"Good morning, fellow Earthlings! We represent Interlake High School from King County, state of Washington! Yup, you heard it right--King County. The location of the first death from COVID-19 in the United States. Nice meeting you.” This verbatim was going to be the greetings one of our school clubs had prepared to deliver once they arrived for the International Conference.
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     COVID-19--the new coronavirus has killed 55 people in the United States as of 3/14. Out of all those 55 deaths, 40 occurred in Washington, my home state. In fact, the first, and 35 of the 40 deaths were in King County, where I live. Observations below come from the epicenter of the US coronavirus outbreak:

     No more traffic. Bad traffic is one of Seattle's worst flaws. On any normal day, you'd see cars lined up one by one inching down the highway at the speed of a snail. However, after news that the first few coronavirus deaths in the US occurred in our county and the death toll only increased exponentially thereafter, many of the cars magically disappeared. It was as though Thanos had snapped his fingers and only let 10% of the population exist on the roads at once.

     Stock up!! While I was wondering where all the cars went, I found so many of them in the parking lots of Costco. Everywhere inside, people were piling up as many towers of toilet paper, canned food, snacks, hand sanitizers, wipes, and groceries they could fit in their shopping carts. One household pushed an entire shopping cart filled with only toilet paper. Personally, I couldn’t figure out the need for that much toilet paper, but apparently many others did. Throughout my journey at Costco, almost every shopping cart I encountered had at least 2 boxes of toilet paper inside. But the second time I arrived at Costco, there was a sign stating: no more than two per member. Well, there went the towers...

     School closures!!! Immediately after two confirmed cases in school districts, numerous districts and schools in neighboring counties shut down. My friends and I thought hopefully: "Haha! This means no more school (and tests)!" As the number of deaths increased, the number of districts shutting down grew dramatically. Not our district. We were so disappointed that we named our online chat “King County Stage One of DTM: Disease and Famine”. Did the district believe that the only way for the coronavirus to be a threat was if a student from within the district tested positive? By March 12th, we were literally the only district still operating full-time in the entire King County and nearby Snohomish County combined. Then, we closed! For six whole weeks! Everyone cheered on the chat, which was renamed to “BSD CLOSED”.

     Not too long ago around the end of February, my friends and I were complaining that there wasn't a single break in March. The constant stress of grades was wearing us out, and we knew that the next time off would only be Spring Break, that is, sometime during mid-April. Now, we're blessed with a six-week break, until April 24th! But, am I as happy as a bird now? Actually, quite the opposite after just 24 hours. I tried to take a walk outside but got scared and returned after seeing NOBODY in the once-busy community park and started suspecting COVID-19 in the air… Staying inside a house 24/7 with no motivation to complete any tasks and the closest form of communication with friends being a video call is truly quite harder than it appears. Perhaps, these six long weeks serve a purpose apart from protection from COVID-19. To teach us students in the state of Washington some gratitude for having the very opportunity to safely go to school on any day we wish.