A comic strip about Covid-19

A comic strip about Covid-19

A comic strip about Covid-19

Covid and Yossarian Episode 23, A comic strip about Covid-19

A comic strip about Covid-19

A comic strip about Covid-19

A comic strip about Covid-19

A comic strip about Covid-19

A comic strip about Covid-19

My personal experience

My oldest daughter is now a senior in high school, and she is still pretty upset that she didn’t get to have a junior prom. She understands that in the context of everything happening in the world, it’s not the most important or most tragic thing that could happen, but it still stings. For many students, it’s the milestones like prom and graduation that make the whole four years worthwhile. If the milestones that high school students look forward to can’t be held, it can affect them deeply. As schools closed and Covid-19 became a fixture in our everyday lives, school events like sports, proms, and graduations went away. Some schools held virtual graduations featuring videos and speeches over Zoom. Others attempted to maintain an atmosphere of celebration by holding drive-up graduations with decorated cars and parking lots. However, many students and parents were upset by this change. While this is understandable, most school districts prioritized the health and safety of students, families, and staff over having an in-person ceremony. This article helps to capture some of the frustrations seniors expressed in 2020 when their hopes of walking the stage and receiving their diploma seemed to vanish overnight.

Arizona teachers have struggled with obtaining higher pay and better funding for years. Add to that a legislative body that doesn’t prioritize educational funding, improving teaching conditions or student learning. When Covid-19 reared its ugly head, the pressure public school teachers normally deal with in overcrowded, undersupplied classrooms intensified and – for many overworked teachers – this was the last straw. Teachers who were in a position to took early retirement. Others simply left the profession for the private sector. Still, some remained and adapted to whatever model of learning their school district employed – sometimes on a week-to-week basis. Now that most schools have returned to an in-person modality, teachers are still leaving the classroom. This article sheds lights on the teacher shortage and how, even still, Arizona educators are contending with Covid-19 in their classrooms and families, leading them to reconsider their decision to stay in education.

As one of many people who adopted a pet during the pandemic, this article resonated with me in many ways. It discusses how people transitioning from remote work at home and returning to the office are trying to ensure that the change is smooth for their newly acquired pets as well. Many of the pets – especially dogs – are not accustomed to being left along for lengths of time and are experiencing separation anxiety. As a result, some pet owners are trying to ensure that their animals have care while they at work. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done due to overbooked facilities and some animals with behavioral issues due poor socialization as a result of the pandemic. This article does a nice job capturing some of the struggles pet owners are experiencing now as they attempt to return to normalcy and some of the services available to keep them happy and occupied as they adjust.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has drastically altered mental health, see https://covid-19archive.org/s/archive/page/mental-health, I hope that there could be benefits to mental health as COVID rates around the world drop. It is now more convenient than ever to partake in counseling services from the comfort of your room, especially if you have social anxiety or pandemic anxiety. Unfortunately, statistics are not out as of March 2022 that demonstrate that mental health is improving with waning COVID rates, instead counselors, psychiatrists, and psychologists seem busier than ever. While telehealth meetings are convenient, wait times and schedules are full of the backlog of people whose mental health was affected by the pandemic. I wanted to find an example of a positive outcome on mental health through COVID's global sweep, especially as COVID wanes. Attached is an example of a study in Spain that focused on a group of homeless in Spain that were in lockdown. "More than 60% of them presented mental disorders and within 8 weeks they were visited in person 2–3 times...Finally, 51.8% were linked to social and health care services and 37% to mental health resources, which can constitute a step forward in their reintegration and normalization." They argue that if it was not for COVID and these efforts, these homeless people may not have been diagnosed and helped. The paper concludes that this study is useful for the future because it shows how under immensely stressful situations, primary and secondary interventions worked. This can be repeated without a pandemic. While the pandemic was very stressful, it reaped some benefits such as a new focus on mental health, new methods of talking with trained professionals, and studied like this that show data of improving mental health in times of stress.

Although my aunt was not a significant part of my life since about 2007, she was still family. During the midst of the large outbreak in the summer of 2020 my dad texted me that she was in the hospital, then was released, and then was found deceased in her home a few days later. At this time, it was hard to have a body “processed” quickly, for lack of better words, through morgues and funeral homes. Additionally, having a funeral service was not advised because of either lockdown, funeral homes limiting attendance, or these homes even not performing services. On top of that, many people would have been hesitant to attend. My dad and his siblings decided to not have a service. I have heard many other similar stories. Perhaps this became a pandemic funerary custom to some; life went on and no occasion was marked. Even though we were not super close, and I was not despondent, this would have been a way to process and mark a death for me. For others, a time to process grief. To summarize, she died of COVID-19. I could not visit her in the hospital, and we did not have a funeral service or a burial. I feel that because of the pandemic my family did not go through the traditions and customs that help people process and accept death. I am not sure how my parents and sister feel. I have mistakenly wondered what my aunt was up to, temporarily forgetting her death. Even though we weren't the closest I would have had a memory marker achieved through tradition and grieving/funerary customs that would have given others the peace needed.

