At the time, it seemed almost absurd. During an emergency meeting of the Sister Bay Village Board of Trustees on March 16, 2020, trustee Rob Zoschke leaned back in his chair and asked bluntly: "Should we be telling resorts to close down and not accept reservations and cancel existing ones?"

When a new and dangerous respiratory disease started racing around the globe in early 2020, it had been just over a century since humankind endured the 1918 influenza pandemic.

Over the course of a single historic week, daily life in Wisconsin and across much of the United States ground to a halt as a dangerous new virus arrived in communities across the nation. A flurry of shutdowns raced to keep up with the spread of COVID-19 and the growing realization of its looming human impact.

A serious new respiratory illness is gaining steam around the world, and epidemiologists, virologists and many other scientists are sprinting to learn as much about it as quickly as possible.