“As a physician, we were masking in the hospital pretty early on. Outside the hospital, I started making masks for neighbors and friends. I think the government finally realized how useful the home-grown masks could be once people started sewing up a storm and they finally recommended it. I have always been careful in the office about hand washing, but I didn’t use hand sanitizer before the pandemic. Now I have bottles of it all over the place. I am very careful to shop only when the store isn’t busy, to avoid peak hours and to avoid people who are not masked or who get too close to me. I realized that it is much harder to interact with strangers with a mask on. People are more standoffish now.” — Michele F. Carlon, Chicago
How did life change during the last year of the pandemic? Here’s what readers told us, in 7 charts.