This article details the closing of the popular Mesa concert venue Club Red during March of 2021. Unfortunately, due to an inability to host concerts as a result of COVID-19, Club Red ran out of business and had to close its doors after 15 years of music. Club Red was the first notable local music venue to close in the wake of the pandemic, and it made me sad personally because my own band used to play shows there. I have had the privilege to interact with Kimberly LaRowe of 13th Floor Entertainment, who is featured in the article, on several occasions to book shows for my band, and I never had a bad experience. While it is not explicitly stated that Club Red closed as a result of COVID-19, it his highly likely, as suggested by Kimberly LaRowe in the article. This article does an excellent job of diving deep into how drastically the local Arizona music scene has been affected by COVID-19, especially venue owners and promoters. Also, this article provides a very interesting story of the history of Club Red over the years, and details the subsequent reactions that many local and prominent musicians had to the venues closing, which certainly adds to the archives performing arts collection

This remarkable article tells the story of how a 104-year-old World War II veteran from Alabama named Major Wooten was able to beat COVID-19 in a little under two weeks after testing positive. The article describes how Major Wooten was given an infusion of a newly approved monoclonal antibody therapy named bamlanivimab, and while this treatment physically drained him temporarily, he was able to recover 24 hours later. Wooten maintains that he is still quite drained and “mentally fuzzy” after having COVID-19, but this remarkable man was able to bounce back extremely well from the disease. This article is significant to the archival collection relating to COVID-19 survivors, as well as the collection pertaining to veterans. It truly is amazing to see someone like Major Wooten survive fighting in France during World War II, and then continue to beat the odds by defeating such a deadly disease. This article will do a great job of addressing the lack of input within the archives from elderly veterans on how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted their lives.

In October 2021 I was selected to voluntarily participate in the EPICC DoD Research Study on COVID-19. This study is focused on adulty active duty and non-active duty military service members who have tested for, had, or is vaccinated against COVID-19, and part of the Military Health System. I had never participated in a study before and honestly what hooked me was the $10 Amazon gift card they would give us for participating. Fast forward six months and I have completed three questionaries and one at-home blood sample kit. I think it's pretty cool to be participating in something that may improve the Military Health System overall and also provide data points for future research of COVID-19. Studies like this show how novel this virus really was and how we want to learn as much as we can about it in an effort to be more prepared for similar events in the future.

On March 23, 2022, American Samoa reported its first Covid Death. This article was released on Talanei News with the Governor sending his sincere condolences to the man's family. With the surging number of cases in American Samoa from 555 last month to 2000 plus recently, the Governor went live on the local news when the first covid related death was reported to express his sympathies and to the public never to lose hope and to keep fighting against the disease. After two years, American Samoa had just experienced its first covid related death, making everyone worried that more deaths would come. And sadly, I think there will be. I have seen how COVID deaths have increased globally for the past two years, and as much as I do not want to think about it, I know it will be bound to happen. And just like me, the American Samoa public worries that since it is a tiny island, COVID-related deaths will spread quickly. When I saw this article on Talanei News, I immediately began to worry. I felt like I also lost a family member thinking about my parents. Experiencing death is never easy, and COVID has brought a lot of sadness. This article gave me fear, worries, and sadness altogether. This is why this article is essential to me as it informed important information about home during the drastic times of COVID and death.

The screenshot is a cancellation email from graduation services letting us know that our graduation was being postponed, ultimately it was canceled altogether. Like many, I also lost the opportunity to walk across the stage after completing my undergraduate degree in the spring of 2020. Really it wasn’t until I found out that the graduation was canceled that I realized how much the graduation had meant to me. Before, I thought “It's just a piece of paper, who cares if you walk across the stage to get it.” It's more than that, for many it’s a transition from academia to the workforce, a real transition in life that is captured in a moment. For me, it was a little different as it was more of capturing a moment of hard work and dedication as I completed my degree while having a full-time job in the military. Also, I was the first person in my family to complete a college degree. Not graduating doesn’t erase these accomplishments, but it does alter the celebration of the accomplishments. The pandemic changed what was considered “normal.” We can see this as graduations later in the pandemic shifted to virtual graduations accomplished over Zoom or Skype. Obviously, this is not the same experience by a long shot, but I do think that it is still important to capture these big life moments in some way. I am writing this in March 2022, the pandemic has tapered off and I hope that this spring/summer people have the opportunity to experience a real graduation!

