Six months, six countries, six families — and one unrelenting, unforgiving epidemic

For the rising actress in Hong Kong, who had broken free of the poverty of her peasant parents, 2020 began as a moment of hope. For the window cleaner in New Delhi, finally able to afford a new cellphone, the year’s start was a time of small advances. For the young nurse newly assigned to the coronary care unit of a Madrid hospital, it was a dawn of promise.

They had their troubles, of course, as did the sorbet hawker from a Rio de Janeiro slum run by drug lords, the publishing manager in Budapest nervous about rising authoritarianism and the single mother in Nairobi staying steps ahead of hunger and her HIV infection. But the concerns were familiar, the challenges of a kind that could be faced, or fought, or at least recognized.

Now, the new year was bringing a new peril.