A year of pandemic: What was the moment when you realized everything had changed ?

Barren shelves in a grocery store.
The soup aisle at Fred Meyer in South Anchorage is almost completely barren as people stock up on groceries during the start of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020. (Joey Mendolia/Alaska Public Media)

It’s been almost a year since the coronavirus pandemic began.

The virus charged in and changed so much of our lives so suddenly.

Classrooms closed. Store shelves emptied. Tourism crumpled. 

We stopped shaking hands. We bought face masks. We avoided crowds.

As we reflect on the past year, we’re thinking a lot about when we knew that the coronavirus was not going away quickly, and was changing life as we knew it.

We want to hear your stories — at what moment did you realize things would be different? 

We’re collecting reflections from Alaskans for a story about the moments it hit us that the coronavirus would change our lives.

What was it for you?

Send your voice memos to news@alaskapublic.org with the subject “One Year In” by Sunday, March 21. We’ll take written responses too, but we’d love to hear your voice. 

The best way to do that is to open the voice memo app on your phone — most phones have one built in — record your story, including your name and where you’re from, and look for the “share” option to send your recording by email. (Here’s an in-depth guide.)

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