One of the main benefits of being in the military is the opportunity to travel overseas and experience other places, cultures, and people. I was stationed in Germany and had lost of ideas of where I was going to travel all across Europe during the summer and winter months, unfortunately, Europe locked down hard in the spring of 2020. I wanted to travel during the summer months and go to the beaches across the Mediterranean and see England when it wasn’t raining. During winter I had looked forward to seeing the famous German Christmas Markets and traveling to Switzerland to see the Alps covered in snow. Due to lockdowns none of this happened. For many the pandemic made if feel as if our lives were on hold. Not only were we missing out on small events here and there but also large chunks of our lifetime. I feel as if I was stuck waiting to live life, not able to really enjoy what was around me.

This is a news article detailing a dramatic decrease in Covid-19 related deaths for individuals over 65 per the Arkansas Department of Health. The article provides context in previous data collection, highlighting that 80% of Covid deaths in 2020 were individuals 65 and older. Further, the article states that in 2021, 65% of Covid related deaths were individuals 65 and older. The Department of Health now reports fewer and fewer deaths in general, and attributes this to the rapid vaccination of the elderly, particularly in retirement facilities that were hit the hardest at the start of the pandemic. Indeed, the medical community has a greater understanding of Covid's impact on the body and how best to effectively treat the elderly. So it really begs the question: Are we really safe to pull away from the panic of Covid now that the most vulnerable community is safer from Covid than ever before? Or are we merely in a lull between waves?

Deep in the Ozark Mountains lies the small resort town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. This community relies heavily on tourism, shopping, and the many natural spas erupting from within the Ozarks. This community is also home to a thriving LGBTQ+ community in the heart of the Conservative Bible Belt. As Covid quickly enveloped Arkansas and restrictions were placed on activity, Eureka Springs and the LGBTQ+ crowd suffered. While there is a strong Queer population in Eureka Springs, the area is home to a strong evangelical crowd. This article details how the LGBTQ+ community took greeter precautions to protect against Covid, while the Evangelical crowd largely disregarded the pandemic entirely. Covid truly resurfaced a tremendous divide amongst the population of Eureka Springs which had, for the most part, been stable. The nature of pandemic regulations and the adherence or neglect of these regulations spilled over into the greater conflict between Evangelicals and the LGBTQ+ community, an occurrence that would otherwise be non-existent without the presence of Covid-19. This article highlights that while Covid seems to have the primary grip over our lives at the moment, we must be conscious of the impact Covid can have on other areas of life, deep-seeded conflict, and the general safety of vulnerable groups.

Like everything having to do with public interactions during the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing and lockdowns significantly impacted "traditional weddings." Gone were the days of large weddings, dancing around mask free and hugging the happy couple. If you search the internet, you will find a large amount of information on happy couples who had to cancel or alter their plans. Many of the #COVID BRIDES stories on this archive illustrate the extreme panic of changing plans and constant change, such as wearing masks in their pictures. The pandemic altering, delaying, or even preventing weddings has impacted society's mental health and perhaps future cultural traditions in weddings. This archive has a collection on mental health, https://covid-19archive.org/s/archive/page/mental-health, which demonstrates how hard this pandemic has been on many people. The effects on mental health shows how weddings are a popular and important tradition in American society. The ceremony is a way to share your love before others, blend families and friends, and move from a "single person" to a team. When I say wedding, I mean the customs and celebration within the ceremony, not the genders of the couple. Gay marriage has not been legal throughout America long, only since 2013. The anxiety and stress of two years of delayed/cancelled weddings during a pandemic pale in comparison to the longstanding social pressure for LGBTQ people not to marry, on top of previous legality issues. There is still a large group of Americans that have the opinion that it is "evil" or a sin. I have seen and heard in person, movies, or television disparaging remarks on the idea of two men or two women getting married and/or kissing. I wanted to highlight this picture from TIME magazine as I hope it demonstrates that masks made people freak out. The idea that the officiant and the people were so distracted and concerned about the two brides either not wearing masks or being the only two kissing while not wearing masks----rather than not being male/female made me smile. I hope some of the pain, anxiety, and discomfort of the pandemic was turned into positivity by distracting people from the meaningless idea of couple's gender and that some LGBTQ opponents realized there are bigger problems in the world.

