r/interestingasfuck • u/imfrom_mars_ • 3h ago

An empty highway in the spring of 2020 in Los Angeles.

Post image
16.6k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

501 comments sorted by

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u/IsChristianAwake 3h ago

Don’t think we will ever see something like this ever again.

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u/Recreational-Sin 3h ago

Let’s all fucking hope not.

Realistically, we will and it will be orders of magnitude worse.

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u/Lulullaby_ 3h ago

Exactly!! Humanity isn't great at memorizing things. We'd do the same thing again as early as 2090

Just look at all the other things repeating itself currently

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u/treez2047 3h ago

As early as 2050 u mean, with our history....

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u/Bloodyfinger 3h ago

Lol we would do the exact same fucking thing in 2027.

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u/SexyMonad 2h ago

Well, we did do the same thing in 2024 as we did in 2016. So I feel you are very justified in your belief.

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u/Lordnerble 1h ago

hey and its orders of magnitude worse! thats pretty neat

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u/anivex 24m ago

SCIENCE

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u/Regumate 3h ago

What’s the over under on 2030? Hypothetically speaking of course…

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u/Mike_Kermin 1h ago

If we have a world health emergency now, it would not be good.

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u/veringer 1h ago

2090

That's so optimistic. We're speed running the ecological, economic, and social collapse. As more systems fail, the cascade of disasters can happen fast. Explore what it might look like if/when Lake Mead and Lake Powell empty out. That's likely to occur well before 2090. And that's just one potential failure point among many that are interrelated.

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u/nashbrownies 46m ago

There may be a time, as my grandparents saw, of masses of interstate refugees. Think mass exodus from the Dust Bowl across the US.

It's so naively hopeful of me that maybe us abandoning or downsizing our presense in places that are absolutely not able to sustain large human populations, will have long term benefits.

Perhaps as we shift population centers, maybe after a time, even a generation or two, we could see struggling rural areas with temperate(ish) weather see a revival. West Virginia, Ohio, Rural Michigan, places that would benefit not from just increases in population, but commerce, industry, etc relocating.

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u/JayteeFromXbox 2h ago

Don't worry, we've rat fucked the environment so hard as a species that the world population will likely be lower by the time it happens again, so it might not be as bad in the numbers sense, but it still could be bad in the percentage of the population sense!

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u/Trawling_ 2h ago

That’s pretty optimistic to think it won’t happen again within most of our lifetimes

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u/SpiritMountain 58m ago

Climate change is going to make this happen in the next few years. Maybe decade, but it will be within our lifetime. LA is in a bad spot with the upcoming water wars.

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u/ropean 3h ago

Walking Dead vibes if something like Ebola were to start spreading through casual contact. Shudder

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u/theromingnome 1h ago

I mean it was pretty good for the environment.

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u/BalkeElvinstien 2h ago

Well the empty highway part hopefully. Itd be nice if we could have like a "dont drive today and we'll give you a day off" holiday

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u/MagnusRottcodd 3h ago

Well, https://outbreaktracker.live/ebola

With so many infected it is a matter of time before it mutates -maybe to something airborne.

But with Robert F. Kennedy Jr in White House it will be just fine! =)

/S

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u/cynicaldotes 1h ago

Yeah sorry buddy I know you want it to be so scary but ebola will never be a problem in first world countries. It's only concerning in tiny African villages and will only ever be that way

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u/DigiornoDLC 1h ago

Unless it evolves to spread easier. I don’t expect that to happen.

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u/Mitosis 1h ago

Spread easier, lay dormant longer before symptoms while remaining contagious, and be less deadly.

It's like none of y'all learned from Pandemic (or its knockoffs). It's already out of Madagascar I mean cmon

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u/Murky-Relation481 10m ago

It doesn't have to be less deadly, just not as fast. If you have asymptomatic spread for a large period of time before the onset of symptoms it can still be just as deadly and spread very effectively. People confuse the less deadly thing often because usually deadly viruses are also quick and don't present spread asymptomatically, but that doesn't mean that always goes hand in hand.

