That was the plan anyway. In just a few weeks, it would be upended to an almost unimaginable degree.
The family found itself stuck 275 miles from Wuhan, the city of 11 million that is the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak. Travel restrictions forbid them from moving freely. Their planned return home Jan. 29 came and went. At one point, they wondered whether it would be months before they could leave.
Lowe, 51, wrote about the family’s experience in a first-person account published on MarylandReporter.com. In an interview with The Washington Post, he shared additional details of the harrowing journey that included being cooped up in a small apartment with little access to reliable information, walking the ghostly streets of a typically frenetic city, being flown out of Wuhan on a cargo plane staffed by personnel in full hazmat gear, spending two weeks quarantined at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas and, finally, returning to their Baltimore County home Feb. 20.
As the coronavirus threat continues to spread around the world, claiming new victims and upending financial markets, the family’s escape from a region wracked by the virus offers a glimpse into the personal experience and worries of those who have faced the threat close up. And it is a window into the steps taken to ensure the family’s health and that of the community to which they have returned.
“The operative word of the entire experience was anxiety,” Lowe said last week in a phone interview.
The first hint of trouble arrived a few days after the family landed in Shanghai. They took a train to see Xiaoli’s family in Shiyan, stopping for a night in Wuhan to visit friends. Xiaoli asked that her last name not be used because of privacy concerns.
“We made our trip to Wuhan at precisely the wrong time,” Lowe said. “The day we left Wuhan was the day the coronavirus was first identified. But there was almost no publicity about it.”
In Wuhan, the couple heard rumblings of a mysterious new virus via a text message that Xiaoli, 38, received from her sister. The information was vague. Panic was not yet in the air.
Lowe recounted the text with a rueful laugh. “The message was that the virus didn’t seem like it could be vectored from human to human, so don’t worry about it,” he said.
Two days later, the virus claimed its first victim.
Still, life remained fairly normal for the first few days of the family’s visit to Shiyan, which, like Wuhan, is in Hubei province. There were joyful reunions and boisterous meals. And much doting on Weiya.
But by mid-January, more news began trickling out about the coronavirus as it spread, mainly in Wuhan.
“As late as the 20th, it seemed to be a Wuhan issue,” Lowe said. “People in the rest of the province weren’t wearing masks. No one seemed that worried. But four days later, the province was shut down.”
A sense of dread grew with the realization that so many residents of Wuhan had left in the preceding days to travel for Lunar New Year celebrations.
“The mayor of Wuhan estimated that 5 million people left the city before the quarantine went into effect on Jan. 23,” Lowe wrote in his journal entry. “Now all of China and the rest of the world trembles, waiting to see just how far and wide those departed seeds will carry the virus as they scatter in the wind.”
The family had planned to return to Baltimore from Shanghai on Jan. 29, but the new travel restrictions quashed that hope.
Life in Shiyan had changed noticeably. Now, everyone was wearing masks. Buses and trains stopped running. Lowe’s father-in-law had his temperature checked whenever he went out to get food for the family.
The swimming pool at the gym shut down. For exercise, Lowe would take long walks through the city’s empty streets. The only vehicles moving about were an occasional ambulance.
“Being in Hubei on those days felt post-apocalyptic, like being among the last humans on earth,” he wrote in his journal.
On Jan. 31, the U.S. Embassy posted information about an evacuation flight for U.S. citizens from Wuhan. With travel restrictions in place, the family wondered how they would make the trip to Wuhan. They were also unsure whether Xiaoli, a green-card holder, would be eligible for the flight or if it was for U.S. citizens only.
After working with local officials to get clearance to travel, the family left Feb. 4 to begin their journey home. But after just a short time on the road, they learned a mistake had been made and that Xiaoli didn’t have a seat on the plane. They would have to wait two more days. Those last two days, Lowe wrote, “we waited and hoped and fretted about all the things that might yet go wrong.”
On Feb. 6, the family again traveled to the Wuhan airport, arriving at 7:30 p.m. for the flight home. It would be 10 more hours before they boarded and 2½ hours more before the hulking cargo plane with about 250 onboard took off for their return to the United States.
U.S. personnel on the plane wore biohazard suits and spoke through megaphones. Port-a-potties served as restrooms. Boxed lunches containing ham and coleslaw sandwiches were on each seat.
On the long flight to California, Lowe and his daughter gorged on candy bars, sodas, chips and cookies.
“I imagined having to explain to the doctors on board that I wasn’t rushing to the bathroom because of coronavirus but instead because I had merely overdosed on sugar,” Lowe wrote.
When the plane landed at Travis Air Force Base in Fairview, Calif., there was “a great sense of relief,” he said.
There, the passengers went through a health screening, and Lowe later learned that four of his fellow passengers were hospitalized after showing symptoms of coronavirus. The family was back in America, but home would have to wait. They were put on a plane to Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio.
At Lackland, they and the other evacuees were quarantined in small apartments on the base for two weeks. They were fed and treated well. Toys were provided for the children. But there was a perimeter fence they weren’t allowed to cross. And armed guards stood sentry around the compound. The apartments were cleaned every day by crews wearing hazmat suits. The evacuees were told not to socialize with others who were being quarantined.
“It is incarceration, but it’s incarceration where the staff is nice and supportive and friendly,” Lowe said. “It’s prison where you forsake your freedom for the sake of public health. Psychologically, I felt that way. I felt the freedom that I lacked.”
On Feb. 20, having met the quarantine requirements, Lowe, Xiaoli and their daughter were taken to the airport, where they boarded a flight to BWI. Freedom.
“A friend picked us up at the airport, and within an hour, we were sleeping in our own beds for the first time in nearly two months,” Lowe wrote in his essay. “With our CDC quarantine release forms in hand, life can return to normal now. We know that we can count ourselves among the fortunate ones.”
The relief he felt when he wrote that isn’t there any more, Lowe says.
Weiya was welcomed back to her kindergarten, which had been fully apprised of the family’s travails and its clearance by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Xiaoli returned to her graduate program, where she, too, was well received. Lowe remains on sabbatical and is in contact with family, friends and colleagues, who he says have been “super supportive.”
But the ordeal will not soon be forgotten. Xiaoli is still worried about her family in Shiyan. She talks with them twice a day. And now the family finds itself anxious again as the coronavirus begins to make its presence felt on America’s shores.
“It’s almost like we’re back where we were in mid-January in China, but now we’re here,” Lowe said. “We’re making preparations. We feel a little more like we know what to expect.”