This is an article form the New York Times detailing the views of a transgender woman and her views on the invisibility of Queer people when collecting data regarding vaccines. There has been extensive data highlighting the disparity of President Biden's vaccine rollout along racial and socio-economic lines. Racially diverse and poorer communities have faced some of the greatest struggles when dealing with COVID-19, yet disproportionately have received less vaccines and vaccine availability. While the disparity is recognized, little seems to be done to change it. Further related to the article, the transgender woman in question, Josie Nixon, expressed her fears that Queer people arguably face a greater disparity and fears that the community will become faded in the attempt to quickly roll-out vaccines. Nixon asserts that while there is an abundance of data associated with racial and economically impoverished groups, data related to the LGBTQ+ community is miniscule, which presents a danger of that vulnerable community being left behind. The article's ultimate assertion and conclusion is that Queer people must have greater inclusivity in data collection in order to give a clear picture to the government to aid in the distribution of vaccines. Failing to do so, Nixon argues, places an already at-risk community to greater issues.

KHON2 News Story on the Punawai Facility. The facility aims to help the community combat homelessness and aid those experiencing homelessness bringing hope to everyone.

According to the Center of Disease Control, in June of 2022, US adults reported considerably elevated adverse mental health conditions associated with COVID-19. Out of a survey they did on 5,412 people, 40.9 percent of respondents reported at least one adverse mental or behavioral health conditions, including symptoms of anxiety and depressive disorder which were around 31 percent. One of the causes of this is due to increase sedentary behaviors and low levels of physical activity due to quarantines and lack of business operation. Over the past two years, government mandated quarantine, work from home, and online schooling has caused me to stay at home for longer periods of time than what I use to. Because of this sedentary behavior, I had dealt with the negative effects of isolation, stress, and anxiety on both my mental and physical health. According to the World Health Organization, 150 minutes of moderate exercise or physical activity is usually recommended per week, however, with working a full-time job and being in school, the question that remains is how that is possible? I have learned to accommodate these physical needs indoors, by taking active breaks during the day and exercising at home. While this does not necessarily help with isolation and loneliness sometimes, I have learned to take these matters one day at a time and not shun myself for feelings them. CDC argues that from a recent comprehensive review that the impact of COVID-19 on mental health particularly seems to affect more young women disproportionally than any other group. Therefore, I recommend any young adult or women facing severe mental health to take advantage of online support or mental health services through telehealth such as ZocDoc. It is important to highlight COVID-19's impact on mental health in the United States and my personal life because it shows how the pandemic changed the means and the ways we received mental health services in the past. As the pandemic ventures on, people like myself will continue to have to find ways to cope and receive services for our problems. Thanks to the pandemic, much of our mental health problems have come more to the forefront due to us having ample amounts of time now to navigate and deal these issues unlike never before.

Baked breadfruit is a typical Samoan traditional food. Fully ripe breadfruit is baked or boiled for Samoans to enjoy as a common staple starch. Samoans eat breadfruit for everyday meals and in large feasts or celebrations. The video shows my family setting the baked breadfruits on the table to cool down before packing them to be sent over with my cousin leaving the island. Before the pandemic, whenever one of our close friends or family members left the island, my family always prepared baked breadfruits for them to bring over to us here in the states. Now, we could only enjoy the sight of it through video chats with my parents back home. To prepare for this delicious delicacy, we prepare everything the day before the cooking. If you are to visit Samoa, Sunday is the day when every family is baking breadfruit. Sundays are considered feast days or holidays in Samoa. We enjoy baked breadfruits every Sunday after church and other delicious home-cooked Samoan dishes. While we can also enjoy baked breadfruits here in the states using an oven, we can barely find any excellent, fully ripe breadfruits in-store in Washington. And besides, I know it will never bring the same taste as I grew up enjoying back home.

The COVID-19 crisis has impacted mass incarcerated facilities at an exceeding rate, exacerbating existing staffing shortage and leaving those housed in large numbers increasingly vulnerable to COVID-19. The Federal Correctional Institution in Edgefield, South Carolina is no exception to this hardship. FCI Edgefield has be forced to expand its use of a practice called "augmentation" or allowing those in non-correctional roles at the prison to work in correctional officer roles. This is because staff members are getting sick an exceedingly high rate, causing some staff to have quarantine for several days while others have chosen to retire early out of the fear of high exposure and incentives losing way due to the crisis. Since the pandemic has taken off, only a small number of inmates have died from COVID-19, about 50 in total. Yet, due to less experienced staff on site due to shortages, one inmate died due to undermined symptoms on January 27, 2021. Overall, stories like these are important because they show how state officials, lawmakers, and policymakers have made little strides in reducing and slowing down the spread of the coronavirus in state and national prison systems. People like my mother, who works at FCI Edgefield, have preexisting medical conditions that put them at a heightened risk for complications if they were to catch COVID-19. Thus, we should make aware that these state officials have waited too long to make strides towards reducing the prison population, routinely rotating staff, and increasing social distance measures in the jail populations. As the pandemic wears on, much is still needed to be done in prioritizing staff and prison populations for vaccination matters. While this idea has generated some wide societal debate, I find it hard to argue that people who work and live in correctional facilities are at a major disadvantage in this crisis. Therefore, it is only fair to consider these high-risk groups first when prioritizing phases and measures of the vaccines and health and well-being.

