This is an Instagram post from sandawanaspa about masking. The company is saying that you no longer need a face mask as a requirement for their services.

This is an Instagram post from birdlife_sa. It discusses the amount of face masks that ended up in the ocean, and what you can do to make your mask disposal more environmentally friendly.

This is an Instagram post from adrianmiller. Here, she is recounting changes that have happened within the last 2.5 years of COVID. These changes include not making small talk or checking for people's facial expressions.

This is an Instagram post from ecowhizz_sa. This is a post advising people to dispose of their masks properly to protect the environment.

We perceive what we want to perceive

This is a tweet from NealJ4USA. This person has decided not to vaccinate their children after having done some research on the subject. Due to distrust in the COVID vaccine, it is also making this person feel more hesitant about any other vaccines that end up getting pushed.

This is a tweet from ChurchAndCovid. This account is trying to help people out in finding ways for people to protect themselves during worship services. The account recommends that instead of providing cloth or surgical masks, it would be more effective to have N95 and KN95 masks instead. Some churches have taken different approaches to COVID, and as we can see here, some churches practice more precaution than others.

This is a tweet from RealLyndaCarter. Lynda Carter is famous for her role in the Wonder Woman TV series. Here, she is expressing anger at those who hated COVID safety precautions wanting to control what people do with their health on abortion.

This is a tweet by StabbyandSpicy. This person is expressing their frustrations over their mom getting COVID, and the Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade being overturned.

This is a tweet from eevee. This person is saying that those who refuse to wear masks are helping create as many COVID deaths as there are abortions per year. It is meant to point out the hypocrisy of people claiming "life is sacred" while being flagrant about wearing masks, which they argue is not pro-life.

This is a tweet from myrabatchelder. This person is advising other about the risks of long COVID, saying people should wear masks in indoor and crowded settings.

This is a tweet from geraldcelente. This person is expressing their anger towards Dr. Fauci and his ideas on what "my body, my choice" actually consists of. Within the vaccine skeptic communities, people like Dr. Fauci are held in contempt due to his stances on things like masks, vaccines, and lockdowns.

This is a tweet from bobbicallie. This person is announcing the joy they have in receiving their second COVID booster shot. They are also worried about long COVID, so despite getting the vaccine booster shots, this person has decided to continue wearing a mask.

This is a tweet from BillHMcCarty. This person is criticizing the amount of COVID deaths that are happening is states that are looking to outlaw or heavily restrict abortion.

This is a tweet from KingsleyCortes. She is criticizing the general Democrat talking points with things like abortion and gay marriage by pointing out that many Democrats were in favor of people getting the vaccines. The vaccines were not voluntary in some cases, where people were coerced into getting them at the risk of losing their jobs. People have many different takes on these hot button issues, but this is the best way I can explain it.

This is a tweet from metraux_julia. She is discussing the importance of wearing a mask for those that could be at high risk. For disabled people, they often face higher chances of getting COVID, in addition to having more complications with it. This is an advisement specifically for attending protests.

This is a tweet from Connybub. This person is pointing out the hypocrisy of the pro-choice crowd and their use of "my body, my choice" while many in this same group also wanted people to take the vaccines against their own will. This is obviously a very controversial topic, and there have been people using different aspects of the vaccine debates and the abortion debates to show which side in the correct one.

This is a tweet from CJ_isnowblue regarding the leaked opinion from the Supreme Court on abortion. She is criticizing the way Republicans have protested for their rights to bodily autonomy on things such as mask mandates and vaccines, while wanting to restrict the bodily rights women have. Throughout the pandemic, the abortion debate has come up a time or two due to the "my body, my choice" rhetoric being used by those against masks and vaccines. Prior to this, it was mainly used for discussions on abortion, but now the two subjects are getting linked in public discourse.

This is a tweet from Anna Akana regarding the leaked opinion draft from the Supreme Court, which would overturn Roe v. Wade. Here, she is criticizing people who use "my body, my choice" in regards to masks, but don't allow it for when it comes to women's reproductive health.

