I’ll start with my own naively optimistic reply to the question,
“Should the SBMB have a (hopefully) temporary Coronavirus forum?”
I voted no as did many others because reasons. This was mid-March, or in real time, approximately 150 years ago. 
To which I now say: HA!
I remember driving somewhere around early spring and hearing on CBC radio news that the World Health Organization had just declared coronavirus to be a global pandemic. Since this is a day that will go down in history, I could easily establish via Uncle Google that this was on March 11, otherwise I would have had no idea exactly when this happened, except “a few months ago”.
What I do remember was the news going in one ear and out the other, news of no particular significance. The significance dawned on me in quick stages, beginning with the now-famous shortages and ending up where we are today. I remember my first trip to the liquor store during this period, wondering why the hell all these people were milling around the entrance and getting in my way when I just wanted to pick up a few things. Well, they weren’t milling around, it was my first encounter with a COVID-related lineup. And so it has gone ever since, with many shortages long since resolved and many services getting better and easier to access, but it really is odd to think that many of us never realized how big a deal this was going to be until it was right upon us.
I was in the hospital during that time. I was very alarmed when my family couldn’t get in. And reading the Dope and watching TV in my hospital room. I felt very removed from the world.
I still feel that, to some extent. I’ve not been anywhere but to the clinic, twice since late February.
Somehow, I kept the family locked down. We only had one person facing the public. My ever diligent DIL.
My Son went back to work this past week. Everyone else is getting ready to transition to normal life.
I have to say I’m scared to death.
Arkansas is experiencing a 2nd wave.
I can’t keep them hostage forever.
Crossed fingers it goes ok.
Yeah, I vividly recall mid-March being the time when the coronavirus went from being a thing “over there” to a thing over here.
Logically, alarm bells should have been ringing in my head that if a nation like China, which can lock down far harder due to being autocratic and top-down, struggled so hard to keep Covid contained, that a nation like the United States which is far more decentralized and has a rebellious populace would struggle 20x harder once the virus hit American shores. But it never really dawned until mid-March.
With the new “single page” board format, I often see the first post in the Corona Breaking News thread. It’s so sweet. The link to 1,000 Deaths (!) is for China.
We’ve had a couple of threads in IMHO talking about this, but now that deaths have topped 1000 (and the daily toll topped 100 for the first time) , I thought I’d start a thread where we can simply monitor the progress of this virus and the fight against it.
There are two main websites tracking the virus:
Coronavirus 2019-nCoV Global Cases by Johns Hopkins CSSE - this site is excellent; by far my preferred of these two
https://thewuhanvirus.com - in addition to maps and numbers, this site does offer links to news stories about the virus.