I worked retail sales Canada and nearly half our customers are Asian (particularly Chinese nationals visiting, local Canadian-Chinese, SE Asian with Chinese background, etc).

One of our biggest days for sales is Lunar New Year (Aka Chinese New Year), a huge holiday in January/February in Asia, and we expect lots of travellers, families, and red pocket money at this time. Most people in retail will know what I mean, especially those living In multicultural cities.

Well, what we didn’t expect was one of the biggest malls in the country to be really, really quiet. The first of many quiet days to come. Sales plummeted and we never really recovered. Looking back at it now, I already knew it was a sign of what was to come (not if but) when coronavirus would spread to Canada - doesn’t take a genius to think about how accessible and excessively we travel(led). I, along with a select few other Asian friends/colleagues, would keep each other updated for months. I was definitely labelled as a wacko and had many mansplanations of how I was blowing it out of proportion... right up until we all lost our jobs.