For example Soviet bioweapons scientists and later Russian scientists were looking at how to embed multiple viruses in each other, basically make ebola a payload to a common cold virus. You'd present with cold symptoms which often are not serious or asymptomatic, spreading the virus as it replicates, which could also contain the embedded stronger more deadly virus. As your body fought off the cold virus it'd release the embedded payload and eventually you'd get enough of the payload for it to take hold and attack you. There was some limited success in making these work, but the proved to be somewhat delicate to manufacture which limited their viability as a weapon.

Also fun fact a lot of the lipid tech used to deliver rna vaccines came out of research in how to harden viruses for delivery as a weapon!

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u/Dabbling_in_Pacifism 1h ago

Or we import large amounts of infected monkies and keep a breeder population of the disease alive and well because godawful regulation of research primates.

Not like something like that could ever happen in America, the first world. Where we don't get dirty ebola.

Lol, there's whole fucking books written about the effort expended to stop ebola outbreaks in America. The reality is we're lucky ebola kills people as quickly as it does, because it would certainly be a bigger issue if it didn't.

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u/DigiornoDLC 39m ago

My understanding of the spread of Ebola is that there are populations in Africa who are handling their deceased loved ones in a way that isn't done in the US.

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u/HopeADMKidsLoseLimbs 2h ago

For 50% of the population it will be the worst. The top 50% will live their life and be like “duhhhh durrrr why doesn’t everyone just sell a few hundred grand of their stocks and use that money to live?”

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u/GearhedMG 2h ago

At the point of this happening, their stocks will be worthless as well, stocks need heathy companies (supposedly, looking at you Tesla) and to have a healthy company you need workers and consumers, no workers = No product, no product = no consumers, no consumers = no company, no company = no stocks

Now, that said, likely they will be hoarding and trading something else of value to maintain their status

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u/Koktkabanoss 1h ago

Yes lets hope. It was better than this war everywhere after covid

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u/Specific_Frame8537 55m ago

While all the suffering was obviously less than ideal, I have to admit I fucking thrived in the silence.

No cars, no people going to the clubs at night, no social engagements... it was bliss.

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u/LeadingDiscount2556 2h ago

I kind of hope we do. The world could use a reset button

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u/G07V3 2h ago

It’s not a matter if another pandemic happens but when another one happens.

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u/DayVDave 3h ago

We absolutely will, there's no way Covid will be the last global pandemic. The only question is when.

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u/d__c 2h ago

But lockdowns were a new concept during COVID. It caused a huge amount of skepticism as to whether they worked and there was a big explosion in pandemic related conspiracy theorists. I can't see a future lockdown being adhered to as closely, regardless of how bad the disease is

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u/Phyraxus56 1h ago

We were promised a boomer remover virus

And all we got was house arrest

What a ripoff

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u/kbotc 47m ago

Lockdowns weren’t new during COVID. We’ve been doing similar stuff since the Black Death. People would flee from the sick in fear and lock themselves inside.

1918 had school closures, gathering bans, and masks.

Example of lockdowns impacting death rates in 1918-19191: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17684187/

In fact, the COVID lockdowns were based around modeling we did expecting a bird influenza outbreak and the data from 1918.

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u/HydrogenSonata2025 47m ago

Every pandemic ALWAYS has conspiracy theorists, deniers, antivaxers, and con men taking advantage of the crisis. It happens every time. That's why the movie Contagion was so prophetic, all you have to do is study history and change the names. It's all the same.

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u/Conan-Da-Barbarian 3h ago

When we run out of oil

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u/Otto_the_Autopilot 3h ago

California will be all EVs before that happens.

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u/GabeDef 2h ago

The amount of EVs on the road in SoCal has grown exponentially since gas prices broke $6

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u/ToHellWithGA 3h ago

Never gonna happen. Prices rise, proven sources that were previously not financially viable become available, and supply catches up with demand at that higher price point. People who can't afford to drive gas guzzlers will be forced to use vehicles that cost less to operate, and rich people will continue not really caring about fuel cost. If the price of liquid fuel gets high enough more people will switch to battery electric cars.

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u/GloomyLingonberry509 3h ago

Yeah, unfortunately the market will just shift long before the wells run dry.

Everyone will simply get priced out of operating a vehicle.