This is a news story from ABC news by Lolita C. Baldor. Up to 40,000 National Guard soldiers, which consists of roughly 13% of the force, have not yet received the mandated COVID vaccine. Soldiers have until Thursday to get the vaccine. Out of all military branches, the National Guard was given the largest window to fulfill that requirement.

This is a news story from The Guttmacher Institute. This article was written before the official Supreme Court decision was released on abortion. The article states that the 30 year decline in abortions has picked up with the threat of Roe v. Wade getting overturned. At the time this article is being entered in, Roe has been officially overturned by the Supreme Court. What is more interesting to me are the numbers given on abortions in 2020, when COVID was at its peak. In 2020, there was 930,160 total abortions, which was an 8% increase from 862,320 abortions in 2017. In 2020, about 1 in 5 pregnancies ended in abortion. The increase in abortions was marked in an overall 6% decrease in births between 2017 and 2020. The article does not discuss the social reasons why more abortions were happening in 2020 compared to other years, but in my own opinion, people's fears of hospitals being too full and the financial strain of lockdowns would have made it difficult to want to carry a baby to term. At the time, people were unsure of how long lockdowns and restrictions would last, so getting the pregnancy care needed to prevent issues giving birth would have been harder to come by.

This is a news story from USA Today by Adrianna Rodriguez. Most US pharmacies don't allow their technicians to administer the vaccine to children under five. The age in which the vaccines can be ministered to younger kids varies, with most putting a minimum of five or above. A lot of the reason administering vaccines has been restricted, according to the article, is because not enough pharmacists are trained to give shots to children that young. The overall target is smaller, and the needle even shorter, in addition to needing to calm and anxious child. This makes people hesitant to give young kids the COVID vaccine. It is recommended that if you cannot find a pharmacy that will give the shot to very young kids that you ask your pediatrician for a one-on-one appointment for the vaccine.

This was one thing I saw at Feed My Starving Children while volunteering there. By rules on food handling from the FDA, everyone is supposed to wear hair nets while working with the food. However, the hand sanitizer was new to me. The check-in wasn't through a computer like it was before, when I volunteered years prior to COVID. People had to go up and say the group they were with, and the check-in was next to the hand sanitizer and hair net station. Due to the facility handling food, hand washing stations were also in the building, but many of these precautions aren't COVID related so much as abiding by FDA guidelines.

This was a sign I saw on June 22, 2022 while volunteering at Feed My Starving Children. Upon entering, I was worried that I would need a mask in order to participate. It turns out, masks were not mandatory. Some people that did come at the session I did were wearing masks, but a good majority of people were not. One of the coordinators said that now they are able to host up to 125 people at a time for a session. At the very beginning when things were just opening up again, that number was at 10. The coordinator said that if things go to plan, FMSC should be able to host 145 people at a time, increasing the amount of pallets that can be shipped across the world to help children in need

This is a news story from National Academics by Sara Frueh. It goes over the data of births throughout the pandemic. Melissa Kearney, a professor of economics at the University of Maryland, says that there was this idea at the beginning of the pandemic that it would lead to a baby boom with people being forced to stay home, but it did not. She adds that closed or limited facilities at the height of the pandemic maybe impacted some people. To support the claim, she brings up the pandemic from 1918-1919 and how that also led to decreased birth rates. An analysis of the data from Kearney states there were 62,000 fewer conceptions in the years from 2020-2021. There was a small increase in conception rates in the summer of 2020, but fell into decline again soon afterwards. The overall trend that Kearney sees with the birth and conception rates is that is has been a steady decline after COVID.

