COVID-19
January 1, 2020
In the first months of 2020 a new coronavirus spread from country to country faster than anything could be done to stop it. Hospitals filled, cities closed, and the dead were counted in the millions.
While much of the world stayed home, some could not. Police and corrections officers kept answering calls, making arrests, moving prisoners and working face to face with the public, and many caught it doing the job. Corrections officers were hit hardest: confined facilities and large populations meant close, constant exposure.
They are the first named here. They will not be the last. Nurses, doctors, paramedics, firefighters and the people who kept everything else running died of it too, and people are dying of it still.