I hate that people will look back on this behavior with derision, rather than taking sensible precautions during a time of uncertainty.

The first 6 months when we were too scared to go anywhere or do anything, we saved like $1000/month. I proceeded to learn nothing and we went back to max spending as soon as scientifically acceptable.

I went to the expensive grocery store. I had to keep working the entire time. When I went to my usual store after work, I'd have to wait in line to enter the store just to find out the horders bought everything again. The horders didn't go to the expensive store, so I didn't have to wait in line and most of the time I could find everything I needed.

I remember that I got to wfh so I had no commute, and people left me alone to actually do my job. All the orgs I keep busy with were shut down, so I finally got to rest.

But my anxiety was through the fucking roof because every 2 weeks, either my work or some other group would be like “let’s plan a get-together now that COVID is almost over!”

I was an Animal Crosser.

Constant hand sanitizer - I still haven't dropped this habit. I see hand sanitizer, I use hand sanitizer.

this is so fucking wild to me, here in sweden we just put up hand sanitizer bottles in stores and plexiglass in front of the cashiers, and told everyone to pwease keep their distance and not use public transport (and then acted surprised when the public transport use decreased)..

Masks were hard to come by so I 3d printed them and added filter material from furnace filters. They were super hard to breathe but I felt more comfortable shopping with them. Probably inhaled a lot of micro plastic.

We didn't dare eat take-out. We cooked every meal we ate for over two years. That got old after a couple months, so two years kinda sucked. We spent so much money on take-out after we got vaccinated!

Masking outdoors with no one around. I heard on a podcast that it was still good practice so you'd remember not to touch your face, but it was mostly just hot and miserable.

Hmm. Individually washing the eggs in the carton before they went in the fridge, maybe.

Finding out it was definitely airborne was such a relief.

I didn't change much. On the other hand I was already pretty socially distanced before. I honestly loved how society came down to my level. It's much more stressful again now.

The only thing that really changed for me was that I wore a mask when going to a store or something. I didn't need one at work since I worked alone and outside at the time.

The one time I thought I had caught COVID, it turned out to be just a gnarly case of strep throat. Never once lost my sense of smell or taste from strep throat before, but 2 home tests and 1 actual doctor test all showed negative for COVID so... 🤷🏻‍♂️

I then had an allergic reaction to the amoxicillin given to me for the strep throat so that was fun.

I manage a produce department at a grocery store and was always front and center with the hordes of people coming in. At the start of the pandemic my wife and newborn were stuck at home, so even if I wasn't worried about myself, there was always this background anxiety that I was going to bring it home and potentially cause the death of my wife or daughter. Any illness we did get was especially weird or aggressive, and always thought "Ah, shit, this is it.", but somehow never was. To this day we've somehow never tested positive for COVID, though I know statistically we've probably had it.

Those early days were bizarre, though. I remember ominously gathering in the stockroom at work shortly before things started getting weird. The owner explained what was going on, how it would change things and what we would be doing differently going forward. He predicted all of the shortages, especially toilet paper. Funny enough, we always had a huge supply of that shit downstairs, but idiots would buy it up so fast it always looked like there was a shortage. You can only fit like 3-6 packages in a large shelf space at any given time. People would show up before the stock guy could get more out and wind up depleting all of the napkins and paper towels instead. Bet their assholes felt great.

The best were people who bought up a bunch of Lysol, thinking that shit was like a convenient and instant disinfectant. Yeah, if you want to spray down every inch of your home and leave it sit for thirty minutes..

Strange days.. Though I suppose at the heart of it, stupid or not, everyone was just worried about their families.

Not much, I'm already kinda germophobic so it was easy to treat every surface as dirty. And now that people stopped cleaning everything, it's easy to see that everything IS dirty. Still haven't caught it lol

I remember using ATM's for the first time ever (because bank branches were closed) and using our stock of nitrile single use gloves to touch anything.

I also remember still going to work as a machine operator and being forced to wear the paper mask on top of my existing eye and hearing protection... my safety glasses would fog almost constantly and I scrapped at least a few parts cuz I couldn't see what the fuck was going on and they wouldn't let us take any safety gear off (even for a second) unless we left the shop floor. Good times.

Basically the 2nd week of the pandemic they announced that fomites were not a vector of infection.

I was working remotely and not receiving stimulus checks.