Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers used a private jet to escape from Peru with just 15 minutes to spare before the airport was locked down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rodgers yesterday described scenes of panic and fear, as he recounted his hasty exit along with three others.
“It was absolute pandemonium at the airport,” Rogers told the Pat McAfee podcast show, adding that the main reason they got out in time was because they had a private plane.
“When we rolled up to the airport at like seven in the morning, it was wall-to-wall people and you couldn’t move,” Rodgers said. “I was thinking: ‘This isn’t very safe.’ Not many masks on and there was definitely a panic in the air, but somehow we made it down and then they shut the airport down because it was really bad weather.”
“They had a drop-dead time where they were going to shut the entire airport down,” Rodgers added. “We made it by about 15 minutes.”
He likened the March 18 experience to a Hollywood movie.
“That was quite the ordeal,” Rodgers said. “Have you seen the movie Argo? You have? The scene at the end where they’re racing to the airport: Nobody was chasing us, thankfully, or holding us. We didn’t have to speak Farsi to get back into the country, but there were some moments when we worried we were not going to get out.”
The US Department of State said that it has repatriated more than 9,000 stranded Americans from 28 countries after many closed their borders to stem the spread of COVID-19, but it is believed that about 50,000 Americans are still stranded abroad, including in places such as Peru.
Rodgers, who lives in Malibu, California, said that he and his girlfriend, former racecar driver Danica Patrick, are both safe and healthy. None of his Peru traveling companions have the coronavirus either.
Now that he is back in the US, Rodgers has a different set of circumstances to worry about, such as a healthcare system crumbling under the weight of the pandemic, widespread closures and self-isolating, but he did stumble on a stash of in-demand toilet paper at a his local grocery store on Thursday.
“I bought a six-pack and that was a good day,” he said.
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