This month I asked ’90s, “In what way(s), big or small, has the pandemic changed you (or your outlook, or your habits, or your values, or your self-knowledge, etc.) forever?” Here is Part I of your answers. Greg Millett:“If anything, the Covid-19 pandemic is all too familiar. After Dartmouth I returned to N.Y.C., which was being ravaged by AIDS. I remember a botched government response, a city gripped by fear and anxiousness, and being 22 and already knowing 13 people who had died. For many of us in the gay community, Covid-19’s stigma, testing, denial, and politicization brought up so much of what we lived through in what we call ‘the plague years.’ It has not helped that five of my friends and work acquaintances lost their lives to Covid-19 in the past year. As an infectious disease epidemiologist who has had a career spanning the Centers for Disease Control to the Obama White House, I’m grateful for my experience in HIV to provide insight on surveillance and prevention measures—as well as the ability to contribute my published studies to the Covid-19 scientific literature. What I did not expect was our nation’s haphazard and half-hearted response to the pandemic. I hoped that, collectively, we would handle this pandemic better after the mistakes that were made 40 years earlier. Sadly, that has not been the case. What does that say about us?” Kimberly L. Robinson:“This pandemic hasn’t changed me forever. Adversity happens in life. I think people have been so thrown by this pandemic because they thought their comfortable lives couldn’t be shaken and that such a global catastrophe couldn’t happen in the 21st century. I’ve never been under any such illusion. In the short term, the pandemic prompted me to quit my job because I didn’t believe they could keep work conditions safe, plus I was unwilling to expose myself to public transportation twice a day to get back and forth. I was going to leave that job anyway; I just didn’t think it would be because of a pandemic. Now I’m going to try to do something where I can work from home. Of course, starting something new is always a little bit anxiety-producing, but I think I will be okay. I wouldn’t say that what I’m embarking on, in terms of career, will last forever, but I hope it will last a few years and be reasonably lucrative. The truth is that God has been looking out for me during this very trying year, so I don’t have to worry about what will happen tomorrow. This past year’s catastrophe is hardly the first I’ve been through in recent years and I’m still here, by God’s grace and provision. He has been looking out for me since I accepted Him, which was, not ironically, at Dartmouth. (I’ve always told people that Dartmouth is a place that will drive you to one side of the divine divide or the other.) So I just try to do my part each day and not worry about the rest.”

—Rob Crawford, 22 Black Oak Road, Weston, MA 02493; crawdaddy37@gmail.com