In May of 2020, it was the middle of the pandemic and I wanted to try and make homemade donuts. Everyone else in lockdown was making homemade bread, but I wanted to do something a little more sweet. With that, I searched on Amazon for molds that someone could use to make the circular donuts. I knew without them, the donuts would not come out well. Once the molds were delivered and using a box of cake mix, I tried to make donuts. Now, you would think the second picture of Devil's Food favored donuts was the first batch, but no it wasn't. My first batch came from Funfetti cake mix (my favorite boxed cake mix), but it was a disaster. The donuts got stuck in the mold and would not come out until I used a butter knife. It left a mess because only part of the donut came out sometimes. I was disheartened because since I had time on my hands, I thought I could make donuts because the recipe I found was easy to follow. I gave up for awhile but decided later on to try again. In January of 2021, the date for the second photo of the Devil's Food donuts, I succeeded. I had sprayed the molds thoroughly and took my Mom's suggestion to spread flour around in the molds. I was proud that my second batch of donuts came out successfully!

I got married in May of 2019. When I got married, I had no idea something like COVID would happen and change the dynamics I had with my husband. COVID happened the first few months into our marriage. With it, my husband had to start working from home. I won't lie and say it wasn't an issue with my husband having to not be in the office anymore. I felt like I couldn't do as many things, as my husband had to talk to clients and go to meetings, where I couldn't be too loud. Another thing I wasn't used to at the beginning of all of this was seeing my husband far more often than just before or after work. With that, I had to learn to communicate better with any issues I had instead of bottling it up as much. As we were together more, I had to learn to accommodate for that. From reading news stories early in 2020, not everyone was able to make their marriages work, and ended up getting divorced after some spouses were made to work from home. I think that is one thing people aren't always aware of being an issue in a marriage. Sometimes too much time together can have the opposite effect, especially if communication was already shaky even before the pandemic. There were a few times I did get angry with my husband for not feeling like I was being understood. With him being at the apartment more, there were more opportunities for me to get annoyed with him. At some points though, the anger wasn't even really his fault, but my own for not dealing with the lockdowns well mentally in addition to forgetting to take medicine or do other tasks. I had to learn to speak more openly about these issues rather than letting them linger. Funnily enough, it wasn't until February of this year that we both really learned to talk to each other more productively. The big fight we had was partly from me feeling jealous of how my husband would talk to his friends more often than he would me, as for a while by that point, we had gotten into a routine during COVID of both of us being on our phones way more than we should be. We later had to come to the agreement to set aside specific time for each other without using our phones. It has already been over a month since that change, and the relationship has improved drastically. Some of my habits that I made to help cope with COVID and general anxiety issues kept me from having as solid a relationship with my husband. Intimacy was another issue that came up due to my husband working from home. Even though we physically saw each other more often, we didn't kiss nearly as much as we used to. I think that sometimes kissing goes to the wayside if people become too busy. This was something we ended up having multiple discussions on, as we wanted to show more affection with each other, but did not think to do it. Overall, the biggest changes that happened in my relationship with my husband because of COVID was the way we communicated. Being together in person more often meant we had to work through multiple issues we had prior to COVID or because of COVID. Being alone together more often may seem like an ideal situation to some people looking from the outside, but with it can bring a host of new issues. Some people during the pandemic learned this the hard way and ended up getting divorced. The problems me and my husband have had were not unsolvable, but they take some maturity to work through without it causing resentment. I think sometimes of what it would have been like if COVID never happened early on into our marriage, and now I am glad some of it did, because I have become a better wife and am able to meet my husband's needs better than before. Life really did hand me one very tart lemon by having to deal with a pandemic the first few years in marriage, which many say are some of the most vulnerable years for a couple. That tart lemon has since been made sweet, but only because both of us were able to recognize problems and figure out ways to help each other.

This picture shows the presents I received from my best friend Alex back in October of 2021. Normally, I would have two parties for my birthday; one with family and one with friends. Alex would normally be part of the friend party or possibly a separate party of our own. However, due to COVID, that was not meant to be. Alex wanted to keep healthy in order to keep seeing her nephew, so it was for the best to not hold the party this year. Instead, we decided to meet up on my birthday for about a half-hour to hand out my presents. She gifted me with four figures of Princess Aurora from Disney's Sleeping Beauty. Aurora is my favorite Princess and I was so happy to add these figures to my collection! I am glad that we were able to talk for at least a short time before she had to go home. I hope that in 2022, we can actually hold an in-person birthday party for my birthday and her's as well.

