The last in-person conference I attended before COVID-19 broke out already felt like the beginning of the end.
Attendees wandered around a convention centre where the exhibit floor had obviously been shrunk down to less than two thirds of the originally-intended size. For once, there were plenty of seats in common areas and no lineups for food. A few people seemed to hesitate as they remembered not to shake hands.
The next day, the conference was shut down after it was discovered someone had contracted the virus a week earlier in the same venue. Since then, it’s been kind of like this:
