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A look back: When did you realize COVID-19 was going to change your life?

How long did you think the pandemic would initially last?

February 11, 2022

2 minutes to read

This time two years ago, we had started to hear the first rumblings about a new virus. Health officials were calling it the coronavirus, and the risk to the general public remained low. We had no way of knowing just how much it would change all of our lives.

The first case of COVID-19 was confirmed by state health officials on February 1, but for most people, it was the Biogen “superspreader” conference held later that month that raised the first alarm bells about COVID spreading through Massachusetts.

By the time the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, it was clear we were dealing with something more than the common cold. Over the next month, the true gravity of the situation would sink in differently for each of us.

Within the first two weeks of March, dozens of COVID cases were reported in the state and the first events were postponed as Gov. Charlie Baker banned gatherings of more than 250 people. Then came the school closures and the restrictions on non-essential businesses that were only meant to last until the end of April.

Many of us were sitting at home learning how to use Zoom, or masking up with spare scarves unsure of where exactly this was going to go. Suddenly all our conversations were peppered with new phrases that would quickly become commonplace like masking, social distancing, and “flattening the curve.”

This survey has expired. Read the results on Boston.com.

It didn’t take long for it to become clear that no one was going to come out of the pandemic unscathed. Hundreds of thousands of Americans died from the virus — each of them someone’s family member, friend, colleague, and neighbor. There have been more than 22,000 deaths in Massachusetts alone.

Even those who haven’t lost a loved one to the virus have had to contend with it in some way. The pandemic shutdowns caused unemployment to rise higher in the first three months of the pandemic than it did in two years of the Great Recession. We’ve also faced an unprecedented mental health crisis as we all cope with both the spread of the virus and lockdowns.

Time has seemed to move strangely over the last two years as we cycle through rising cases and lockdowns, but we’re beginning to enter a new phase of the ongoing pandemic. With vaccination rates high, and the latest omicron surge declining, some are ready to lift restrictions and “learn to live” with the virus even as health officials warn it may be too soon.

As we mark another anniversary of the pandemic, we want to know when you realized that COVID-19 was going to have a big impact on all our lives. Were you tracking the virus as it moved through China or did you not recognize the urgency until the first wave of lockdowns?

Tell us what sticks out in your mind as the moment you realized the pandemic was a big deal by filling out the survey below or emailing us at [email protected] and we may feature your response in a future article.

This survey has expired. Read the results on Boston.com.