This is a picture of the first Christmas tree that my brother and I bought to set up in our apartment. It is a small tree because I figured we did not need a big one since we had a small number of ornaments to hang up. This tree also represents Christmas 2020, the year of COVID-19 and the first year we did not spend Christmas Eve with our parents. My Mom has an auto-immune disease and she could not go out much in 2020. However, at some point, she either went out or COVID was brought home. She ended up in the hospital a day or two before Christmas and tested positive for COVID. Therefore, it was for the best for my brother and I to not go home on Christmas Eve. I was disappointed we couldn't go see them. However, my brother and I decided to order Shari's, a diner restaurant local to Washington and Oregon, for dinner. We didn't see them that day, but we were able to go over the next day to open presents and not much else. Not the best Christmas, but I suppose it could have been worse.

For those that are somewhat familiar with autism, one might believe the pandemic was perfect for someone like me. People were encouraged not to speak to each other in person, everyone had to keep a distance, and masks were everywhere to conceal the face. These things, for me, were what I dreaded. I had a pretty good routine going before the pandemic. I had just graduated college with my bachelor degree and was getting used to being married. I was also caring for my grandma as one of my first jobs. I got to get up every morning, earn money, and make sure my husband was well cared for. My husband and I would go places for date nights and we would sometimes do spontaneous things like midnight grocery shopping for ice cream. Things were just carefree. Then a few months into our marriage, things changed a lot (more for me than for my husband). I enjoyed going to church in person for both my spiritual needs and for the social aspects it gave me. Once March 2020 happened, I couldn't go to church in person. Church was online and it became harder for me to get into it and actually concentrate. I then just stopped going altogether for a while because I wanted to have that human connection I was missing. Eventually, I was able to go to church again, but I had to wear a mask. I dealt with it even though I didn't like it. It was sad to see so many people's faces covered by cloth. It made it feel like I couldn't connect to people as well. My social skills aren't terrible if everyone wears a mask, but I'm more likely to miss certain cues or tell when someone is joking. I focus on the mouth a lot when people talk, so not getting to see mouths was bothersome. Other elements of my life changed, and autism made it worse for me in some ways. Due to my older habits of wanting to go places more often, the stay-at-home orders that occurred at the very beginning made me feel like a prisoner and that I couldn't choose things for myself as often. This increased my anxiety a lot, to a point of a mental breakdown. My husband was luckily very understanding of my issues, so I was eventually able to recover once I gave myself more work to occupy my time with. Of all the COVID rules I had to follow, social distancing was one of the easiest things for me, but only in a few ways. I was fine with talking in person from a distance, as I already do that naturally, but I was not okay with having to talk to people more often through online video like Zoom. Zoom feels so unnatural because seeing people through video is not the same as seeing them in person. I didn't have to do it very often, but I was greatly unhappy at the annual family Christmas celebration in 2020 was all on Zoom. It didn't feel as festive as I would have wished. Autism in general has made COVID much harder to deal with, and sometimes I think that if I didn't have it that I could have adjusted better to the abrupt changes COVID brought into my life. I did learn some things though. I learned that I need a set routine to get things done, and that if I have a problem, I shouldn't feel afraid to be more honest about it. With my husband having had to work from home due to COVID, both of us have had to work on better communication skills. I don't think everything I've learned from this experience has been bad, but it's also not something I want to go through again.

