I don't know if there was a proper moment of realisation. It was a slow, creeping thing. Throughout February my friend would show me worrying clips from China he found on Twitter, which I didn't know what to make of. Some time later I saw some bloke wearing latex gloves and a medical-grade mask in the supermarket remonstrating with shelf-stackers, and thought "that's a bit much". My brother in Spain would WhatsApp us like Kyle Reese in the Terminator: "I am from the future, you need to be prepared!". I only started working from home the week before lockdown and that was my own choice.
I feel blessed in that no one who is close to me has died of it, which would affect my feelings. Even though, like everyone else, I know how bad it is, if no one I care about has died of it I don't feel like I know, you know?
I cannot believe the UK is in this situation one year on. I was chatting to a friend in Shanghai today. He said they had one strict lockdown last spring but, apart from international and domestic travel restrictions, everything is pretty much as it was before COVID-19. Here on plague island, that seems unimaginable.