This is a news story from the South China Morning Post by Priyanka Shankar. This article is discussing the difference in responses based on forms of government. When it came to handling the pandemic, people from Asian countries where restrictions were much tougher rated a higher rate of satisfaction in government response compared to Latin America and Europe. This was taken from the Democracy Perception Index. According to researcher Fredrick DeVeaux, a leader in conducting this survey, the tight restrictions common in Asian countries are generally accepted because it gets associated with low death rates. The survey does make mention that in countries such as Iran and China, they hid data about the virus from their citizens, affecting their overall response to changes in lockdowns. However, Singapore is also authoritarian, and the prime minister has made an effort to create transparency in what is occurring, so items get hoarded less. Overall, the article claims that the mass mobilization of people and goods under authoritarian regimes fares better than democracies do at creating an effective COVID response.

This is an Instagram post from infectious_disease_modeler (Dr. Jacob B. Aguilar).He wrote an article about how herd immunity doesn't work with COVID as well as it could due to new variants that keep on happening. He says that if vaccines had a 100% effectiveness rates across all situations, this would not really be an issue. Since the vaccines are not entirely effective, the solution, Dr. Aguilar proposes that the way to help mitigate the issue is mass regular testing to slow the spread of new variants.

This is a news story from CNN by Laura He. This article is on the economic impact of China's zero COVID policy. Retail sales fell 6.7% in May according to China's National Bureau of Statistics. It is slightly lower than the 11. 1% drop in sales from April. Customer spending has fallen in about every category except for food, drink, and petroleum. Youth unemployment is rising in China, as places that would hire young workers were forced to shutdown with lockdowns. The youth unemployment rate rose 18.4% between the 16-24 range in China.

This is a text story from Vox by Dylan Scott. The article claims that COVID helped sink President Donald Trump's re-election campaign, yet despite this, it is not being focused on by either party. Though, this author believes the Democrat response hasn't been much better, with people not really touting President Joe Biden's vaccine rollout and other initiatives. The author links the reason for inflation being COVID interrupting supply lines, which is on people's minds for this midterm election. According to Gallup polling, COVID has lost importance in many people's minds, with it falling behind Russia and gas prices. On the Republican side of things, COVID is rarely mentioned, and if it is, it is in a negative light. Scott says that candidates favored by Donald Trump have gone against his ideas, with them being more skeptical of vaccines, and some refusing to get the vaccine at all. COVID is being tied to an anti-establishment attitude that has been rising within the Republican party. As for my own opinion on this piece, I believe that is does bring up an interesting point with linking COVID to current inflation. I do agree that COVID has impacted the economy for the worst with supply chains being more limited and rising spending of the federal government to counter it, but I do not think it can explain everything. Federal spending in general has been on an increase, which is driving up the cost of items, and not all that spending is COVID related. In addition to that, the shutdown of important pipelines has made reliance on foreign oil more of a necessity, which then drives up gas prices. These types of decisions can't all be traced back to COVID. So while I do think COVID has impacted the economy, I do not think it explains nearly all the economic issues the United States is facing.

This is a news story from The Guardian by Adeshola Ore. The Victorian government has been pressed to stop the two-jab vaccine mandate due to a worker shortage. "While some industry groups have called for the two-dose mandate to be abolished to help ease the skilled workers shortage, the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) said the decision was up to health officials." "Almost 95% of Victorians aged over 12 have received two doses of a Covid vaccine."

This is an Instagram post by ntsnoticiaspatz. It is saying that if you have not, you should register your kid to receive their vaccine. This is being promoted by the Mexican government.

This is a news story from NPR by The Associated Press. The United States has authorized the use of vaccines for infants and preschoolers. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is debating how the vaccines are to be administered. The article says that studies support giving these age groups the vaccines, as they are said to be effective and have minor side-effects.

This is a news story from Tuscon.com. Overall, employment has risen by 15% compared to pre-COVID numbers. Bars, restaurants, and hotels have increased employment by 10.6% since last year. Permits issued for single and multi-family homes are down by about 16% compared to last year. There is also a 32.6% price increase on energy prices, being driven by rising gasoline prices. Overall, this article shows economic trends in Arizona and how COVID has impacted various industries and consumer trends.

