What were you doing one year ago this week, as COVID-19 made what was then its first known appearance in the United States?
Maybe, around the same time a Snohomish County man tested positive for the novel coronavirus that was already ravaging China, you were watching “Fiddler on the Roof” in Seattle’s crowded Paramount Theatre, or looking forward to Pacific Northwest Ballet’s “Cinderella.” Or maybe you were training for Seattle’s Hot Chocolate 15K, where you’d look around on race day several weeks later and wonder nervously whether you should be there, the coronavirus starting to shadow your steps. (We would later learn the virus had been spreading silently for weeks before the Snohomish County case was detected.)
If you had known what was coming — the dizzying shutdowns of schools and businesses and places dear to the heart of public life, the soaring cases and deaths, the economic pain — would you have done anything differently? Perhaps stocked up on masks sooner, taken that last trip in a big hurry, or bought stock in a toilet-paper company? We’d like to know, and we may be sharing some of the responses in the days ahead.