Paddy Mullen

2020 The Year We Did Nothing Paddy Mullen

Covering people's thoughts and memories of the most bizarre time that the country has experienced since WWII. Full of photos, poems, memories and thoughts of a time like no other, for generation to remember and contemplate on for the rest of their lives. With a timeline covering the events as they happened. The news began to report on a virus -which gradually became an epidemic in China - COVID-19. The WHO (World Health Organisation) reported in January 2020 on a Coronavirus epidemic, beginning to spread from Wuhan City in the Hubei Province of China. Initially thought not to be as deadly as the SARS epidemic in 2003, it was soon realised that its transmission rate was significantly higher and the death toll began to rise. And then it hit Europe... Italy was the first to suffer badly from the spread of COVID-19 and then the cases began to slowly occur in the UK at the beginning of February. By 5th March, the UK had its first COVID-19 related death and with a steady increase, by 31st March the death toll had reached 3095; the UK was part of the first 'pandemic' that nearly anyone had experienced in his or her lifetime and the country was put into 'Lock-Down'. Only essential shops, chemists, petrol stations were open and the only people allowed to go to work were 'key workers' - NHS staff, police, teachers, Civil Servants, essential shop workers - the city of Plymouth was a 'ghost town' with nothing before seen like it in our lives.