escalated. We went from zero cases in the US a couple weeks before our trip, to around 20 cases (but all out west) the week before our trip, to the day we left jumping up to 100 US cases, but none in Florida where we were going. That's why we didn't decide to cancel the trip (along with the fact that at this point in the pandemic airlines, hotels, amusement parks etc weren't doing free cancellations yet - we would have just been out thousands with no recourse.)

So we flew down (on a full plane) there March 8th not worried at all, just using a lot of hand sanitizer. Each day at there that week things were starting to escalate. You'd hear rumors that there was a case in Florida, the numbers went up from 100 to 300 or so per day. There wasn't any info out about "social distancing" or masks yet so you'd be in those long lines at the park just constantly telling the kids to keep their hands off of handrails and constantly spraying hand sanitizer.

But then that Thursday when the NBA cancelled games it got real. I think right after that the case were up to like 2-3000 per day and that was with minimal actual testing (again we didn't realize this at the time.) The flight home was really where we were worried, but by then everyone was cancelling flights, the plane was maybe only 20% full.

Looking back I'm really glad we still did the trip because we had a great family vacation right before full lockdown. We usually do several trips a year so it was good that we had one big vacation before missing out on our summer trips. But also looking back I guarantee that the case numbers were WAY higher than we knew so I'm sure we were in line - back to back - with Covid positive people, so it's really fortunate that none of us got sick. Especially during that early time of the pandemic when hospitals really didn't know how to treat it.