Wanted to share how pandemic effected myself and my family

For about 18 months during the main phase of the pandemic, I sent a daily covid (numbers and rates) tracker to a large number of colleagues in the Health and Social Care community in Plymouth. From October 2021 to March 2022, on each Friday I also included, with the covid tracker, a reworked pop song with Covid-related lyrics. It was a bit of fun, but people loved it and some Teams actually had a sing along to the new release each Friday. Depending on your age, you may know some of them. If nothing else, it made people look at the tracker.

The American Samoa Department of Health released this flyer in both English and Samoan languages for the public so they would know what time and day COVID testing sites are open, where they are located, and the number to call for each site if they need further information. Not only was this released online but placed in every store of the island.

With the rise of covid cases in American Samoa at the beginning of this year in February, the Department of American Samoa Health Department partnered up with the American Samoa government to make sure that the people of American Samoa are well aware of what to do to combat COVID. It is one of the many flyers and ads released by the ASDOH for the public of American Samoa. They are released in both the English and Samoan languages. This flyer is for people to wear a mask and in the Samoan language, fa'aaoga puni fofoga.

This biography was created out of a self-directed project from the HST580 class. This biography will be linked to the submissions of the person mentioned in the document and title.

This biography was created out of a self-directed project from the HST580 class. This biography will be linked to the submissions of the person mentioned in the document and title.

This biography was created out of a self-directed project from the HST580 class. This biography will be linked to the submissions of the person mentioned in the document and title.

I have come to this platform as the stay-at-home mom of 2 adorable little girls, Emily 8 and Sara 11, who are simply the loves of my life, during the gut-wrenching time, last year, of the Coronavirus Pandemic! I also teach Part-time at Concordia University in the Department of Women's Studies and Journalism! :) I could never have done this without the genuine love and kind-support of my loving husband Dennis, throughout our 43 years together! :)

I wrote this story about an elderly man who lost his wife in war and suffers from PTSD. He then hears then news about Covid-19 and becomes more isolated because his family is worried about giving him Covid since he is more susceptible to dying. However, as he is getting lonely he realizes his neighbors are abusing their son, so he decides to adopt the little boy. This is to show how domestic abuse became worse with Covid-19 and how some neighbors were able to connect more than before. Finally he catches Covid and passes away, leaving the boy alone again. However, it ends with the elderly man and his wife as angels together. The objective is to show that death is inevitable, with or without Covid-19, but Covid-19 has made many people's lives a lot harder with the added struggle of financial burden, loneliness, and family struggles.

So one of my roommates got covid and because of that we had to self isolate ourselves in our rooms because we found out a couple days after he came back without taking a covid test to see if he had it before coming back. With that being said it was just very difficult to process and go through because there was 4 of us and only one could come out at a time making it very hard for us since we loved to communicate and talk to each other while watching shows in the living room yet now we had to just lock ourselves in our rooms not being able to see each other until my roommate was cleared. It is just hard to adjust right away to being locked in a room for weeks on end and because of it many can really get depressed and just feel awful at times. I wanted to highlight this because of how much of an impact just getting this virus has because some don't believe how bad it is but by now everyone should have realized how bad this pandemic really is for others that have it way worse.

So this was the beginning of lockdown for covid-19 when it first started to get out of hand, I was trying to start my first year at my new college DePaul University. Yet it was going to be online for the first year and that is when it started to get rough from all the work I had to get done with little to no help at all from professors. They weren't opposed to helping it was just the fact that we could only find them in office hours and after class online and most of the times it was software problems that would take so long to be fixed to where it would take almost a couple of weeks to fix. When if it wasn't for covid I would be able to go in and fix it asap. It's just that the reason for this is because Covid can really affect ones learning progress and if it's something tech related it really can cause a delay for many not just students but office workers and professors etc.

