March 11th, 2020: Covid Explodes on the Scene

CLAY: I wanted to spice in, Buck and I did, a few of the different stories that two years ago began to happen on March the 11th which was the, “Oh, my goodness, everything is falling apart,” with covid almost simultaneously on March the 11th. I feel like they’ll do a documentary called “March the 11th, 2020,” one day.

And this is when it started to really become an issue for a lot of people. Do you remember Oklahoma City was getting ready to play against the Utah Jazz when Rudy Gobert tested positive for covid to become one of the first athletes to test positive, and as the players were out on the court they suddenly walked out and said, “The game is postponed”?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: We were talking earlier in the hour about this was the anniversary, today is. March the 11th of 2020 is when, for many people, covid first exploded onto the scene. President Trump had an address from the Oval Office. he shut down many of the borders. Everything kind of hit the fan all of a sudden on March the 11th that year.

And this was, for many people, the moment when sports shut down. The NBA was preparing a game between Oklahoma City and the Utah Jazz, and this is what happened on the PA system. This was basically from this point over the next 12 hours or so, 18 hours, every sports league in America shut down, which was a prelude to the entire country shutting down. Listen.

CLAY: So that was basically the end of sports, and when sports shut down… We’ll play a couple of more cuts from March the 11th when Trump came out and spoke. This was also suddenly Tom… You remember this, Buck. How crazy it was that March the 11th, Tom Hanks announced that he had tested positive for covid. He was in Australia and was in isolation.

At some point, there will be a gigantic documentary done on everything shutting down in America — and, frankly, I think the fact that we got everything wrong. But March the 11th, this day two years ago, represented the beginning of that process. And that crowd filing out of Oklahoma City was one of the last crowds to exist in mass numbers for basically a year.

BUCK: I remember, Clay, going home from the studio. Downtown is where the WOR NYC studio was. I was doing my show from down there, and I remember going home and realizing that I had to get all of my… It would have been probably two years ago to the day almost now, maybe, give or take a couple of days. I remember going home, realizing that I was gonna have to actually dust off my home radio gear and in real time set it up. I was like, “I don’t think I can go back into the office.”

CLAY: Buck, you were talking about New York City. This is one of the craziest of all things. They started the Big East Tournament, and they stopped the game at halftime. They were like, “Okay, well, we’re gonna try to play the tournament.” At halftime the teams went in, and they were like, “Sorry, we’re shutting down the entire tournament,” literally at halftime.

I remember… You know, I do a daily sports gambling show at the time. They completely canceled our sports gambling show. Buck, I went in the next day. For three months, I did daily sports talk radio — three hours a day — without a single sporting event going on anywhere.

BUCK: How did you do that?

CLAY: Well, I was one of the guys going on arguing we have to find a way to play, ’cause initially, remember, the hope was, “Oh, we’re only gonna be shut down for, like, two weeks,” right, and everything was gonna come back.

BUCK: Yeah. Yeah. Sports kind of went first among many things with the two weeks. I remember this, because just people thinking, “A giant arena full of people that’s like the worst possible thing!” Turns out, actually, no. You get it at home.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: And you get it in close quarters with people that you spend all day long with in an office. It’s actually not going to a sports stadium that was the big thing. They got everything wrong!

CLAY: They got everything wrong.

BUCK: You go back to the earliest rate. Go back two years ago and see what was being said. “Oh, we had a 3% fatality rate, maybe,” and all this stuff was being said that was totally wrong.

CLAY: We have some of those cuts. Some of those cuts we’re gonna play for you during the course of today’s program. All of it was wrong.