$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE
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As of March 2025, officials say 30,223 in King County have been hospitalized with the virus. 3,881 have died here. The virus disproportionately preys on the most vulnerable but the hospitalization rate is now at an all-time low since the first outbreak. About 25% of King County residents have received the 2024-2025 updated vaccine.
There is no place in the city, yet, to go and mark the pandemic. There isn’t much to physically remind of those days at all beyond the masks and home tests we all keep. But proper masks and nasal swabs weren’t part of that first month and its blur of shutdowns, closures, and plywood.
Below is a look through the CHS headlines from that first month of the pandemic. As we reach the five-year milestone and face new challenges, some of the headlines will remind you of the confusion, some will surprise you with their prescience, some will give you hope for what was overcome and the good things that people did along the way to help.
To go beyond the headlines, CHS’s March 2020 coverage can be found here.
$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE
🌈🐣🌼🌷🌱🌳🌾🍀🍃🦔🐇🐝🐑🌞🌻
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.
Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month -- or choose your level of support 👍
Nowhere do I see any mention of the crippling devastation of long Covid. This feels as though all is consigned to history. There are precious few data sources available but, there are still states that develop high contagion rates and we can occasionally fall into that category.
I so remember the 8 PM thankful noise. These days, I wish we had something similar to express gratitude for the federal workforce and our displeasure with what the Trump/Musk/Vance regime is doing.
Another verse for that Billy Joel song.
Jenny curfews, teargas and shenanigans from the East Precinct, the park, stay at home. What a wild year and crazy leadership from Olympia on down that year hard to believe it’s 5 years ago.