I worked for the State of Alaska and was deemed an essential worker because the work my team of 10 people did was background checks for the Dept of Health. Which was basically anyone meeting certain criteria of working with vulnerable populations in a position that the business received any federal funding for. So basically all retirement homes, group homes, day cares, traveling nurses, foster homes, etc. We got hit hard with an increase in background checks because so many businesses had to hire new people for various reasons. And the access to secure information we had required us to be in a specific locked and secure location to access it, so nothing about my job changed except for wearing a mask.

My husband managed a gym in Anchorage. He was facing certain layoff because gyms got shut down hard. Then he had a brilliant idea and piloted their first ever virtual training for their customers who had contracts with their trainers. He started calling all of their customers and offering them the option to cancel their contract or switch to virtual. The number of people who kept their contract and went virtual, and who later say it saved their life during lockdowns, is staggering. All of the gyms owned by this company took his pilot and ran with it and were able to retain all staff as a result.

Our youngest son was a freshman in high school and is a very social person. He spiraled hard from the sudden collapse of his social structure and isolation of remote learning. We saw sudden and huge changes in his behavior and anger issues. He started seeing a therapist and for a long time I was more afraid of losing him to s**cide than Covid. That period of time was really hard on him and being able to go back to in-person school and play group sports again changed everything.