My sister got engaged in October of 2019. At the time, we believed everything would go smoothly. My sister and her then fiancé planned for a wedding on October 10, 2020. It was a good thing it was that far in advance, as some people I knew that were planning for weddings in March or April of 2020 had to either reschedule their weddings or have a much smaller one than anticipated. One element of the wedding that made it unique for me outside of it being during COVID was that I had to travel across the country to get there, as the wedding was in Ohio, and I live in Arizona. At least I wasn't a bridesmaid, so there were less things I needed to really worry about. One thing that did bother me a lot was the plane ride there. I am not a fan of masks, as they give me lots of sensory issues and make it harder for me to understand what people are saying. I had to wear a mask for over three hours in the airport traveling to and from there. It was very uncomfortable too, given that planes themselves don't typically give you enough room to really feel like you can stretch out or lay down. I absolutely dreaded the plane ride even more because of the masks, but luckily the airlines were not bothered if I wore a cloth mask that I felt like I could breathe easier in. At least that was one mercy I got from all of this. Getting to the airport itself in Michigan before having to use a rental car to drive to where the wedding was, it made me sad to see so many shops and restaurants in the airport that were closed. For how many were shut down, I thought it was the opposite of helping, as it made it so people would crowd in the few places that were open for business, in addition to keeping people out of work that could have really used the money. When I got to the rental home my family was staying at for the wedding, it started to feel a bit more normal again. People were talking with each other without masks and for a moment, it made me feel like I was human again. The wedding felt the same way. Masks and hand sanitizer were still abundant for those that wanted them, but overall, people were acting like it was before the virus even happened. I was happy that the cases were low enough in Ohio for my sister to have a (mostly) normal wedding given the circumstances. Others were not nearly as lucky. Overall, it was a great time seeing family I didn't get to see as often, in addition to enjoying lots of dancing and good food. Unlike my wedding that happened in 2019, my sister wasn't able to go to the honeymoon destination she wanted until nearly a year after the wedding happened. She was also busy in school, so she couldn't afford to take time off for that at the moment anyway. If you were to look at the picture I posted for the wedding of my sister, you would assume that it wasn't during COVID. I'm glad my sister and my brother-in-law didn't wear masks for the wedding pictures because it's more fun to see people's faces, especially for an event like that. I am mostly just grateful that despite less than optimal circumstances to have a wedding, my sister was able to have a celebration she could look back on fondly.

As a 2020 senior, I went on Spring Break and never came back to the high school that I thought I would enjoy for 2 more months. I cried at the fact that I wouldn’t get to experience my “lasts” of high school; no senior trip, no senior field day, no senior prank, and no graduation. I felt like my senior year had been ripped away from me in a matter of seconds, and I felt that I had worked hard in school for nothing. I questioned if I would ever get to go to college or travel again. Covid-19 turned my happy senior year into a nightmare. I remember feeling so discouraged and depressed; even my town’s streets were completely empty. It was a time of utter darkness that I never want to live through again. The unknown scares me, and Covid-19 sent my fear into full force.

The removal of the Robert E. Lee statue in Richmond, VA was removed because of the racist history of Lee and how he failed to represent the many people living in Richmond today. Richmond, VA was once the capital of the south, but today, it is an eclectic city full of rich history. The removal of the statue was because of the many BLM protests that took place during the summer of 2020 after the murder of George Floyd.

This story is about the school board of Hanover County in Virginia needing discipline instead of letting it's students protest and participate in walk-outs during school hours because of the policies against their transgender students. The school board is accused of having no intentions of supporting the non-binary and transgender students of Hanover. This is important because it is once again showing discriminatory policies that the school board keeps bringing up against transgender students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Video highlights why the cancelation of PrideFest 2021 was important. During this time in 2021 there was a COVID-19 surge, so for the safety of the community, PrideFest was canceled. This shows the difficulties that the community faced and the hard decisions that had to be made in order to keep the community safe, but also the city of Richmond.

The document is the "COVID-19 Parent/Guardian Expectations" section of a school handbook for the 2021-2022 school year. For this school district, the 2021-2022 school year is the first year since the pandemic started that would be entirely in-person. Due to this, school staff, parent/guardians, and students were expected to comply with essential health and safety standards. The handbook covers when students should be kept home from school, how to report symptoms of COVID-19 or a positive test, bus protocols, sanitation policies followed by teachers and school staff, mask expectations, cafeteria and food procedures, accommodations for social distancing, requirements of school volunteers, and athletics. This document shows how schools worked to create policies and procedures in order to keep students in school in-person. These procedures were created in anticipation of the first school year that would be completely in-person, since the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years were partially online.

My grandfather on my dad’s side passed in April 2021. It’s coming close to a year mark at my time of writing this. I think that being in a time surrounded by so much death and loss that we have forgotten about those who have died during this time unrelated to Covid. He had suffered kidney failure in late 2013/early 2014, that part of my life is blurry in memory so I don’t recall exactly, but he had been on dialysis ever since. It’s been hard to talk about his passing, everyone assumes that death in the last two years always has to do with Covid. Death is never easy to talk about, but it is inevitable for every living creature. My grandfather was old and had been sick for a long time, he lived a long and happy life. I don’t mean that in some cheesy way, he truly did. I carry a tremendous amount of guilt surrounding his death. Due to Covid restrictions, I didn’t get to see him for a year leading up to the week that I spent with him while he was in the hospital, then hospice. I still think about him all the time and the last days that I got to spend with him. I don't think I'll ever get to have that closure I want due to this. It’s almost as if we had expected death due to illness, accident, age, anything else, expected to stop. Yet, death of all causes never stops.