This is an article from NHK World-Japan. There have been more COVID-19 cases reported in Tokyo, Japan. However, the article reports that the cases have been in decline despite these new 1,600 cases. The Japan Times website, they have a timeline that discusses the same 1,600 new cases, but also shows an Outbreak map of Japan's current cases, deaths, testing, and other things. This is a reminder that Japan is still struggling with the virus, but there is some hope with the cases decreasing weekly.

This is a news story from Penn State University by Jessica Hallman. A recent study has shown that user corrections given back and forth on social media has helped reduce the spread of misinformation. Through sharing source-backed information, people were able to pick out fake news easier.

This is a news story from CNN by Kaitlan Collins. The CDC is expected to lift the requirement for air travelers to test negative for COVID before entering the US. The travel industry has been lobbying the CDC for months regarding this issue after it was no longer determined that the restrictions are no longer "based on the science and data." However, just because it is getting lifted now, the CDC does have the power to reinstate this restriction if a new variant develops and causes concern.

This is a news story from Healio by Michael Monostra. During the COVID pandemic, adolescents are eating less processed food. "In an interim analysis of the Processed Intake Evaluation (PIE) study of 452 adolescents and young adults presented at ENDO 2022, participants reported eating less ultra-processed food during the first 2 years of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021 compared with prior to 2020. Ultra-processed food consumption dropped further in 2022 when COVID-19 restrictions eased."

This is a news story from Travel Awaits by Amy Sward. Due to a pilot shortage, nearly 100 planes are sitting idle because there are not enough people to fly them. Part of the reason for this pilot shortage is because of COVID. It is due to both buyouts and some pilots being forced into retirement due to age requirements. The shortage of pilots has created hiring sprees where companies like American Airlines are offering better pay and work schedules to lure people into flying for them. American Airlines plans to hire 2,000 pilots in 2022.

This is a news story from Eater by Jamie Feldmar. This chronicles the changing food habits of people throughout the pandemic. In 2020, there was a wave of panic buying for things like flour, canned soups, and frozen vegetables. The use of grocery store delivery apps also increased that year. Instacart, a grocery delivery app, saw a 229% sales increase. With the panic buying came people looking for ways to use up things like canned goods and dried pasta. Things like sheet pan dinners, salads, and other easy meals became sought after in that time. Another change that occurred was people trying food trends popular during the pandemic. Things such as sourdough and whipped coffee were major food trends of that time. Meal kit delivery rose during the pandemic. Blue Apron had subscriptions to their food service skyrocket. Hello Fresh did as well, and was forced to close down temporarily to hire 3,000 extra workers to tackle the rising demand. In 2021, other food trends occurred while many restaurants and other dining establishments could not operate at full capacity. Things like espresso martinis and the dalgona candy, and candy made popular by the TV show Squid Game, were just some of those food trends. The food trends were not without labor issues though. In October 2021, Kellogg's workers went on strike, which affected the supply chains of that brand. Supply chain issues have become an ongoing problem since the beginning of the pandemic. In February 2022, the US temporarily shut down avocado imports from Mexico, making the food more expensive. With supply chain issues comes rising inflation. According to the USDA, food prices in 2022 were expected to rise between 6.5% to 7.5% increases. The Russian war with Ukraine cited as one of those causes. May 2022 saw a baby formula shortage, where 40% of baby formula was out of stock. Today, the USDA is looking to learn from the pandemic and the food issues that are occurring. One way they are doing this is through "a framework to transform the food system," which has the focus on building a more resilient supply chain while providing for rural and underserved communities. My own prediction is that the supply chain issues will mean more local food and less imported food overall in the United States. This means opening more food processing plants and increasing work domestically within the food industry to meet demands. The global food system is very fragile to things like pandemics and war. If food prices are to ever get lowered as well, it is important that more food gets produced and used locally. It would have the added benefit of being more environmentally friendly too, as the food would not have to be shipped as far away to where it gets used.