There were only 1-3 days notice because too few people were paying attention to what was coming. Most people were waiting for someone else to tell them what to do and the people in charge everywhere utterly failed to do any planning.
We offered to help my kids' teachers make photocopies of worksheets and stuff so the classes would have something to do if school closed. They declined, acting like we were crazy to think schools could possibly ever close. This was after some schools in the area had already closed temporarily due to kids having been exposed to the virus at home. Some businesses in the area, including my own, had already started shifting to work from home, and schools and businesses in other parts of the country were already closed. But somehow it was inconceivable that the virus would come to our town?
Our school closed a few days later for a day so they could do a deep clean, then a day turned into a few weeks, then a few more weeks, then for the rest of the school year statewide. We had to wait over a week for anything from the school for the kids to do at home. We had to wait weeks for anything remotely structured. Even now, we only get an hour or two of work per day. The work is only review and all optional, due to equal access concerns. Thankfully, we have lots of teachers in my family who helped get us more resources and lessons for our kids.
At work, I asked my boss if we could have a team meeting to plan for working from home. Would we keep the same priorities? Would we all keep the same hours? How would we replace the hallway interactions that sometimes resulted in breakthroughs? How would we maintain our social relationships that helped us be a productive team?
He was genuinely surprised that I was concerned about the virus. This was after a major outbreak in our city. This was after our offices in other parts of the country were already working from home. This was after our offices in China had been closed for well over a month.
We never met. All offices closed a few days later and we won't go back to the office regularly until next year at the earliest. We had no plan to work together while apart. It's fine now, but we could have planned ahead and not wasted the first few weeks.
Saying this was a surprise lets leadership at many levels in many organizations off the hook for their total failure to plan. Teachers, principals, and superintendents failed to see what happened in the next town over and think, "What if that happened here?" The state failed to look at neighboring states. The country failed to look at the rest of the world.
All of us were let down by so many people. We have very few leaders. We should never forget that.