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u/melkatron 1h ago

Except the hoons driving 400hp turbo diesels running on fry oil from Panda Express.

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u/Sammyd1108 3h ago

Even then, it’ll probably have broken down cars on the highway, not completely empty like this.

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u/seasleeplessttle 3h ago

And bodies.....

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u/EK-Notonlyus254 2h ago

It’s wild to think that might be the only time in our lives we get to witness the world hit a literal pause button like that.

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u/wisimetreason 1h ago

Cannonball Run

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u/Mynameisboring_ 2h ago

I'm so fucking ready for the day of reckoning

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u/Trigonometry_Fletch 3h ago

You’ll see it in 2028 for the Olympics. Like it or not.

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u/Conan-Da-Barbarian 3h ago

Covid had some positives

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u/Apathy0 3h ago

It had billions of positives I think that was the issue.

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u/Disastrous_Lie_6698 2h ago

Is it bad to say that I preferred life during the pandemic? 

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u/typically_wrong 1h ago

If it is I'll be bad alongside you (but like at least 6ft away)

I never felt as generally happy and content, productive, or myself than I did during COVID.

Bonus was I always thought myself too irresponsible for WFH before then since I'm a 40something movie buff, lifelong gamer on consoles and PC, and generally hate corpo culture since I was 18, probably autistic, who definitely has ADHD even when medicated.

I found my old personality I didn't even realize had been suppressed, and it really drove home that while I crave friendship and genuinely care about the wellbeing of others, that doesn't mean I enjoy being in most of their company like at all.

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u/ohyeaitskolya 34m ago

This brought me some peace, thank you.

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u/Sixshaman 29m ago

Same here, covid was one of the happiest times in my life

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u/buttononmyback 51m ago

It was one of the best times of my life honestly. I worked from home so I didn’t worry about losing my job and my kids were in pre-school so missing school wasn’t a huge deal either.

They still played with the neighborhood kids, (with masks on) so that’s how they got their social time in.

We took SO many local trips as a family too which was great. We visited lots of places like caves that we probably wouldn’t have visited otherwise. And we spent most of that summer at our cabin by the lake which was just so amazing. We really bonded as a family. Best memories ever!

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u/BlatantConservative 40m ago

Honestly, yeah.

Aside from the fact that shittons of people died, life was worse for lower class and working class people. It was only "better" in certain ways for middle class office workers and rich people.

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u/TemperatureSea4162 33m ago

I preferred life then until my money ran out 3 months in. And its been fucked since

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u/TributeToFaba 6m ago

A time I look back on fondly too. Was in high school, the work was really easy, stayed up daily to 4:00 AM on discord with my friends watching tv/movies, playing games, shooting the shit etc

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u/Odd_Lengthiness4251 3h ago

Less than 1 billion actually, but I know it doesn't seem like it

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u/michiness 1h ago

At this point, I imagine most people have gotten it?

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u/MrMcBeefpunch 3h ago

I work in healthcare as a traveling contractor, I was still flying every other weekend and having to drive a decent amount as well. Traveling during covid was absolutely incredible, I miss having airports like that and half empty planes

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u/sadmanwithabox 3h ago

I ended up packing a uhaul and moving across the country to live with family (got laid off).

Not only was it the chillest cross country drive I've ever done, gas was like $1/gallon. The whole experience was surreal. Felt like I had stepped 100 years in the past or something.

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u/ghostyghost2 1h ago

The sad part is that millions could be working from home and the streets would be mostly empty (not as empty as in Covid days but still empty as fuck), but capitalists don't want people to enjoy their life while making them money, they need you to suffer doing it.

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u/Sidhe- 47m ago

It's more that capitalists are heavily invested in commercial property and need companies to not downsize their offices.

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u/rosecoloredcatt 2h ago

Same! I worked organ donation during Covid and part of my job required me to go to multiple different hospitals. I got sent to an assignment that was usually a 2 hour drive minimum, it only took me 30 minutes. And I got street parking which was unheard of. The whole experience was surreal.

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u/smokeweedNgarden 2h ago

I was a medic durong Covid. 

You and I had very different experiences of what traveling meant.

