The COVID-19 Pandemic
2020 · event
March 11, 2020 - The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Within weeks, the world shut down. Schools closed, businesses shuttered, and millions were forced to stay home. The pandemic claimed millions of lives worldwide and changed how we work, learn, and interact. We learned to live with masks, social distancing, and Zoom calls. Healthcare workers became heroes, working tirelessly to save lives. Scientists developed vaccines in record time. The pandemic exposed inequalities but also showed humanity's resilience. We will never forget the lives lost and the world that changed forever.
For a stretch of 2020, half the human species was under some form of lockdown at once, the largest shared experience in history. Cities fell silent enough to hear birdsong; neighbours sang to each other from balconies in Italy; millions learned the word "quarantine" in their own kitchens.
Vaccines arrived in under a year, a process that had never taken fewer than four. Behind the statistics stand nearly seven million absences: chairs at tables, names on memorials, grandparents who exist for their grandchildren as stories. Remembering them is what this place is for.