Virtual Exhibit - Chronicling COVID-19 - Wethersfield Historical Society

Chronicling COVID-19 is an ongoing archive collecting project that began in April 2020, created to document how our community was dealing with the Coronavirus pandemic and the changes it brought to our everyday lives. WHS has put together the following gallery to share the community submissions we have collected so far. You can still contribute to the project by sharing photos, videos and written materials, which can be submitted online here. If you have physical objects you would like to donate to the collection, please contact our curator at Kristina.oschmann@wethersfieldhistory.org.

Covid-19 is a respiratory virus that was first identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The virus quickly spread worldwide and was declared a pandemic in March 2020 by the World Health Organization. The novel human coronavirus disease COVID-19 has become the fifth documented pandemic since the 1918 Spanish Flu.

Historians and scientists alike have compared this virus and our response to that of the Spanish Influenza of 1918, which saw additional devastation in light of the First World War. The conditions of World War I – overcrowding and global troop movement – helped the virus spread. Doctors and hospitals were already spread thin by the demands of the war. Around 50 million deaths occurred worldwide because of the 1918 flu. Without vaccines or antibiotics that were effective against the virus, many of the control efforts were limited to interventions such as isolation, quarantine, good personal hygiene, use of disinfectants, and limits on public gatherings – similar to the methods employed today.

To navigate through the exhibit, click on one of the following images and the associated gallery will open in a light box in the center of your screen. In the top right hand corner is the control panel. From left to right the buttons are “Zoom In,” “Full Screen,” and “Close.” WHS recommends viewing Chronicling Covid in full screen and navigating through the exhibit at your own pace by clicking the left and right arrows on the screen or by using the corresponding left and right arrows on your keyboard. If you click on an image, it will display at a larger size to facilitate reading text. (You can use your mouse’s scroll wheel to move the panel up and down.) Click the image again and it will return to its normal size. Clicking outside the image will close the light box and return you to the web page. The same function can be accomplished by clicking the “Close” button on the control panel or by hitting the “Escape” button on your keyboard.