I got a tattoo of Charon after because that's what it was. Just ferrying the dead or soon to be

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u/ghostyghost2 1h ago

I worked in a long-term care facility. I lived inside a PPE and stopped counting bodies after a while.

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u/smokeweedNgarden 1h ago

I'm sorry for your experience, that's my bad.

I get unnecessarily cranky when I see the glee in these posts (the overall, not yours)

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u/livewirejsp 3h ago

Wasn’t there reports of dolphins and other marine wildlife showing back up in high-traffic areas?

I wish I lived in a more exotic place to witness stuff like that. 

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u/Apathy0 3h ago

Dolphins were spotted on the 405 and the 605.

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u/CaptainApathy419 3h ago

I bet they drove like BMW-owners.

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u/Apathy0 3h ago

I forgive them its hard to work the turn signals with flippers.

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u/livewirejsp 3h ago

Was ace ventura right behind ‘em?

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u/vanderpump_lurker 2h ago

Husband and i went to the ocean during covid (live in LA, it was right around when the reopened the beaches)

The water was the cleanest we've ever seen in.  And the sharks were close to shore.  Ask me how I know about the sharks, like jesus, I walked on water that day.

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u/hermiona52 3h ago

I'm an introvert who can go on for weeks without speaking to anyone without feeling lonely (and I do love my friends and family), no one I knew died because of Covid, I was able to start working remotely for the first time in my life and been working remotely to this day. Suffice to say, my life changed for the better.

And I'm fully aware how disturbing it is, considering that millions of people died at the same time.

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u/Conan-Da-Barbarian 3h ago

You made the best out of the situation. I didn’t have my house and dog yet and didn’t get to remote work

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u/mammalmaker 3h ago

COVID had tens of millions of positives.

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u/Conan-Da-Barbarian 3h ago

Why you wear a condom. Rip to those who got AIDs

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u/TheMooseIsBlue 3h ago

My sister and I went to Zion and hiked the narrows and we probably went 2!hours without seeing a single person. Stopped at some little beach and ate lunch and had a couple beers sitting in the river to cool them…all in complete silence. It was amazing.

I spent so much time with my kids…picnics in the front yard waving to neighbors all out walking. It was great.

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u/Sudden-Fisherman5985 1h ago

Covid had some positives

Environmentally it was a HUGE gain... For a very short period

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u/florianw0w 3h ago

Less people and idiots on the street (midlane campers, 20-50kmh UNDER the limit) everything was dirt cheap like fuel, in austria it was like 99 cent/L and now we are at 2,2€/

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u/AnOrdinaryMammal 2h ago

The roads were incredible, stores were empty, you could find parking anywhere, people didn’t even go hiking. Paid time off work.

I actually look back on that time very fondly.

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u/North_Tip_8627 3h ago

You know, when stuck in traffic.. I kinda miss those Covid days..

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u/HeirElfEsquire 3h ago

Every time I have to go into the office to do the same work on the internet that I was doing for years during covid makes me miss it

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u/trippinmaui 3h ago

My upper management made me tell the 1 wfh employee they have to rto.... after 6...years.... because 'culture' . I'm probably going to lose her. I'm so annoyed with them. Literally 0 valid reasoning.

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u/BurnedLaser 2h ago

Hey, they gotta make that building make sense!

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u/Tight_Man 2h ago

That building they’re freaking out about putting a new roof on, adding cubicles where there’s no space left, filling the hallways with stuff because there’s nowhere left to put it, where you have to drive around for 15 mins every morning looking for parking. paradise.

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u/SquirrelMemoryFail 2h ago

Work is the worst "culture" we as a species came up with.

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u/HeirElfEsquire 1h ago

I can imagine how frustrating that would be. I literally use the internet for every application that is in my job role there is zero requirements for me to be at a physical location. The only reason I'm at a physical location right now is because I'm required to be on site 3 days a week for some reason which is usually Management's feelings that they have to justify the buildings that they've purchased over the years and they say it's for collaboration or whatever else but 100% of the people around me are on a zoom call with somebody at a different location....

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u/MortCrimm 2h ago

Is anyone going to be checking on her presence other than you?

"I saw her earlier, maybe she is in the bathroom?"

