A year intocoronavirus, were still counting the dead

A year ago this week, The Verge published our first story about the virus. It was January 21. The first case had arrived in the US. We’d only heard of about 300 cases reported in China and six deaths.

We still knew there was a chance it could get bad. “It’s bringing back SARS flashbacks for me,” coronavirus expert Timothy Sheahan told Verge reporter Nicole Wetsman at the time. The 2002 SARS outbreak taught researchers speed, but was only a deadly teaser to the still-unnamed pandemic that was about to begin.

One year and almost 1,000 coronavirus-related articles later, we’ve passed more grim milestones than we ever should have. More than 97 million people have contracted the virus and 2.1 million people have died. In just one year, more...

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