We asked Chicagoans how the pandemic changed their lives. Here’s what they said.

Number of people on a downtown Chicago sidewalk on West Madison Street near North State Street during a normally bustling weekday morning commute on March 19, 2020: zero. Number of pigeons: one. (Ashlee Rezin / Sun-Times)

To mark three years since Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s March 2020 “stay home” order, we’ve been asking Chicagoans over the past week to tell us about the impact on them of the pandemic, how COVID-19 changed their lives and the last thing they did before everything shut down.

Here are highlights of what they told us. Some answers have been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.