"Sounds like sue had a spout of the diarrhea lettuce and rushed out, she let me know"

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u/InsideTheBoeingStore 2h ago

this is thousands of people at boeing

we never touch anything related to plane. we don’t have to be in the office to make critical decisions because it all has to be inputted electronically.

if there’s no approval in the system online, the people that do touch the planes can’t continue working.

when we got back to the office everything was a mess. they sold properties and surplus computing equipment so you didn’t have enough desks or computers for everyone they wanted to come back.

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u/NoImNotHeretoArgue 3h ago

Driving through LA during that time I realized how fuckin awesome the landscape actually is, I was never able to notice that before. (lol no I’m not talking about the freeways 😆)

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u/Apathy0 3h ago

I was deemed essential as my employer was a SpaceX vendor and Musk was/is/will always be a cartoon villain. But I miss the 30 min drive to go 40 miles to near LAX.

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u/LEMME_SMELL_YO_FARTS 3h ago

Yeah we’re due for a plague or something that would reduce the population. Maybe a Thanos snap

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u/General_whisky 3h ago

The air had never been cleaner 

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u/Papa_Shasta 2h ago

It's the biggest thing I think of back on that time; that the sky was always so clear and blue. I miss the air feeling good to breathe

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u/_B_Little_me 2h ago

Well ‘had never been cleaner’ in the last 150 years, maybe.

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u/flying-weenus 2h ago

I mean there was a time before modern transportation tech and, going out on a gamble here, the air might’ve been cleaner then compared to 2020

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u/raknor88 1h ago

Not just LA. There were pics and stories everywhere of how quickly nature was bouncing back during the lock downs.

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u/General_whisky 40m ago

Oh yeah I know. I didn’t even go to California during that time. I just kinda assumed it was like that everywhere. I remember stories of wild animals wandering into our cities out here in Colorado. It was kinda cool. 

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u/raknor88 29m ago

I think I remember seeing a story of dolphins in the canals of Venice for the first time in decades.

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u/_Tigglebitties 3h ago

I had my homeland security pass to keep working

I got from Riverside to Santa Monica in 35 minutes. At 8am on a Monday. Finished and went back at 4pm, took me 35 minutes.

Never ever ever gonna happen again. It was glorious.

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u/GabeDef 2h ago

I can’t imagine. Riverside to SM is normally a BRUTAL drive. Kudos.

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u/LolaContreras8 2h ago

How long it normally takes?

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u/Appropriate_Phase167 2h ago

On average it takes about 1 1/2 hours. But can exceed 2 during rush hour.

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u/_Tigglebitties 1h ago

That's on a regular day. When it rains, everyone forgets how to drive, plays bumper cars and .. I've had it take me over 4 hours , numerous times

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u/Excellent-Way-6596 2h ago

3hr 50 mins so three fidy!

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u/mybotanyaccount 2h ago

That was a mind fuck. One of the first time we were able to go out we drove from IE to OC and it was like 35min!

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u/Mikhulan 3h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/fMzLfjLWiS2PK

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u/watchingfromaffar 3h ago

As an essential worker I was still driving during Covid and it definitely felt like this.

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u/teething78 3h ago

Same. One of the most unsettling feelings I've felt.

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u/BlatantConservative 33m ago

I drove through Washington DC with my decomissioned police car during the weeks when things were really locked down. Like anyone who was out and about was being questioned by the cops.

This was the only time I used the ex police car for nefarious purposes, and the license plate said "NOT KOP" so like it was the cop's fault for not reading. But I digress.

I got to stand in the middle of the National Mall and not a single person was in sight. It was crazy. Stood up on the Lincoln Memorial, only counted like five vehicles pass in sight. All were cops.

Then I drove home on I-66 and got up to like 120mph in like, Crystal City.

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u/creep_nu 3h ago

Me too. And driving like it was the German Autobahn because there was nobody out, and cops didn't give a single fuck

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u/EdisonB123 1h ago

I was an addict at the time (best time to do that in hindsight) so I would often walk to my dealers house downtown or my friends house down the road, and it was very strange that there was literally nothing to stop for in a downtown with narrow one way roads.
Smoked weed with that dude, he had covid, still never got it somehow.

