all the way back to the Spanish flu of 1918. Part of that work included the mayor’s legal team preparing a brief on how a public health emergency declaration would work.
It was something they believed had not been done in modern history.
While the county was modeling its efforts based on San Francisco, the city looked to New York and Washington state, which had tighter restrictions on gatherings.
On the 8 p.m. phone call with the county’s mayors, Tristan Hallman, the Dallas mayor’s spokesman and policy chief, said Johnson wanted a smaller number: 500.
Jenkins conferred with Huang, who said the smaller, the better.
While there was some initial pushback to the lower threshold, one by one the mayors agreed.
"Alignment is critical in times of public crisis,” Jenkins said.
After settling on the scope of the order, there was just one last detail: sharing it with the public.
Jenkins had asked the mayor to join him for a 10 p.m. news conference to announce the prohibition. But on second thought, he was about to ask nearly 3 million people to limit the size of their gatherings. He asked the mayors — several of them over 60 — to reconsider traveling to the medical district.
At 10 p.m., Jenkins walked across the sixth floor of the Dallas County health department flanked only by Huang and four other officials to address the public.
The mayor would announce his own order minutes later on social media.
By Saturday, Dallas’ libraries as well as recreation, community and cultural centers were closed to the public until next week, if not longer. Some courts also were closed as a result.
By then, 11 coronavirus cases also had been confirmed in Dallas County. The first patient, a 77-year-old man who had traveled to Dallas, was released from the hospital and was “in great shape,” according to a tweet that Jenkins posted on Twitter. The man’s wife, who’d also tested positive, never got sick enough to require hospitalization, he added.
Skeptics and true believers
By 4 p.m. Friday, news of the ban — followed by President Donald Trump’s national emergency — had settled in. The grocery store on Maple Avenue, just blocks from Parkland Memorial Hospital in northwest Dallas, was out of bananas, toilet paper and bottled water.
There are skeptics like James Sims, a 28-year-old truck driver. He said he didn’t think that many people would be killed by the virus, despite health officials warning that anywhere between 200,000 to 1.7 million people could die.
“I’m not that panicky,” he said. “A lot of people will be affected. The people who really have to worry about it are baby boomers. And maybe small children.”
But fellow shopper Desaree Davis, a housekeeper at a nursing home, was taking the threat more seriously.
The 31-year-old mother of two had a grocery cart full of food, juice and cleaning supplies.
“My kids will be out of school,” she said, forecasting how her life is likely to change for the next several weeks. “They have to eat. We have to make sure we keep the germs down.”
Davis said her nursing home is under lockdown, and they’re using new cleaning supplies and more bleach. She’ll adopt some of those cleaning habits at her home.
“I’m still in disbelief that it could spread so rapidly,” she said. “I want to say that this is a small thing and won’t become a big thing.
"We’re going to watch the company we keep. If they’re coughing, we’re turning them around.”