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u/Jedi_Master83 2h ago

You know that so many millions of people likely died stuck in traffic jams when the outbreak started really spin out of control. Seeing all those empty cars in the opening is chilling.

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u/8k7k6k5k4k 3h ago

It's so mind-boggling to think that only 6 years ago it was like this..

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u/T3hN1nj4 3h ago

Also somehow that it was already 6 years ago.

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u/EGarrett28 3h ago

I remember reading that somebody took advantage of the lockdown to set the coast-to-coast driving speed record (or whatever it's called). So pissed that I didn't think of it first, lol.

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u/01reid 3h ago

Cannonball Run new record!

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u/OfTheSevenSeasSir 3h ago

25 and a half hours averaging 110mph

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u/keggy13 3h ago

COVID-era travel and return of nature was the very best of my lifetime. It’s selfish and perhaps crude but, COVID was wonderful.

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u/tawDry_Union2272 1h ago

well, COVID wasn't wonderful, but lockdown was great for nature.

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u/Sudden-Fisherman5985 1h ago

It showed us that we could significantly help nature if we really wanted.

Also, the oil price went negative...

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u/EntertainerSuper8933 1h ago

I agree, it wasn't at all wonderful, but I have to say that it was such a pleasure to stay home all day every day with my kids. They were 17, 15 and 11 and it really was good for connection. I am an introvert by nature, so I didn't miss anything. Two weddings were just streamed, so I didn't have to go, lol

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u/Archbuggy 3h ago

Agreed! I took a cross country trip completely alone - and wasn’t scared once. No one bothered me and it was safe everywhere. Loved it.

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u/Midlife__Crisis__ 1h ago

I moved to Arizona to open a new office for my company 2 weeks before COVID and (unsurprisingly) the office never opened as intended. I stayed for 2 years before going remote. While I was there I took my new pandemic toy (2006 911) all around the state. Endless miles of empty roads and National Forests just begging to be driven. Every weekend I'd go up into mountain canyons and rip around without slow-driving tourists to get stuck behind. Took a whitewater rafting trip in the Colorado River that was really intimate because the reservations were locked down. I also did a drive of Devil's Highway (US 191) which even during normal times is the least travelled highway in the country. During COVID it felt like I had it to myself; the nature was breathtaking.

2 years being stuck in literal Hell (Phoenix) was bad but the weekend memories were outstanding. Not sure you could replicate what I got to experience.

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u/JanIntelkor 3h ago

That's the year when the canonball run record was taken, and probably will never be beaten, unless we have a next major pandemic....

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u/TheCrowan 2h ago

Just thought about it a few days ago.

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u/Sonoran_Ghosts_81 3h ago

When I was driving back to Arizona from Oregon during a particularly bad wildfire season in the northwest (two weeks early on the drive to Oregon we had to route from Sacramento I believe to Reno and then through eastern Oregon because the highways were closed to the fire) some of the freeways in California were eerily empty, never seen them like that. I got pictures somewhere of that and mount shasta with fires and smoke around it and just a bleak apocalyptic landscape.

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u/DaMemphisDreamer 3h ago

Can't believe this is history.

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u/Xyro77 2h ago

And you lived through it!

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u/AintNobodygotime13 3h ago

I commute 57 miles one way to work in Boston everyday

I cannot tell you how much I loved the pandemic for my drive

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u/Porschedog 2h ago

I decided to move back home from Seattle to Vancouver (BC) during this time. Rented a U-Haul, packed all my belongings, and drove north. That was probably the most quiet and traffic free drive of my life up I-5 north to the border. Even the border itself was carless with no wait.

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u/im_just_a_nerd 3h ago

So I know we all lived through it. But looking back at stuff like this shows how truly massive that moment in time was.

Let’s get back to looking after each-other and speaking up for the greater good.

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u/keiye 2h ago

Sure Jan. Most people are worse than ever before. More road rage, more violence, etc.

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u/EK-Notonlyus254 2h ago

The air quality during those first few weeks of lockdown was shockingly clear it really showed just how much pollution traffic generates daily.

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u/reb678 2h ago

Years ago I was on the 405 freeway just south of the 10 freeway in Los Angeles years ago. It was normally a big parking lot around 5pm but that day there was no one in my rear view mirror and maybe 2 cars ahead of me. I couldn’t figure out why.

When I got home I called my dad and told him. He asked if I was driving my little yellow car? I said yes. He said he saw me on the news that night. Apparently there had been a bomb threat that there was a bomb under this one underpass and they had shut down the freeway. Just not the entrance ramp I had used. He saw my car when the news helicopter was showing the empty freeway.

It turned a normally 60 minute trip into a 20 minute ride home.

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u/wet_bag_of_noodles 2h ago

When the pandemic started off grid on a surfing trip in Baja. A friend of ours who had been planning to meet up with us showed up and said that we had to hit the border immediately. We all looked at them super confused, nobody had had Internet for a month. He said they were shutting down the borders and there was a international pandemic. We thought he was joking. Nope. People started getting scarcer and scarcer as we got towards the border. By the time we were in San Diego it was Empty.  Driving up the i5 with no one around was such as a surreal experience. Also going through San Francisco rush hour with no traffic was bizarre. 

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u/LargePrompt5840 2h ago

Some of us enjoyed the COVID time. 

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u/LePouletPourpre 3h ago

I remember when I had to go into San Francisco during PEAK lockdown. I was the only car on the street. It was like a an apocalypse movie. Driving back to San Jose, I was doing 100MPH on 101 the entire time and only saw 5 or 6 other cars. It was WILD!

(I work in medical)

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u/intrepped 3h ago

I live in the greater Philly area in vaccines manufacturing. So of course, it was considered essential. My commute went from 50 minutes to 23 minutes basically overnight.

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u/cop2092 2h ago

Was so great to drive during this time. Cruised all around California while working as a delivery driver. Gardena to the Valley like nothing. I miss it tbh.

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u/Thump604 3h ago

And the relief for the planet was immediately obvious. Now we’re back to self destruction.

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u/Traditional-Way-4097 3h ago

low key miss this

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u/rabbitgalaxy 3h ago

I miss Covid

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u/Rare-Mission3337 2h ago

This was one of the positives that came out of COVID. IMO this one day helped Earth in so many ways we may not even understand. Lots of ecological problems would have solved themselves out.

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u/AntonioMargheritiii 3h ago

I’m in Colorado, but what’s weird about this picture is the sky and overall color. I swear it was just like that here when we were on quarantine. There was just this eerie vibe, I can’t explain it.

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u/Horsesrgreat 3h ago

The beginning of the great Covid pandemic.

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u/millerg44 2h ago

My son works on cell towers. He was super essential. He said it was eerie how empty the freeways were as they entered the city.

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u/Xyro77 2h ago

Covid era was wonderful for me. Worked from
Home, lost weight, saved money, lots of gaming (many games suddenly got active again), saw family more, grocery lines were small and traffic near zero.

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u/maybeinoregon 2h ago

Nothings changed.

We still don’t have anything in place to keep this scenario from repeating itself.

Government put no bumpers in place to protect society and we still allow hospitals to run at or just below capacity.

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u/dcinsd76 2h ago

Best of times, and the worst of times.

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u/Help_An_Irishman 1h ago

I remember at the height of things in 2020, being the only car in sight driving on a highway just like this (PCH becoming the 10 East), and passing a glitchy, flickering sign that read "AVOID TRAVEL STAY AT HOME." It felt like a scene out of the zombie apocalypse.

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u/Shadowsinst 36m ago

Dude this shit is insane. I live in Florida and it was business as usual. Everyone was driving, working, shopping. Nothing was different.

I hear people talking about "The before times" like it was some myth. Shit was no different here lol

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u/UNKN0WN-P3R50N 3h ago

Liminal Space, sometimes comfy, sometime disturbing

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u/MRintheKEYS 3h ago

Some Book of Eli shit right there

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u/AIcookies 3h ago

And the planet and animals rejoiced

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u/dubzi_ART 2h ago

I remember the narrative on where it came from, everyone getting mad at the don for shutting the borders down? Then mad about 300k deaths in when the president didn’t take it serious.

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u/BurnedLaser 2h ago

Seriously. Mr. "We need to close the borders" opened them wide during the ONE FUCKING TIME we actually NEEDED closed borders -_-

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u/SpeakersPushTheA1r 2h ago

I lived in West Oakland and worked for the City and County of San Francisco at the time. I would Uber from work every morning as the dawn broke and I would cross the empty Bay Bridge and see the Grand Princess docked in Oakland every morning it was there. It was a really haunting ride home.

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u/Ok-Owl7377 2h ago

I was going from SFV to downtown LA in twenty mins! That was the good ol days. lol

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u/ElPresidente714 2h ago

405 freeway looked like this on 9/11 a few hours after the towers fell. We were sent home early from work that morning and flights had been grounded. People just locked down. I saw maybe 2-3 other cars on that freeway.

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u/No-Celebration3097 2h ago

I live in a suburb of the Dallas FtWorth area and it looked like this during this time, it was very nice. It was surreal, ominous. Thought I was caught in an apocalypse.

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u/jjb0ne 2h ago

los angelinians miss this

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u/flonsta 2h ago

We live about a mile from that spot. Can confirm.

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u/Fofire 2h ago

I had a similar exp there once. It was just me and one other guy in the far left passing god knows what because Angelenos just instinctively drive in the left lane. Anyhow it's just me and this other guy 6 lanes away in the left lane and the MFer still just about hit me while he making a sharp right turn from that far left lane in order to get off at that exit.

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u/z4guy 2h ago

I remember flying home to LAX after a month vacay in Vietnam, Feb to March 2020... Literally as the world was shutting down. Taking the infamous 405/101 route to get home was eerily quiet.

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u/Elgin_McQueen 2h ago

Looks like the entrance to Wally World.

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u/KebabCat7 1h ago

Covid was the best time in the world. It was so much fun, so much free money, so much free time, so much travel and empty nature.

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u/CarbComaCommander 1h ago

Everybody was at the gun store

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u/saralulu121 1h ago

Remember when the skies were a bit more blue from lack of pollution?

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u/Odd_Tomato6535 1h ago

Previously on The Walking Dead

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u/Scyths 1h ago

Never had as much fun on the roads as in 2020.

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u/joeyg151785 28m ago

One word comes to mind.

Peaceful.

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u/Ok-Entrepreneur-6139 27m ago

It was so magical driving through this in the middle of the day as a truck driver. It was hard to believe that no traffic was present

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u/ItsAllBotsAndShills 27m ago

Car enthusiasts united over this. It was unreal driving out there with basically only sports cars all just flying. So many good memories.

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u/MightBeABot24 21m ago

Covid was awesome. No traffic my commute went from 45 minutes to like 15 minutes

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u/have-u-met-teds-mom 16m ago

I remember picking my kid up from school the day that the lockdown was announced. I drove by a putrid trash truck on fire and thinking something wicked this way comes…..

It turned out to be the last time I left my house for a month.

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u/MrZrazies 15m ago

Oh.. i was living in san diego just right before covid-19 started. I mean like month later so i was working for Home Depot that time. So us workers had permission to go out just to go to work. “Essentials worker” anyway. San diego had curfew cuz of covid-19. Anyone who’s out past 8pm if i remember correctly. Either 8 or 9pm. You’ll get tickets. Point is Whole city of San Diego was closed. There was nobody on road. Store street what have you. So i decided to drive through downtown of San Diego. Where padre baseball stadium is. Just driving through downtown all over in midnight. It was basically ghost town with all those lights. It was so surreal experiences. I never forget that.

I moved to san diego. Bam city closed but i had permission. So i basically just drive anywhere i want. Barely see any people like weeks. Wild.

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u/averagemaleuser86 3h ago

So wild to me seeing pics like this and knowing some areas were shut down and some weren't. Here in GA, life went on like usual aside from seeing 50% of people wearing masks. We never shut down here.

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u/Pepperoni_playboi94 3h ago

This was by far the best time of my life. I think about it all the time

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u/Grouchy_Drawer_1580 2h ago

I miss Covid

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u/-Mikey2Toes 3h ago

It was glorious being a truck driver at this point… drove through DC on 495 at rush hr and never hit the brakes…

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u/LegalMulberry2131 3h ago

Corola virus?