The photos are from the Drive-Thru Graduation Ceremony at Bostrom High School in Phoenix, Arizona. To have a graduation ceremony for the 2020 graduates, the high school put on a socially-distant commencement where parents and families could show their support from their cars. These images show the creative lengths that school staff, district staff, and parents went to give 2020 graduates a celebration that they deserve. In 2020, all people made some level of sacrifice, and the photos are an example of how communities worked together so that students did not have to lose another milestone in their lives.

On May 1st, Dr. Curtis Finch, the Superintendent of Deer Valley Unified School District (one of the largest districts in Arizona), sent a letter as part of a daily update during the end of the 2019-2020 school year. Due to laws and regulations, there were many people unsure about whether the Class of 2020 would have a graduation ceremony. In this letter, Dr. Finch announced that an in-person ceremony would be held during the summer (July 2-3) due to a survey where the majority of parents indicated that they wanted an in-person ceremony. He stated a specific time for each high school and explained that additional information would be given each week, due to needing to plan exactly how the ceremony will work depending on guidance at the time. On June 25th, the graduation was canceled. This item shows the work and resilience that went into trying to give students and their families the milestones that they were hoping to experience. Many people, businesses, schools, and other organizations worked to find ways to safely host events. While some worked, this is an example of a plan that did not go through.

January 28, 2021, around 11 PM one of my friends called me, we normally don’t talk on the phone so I assumed something was wrong. I could tell that she was driving and her voice was shaky. She told me that a freezer had failed at her mom’s work and that around 1,300 vaccines would be expired by 5 or 6 AM. She was told to try to get anyone she knew to get to the hospital in order to reduce the chance of wasting such a hard to get thing. This was prior to my state lifting restrictions on who was eligible for the vaccine yet. Not everyone could get it, just certain people due to age, pre-existing conditions, and career. The clinic did a good job at still trying to make sure that people who were eligible got to the front of the line, but they knew that they needed to make sure every vaccine was used. My girlfriend and I would not have made it there in time since we were over 3 hours away, but her family all lived within a 30-minute drive. We started calling her parents and brothers to wake them up and get moving. Her mother, oldest brother, and soon to be sister-in-law were all teachers and were going to have to start teaching in person again. None of them would have been eligible until a month or more after going back in person, and they were all decently nervous about being in person unvaccinated. Her family got lucky and was able to get vaccinated that night. I cannot thank my friend enough for calling me to keep the people who have become my family safe.

This letter is written by Dr. Curtis Finch, the Superintendent of Deer Valley Unified School District, one of the largest school districts in Arizona. The letter is addressed to the 2020 class of DVUSD high school graduates and their parents. Dr. Finch explains that graduation (which had already been postponed by a month) would need to be canceled due to new laws and policies. The letter ends with an encouraging note. This letter says multiple things about the pandemic. First, many people believed the situation would get better. This is shown by attempting to delay graduation by one month when in reality, the increasing cases due to the pandemic would continue much longer. Another message shown by the letter is that school staff, parents, and graduates were working to attempt to save milestones such as graduation in multiple different ways, but were not able to.

Logistics and Transportation have seen dramatic changes since the beginning of the pandemic, and as such, my life has drastically changed as well. When the pandemic started, I worked for a trucking company that had grown into a major corporation. With all of the uncertainty in the world, I decided to bet on myself and leave that job to start my own company. This is how my life has changed since then, and what a typical day in my world looks like now, which is much different than it looked at the beginning of 2020. I wake up at 6 am and grab my laptop, I then log in to my load boards and post the loads I have to work on for the day. 90% of my business is done over email, so I am able to get my work started before I even start to get ready for the day. I then have time to talk with my wife as we get ready, answering emails as we go. When 8 am rolls around, I wake up my two sons, ages 8 and 1. We have family time in the morning, eating breakfast and watching the news before my wife heads off to her Law School. I then take my boys to their respective schools and drop them off for the day. At this point, if I have any errands to run I usually try to knock those out. I then head home and start bidding on new loads for the days to come. And since most of my work is done over email, I am able to knock any household chores out that need to be done for the day. When lunch rolls around I like to meet my wife for a quick bite some days, and other days I eat a simple lunch at home. I am usually able to wrap up most of my business by 3:30 pm and head to pick up my 1-year-old son from his school. When we get back home, we meet my 8-year-old son as he is getting off the school bus around 4:15. We have some father/sons time, and my wife usually arrives back home around 5:30 pm. Once we have dinner, I then get to work on whatever schoolwork or reading I need to do, and then a little more family time before bed. Since the pandemic forced/allowed me to take on this new opportunity, I am able to see my family much more than I did when I was spending 50+ hours per week in an office, with another 5 hours spent commuting. The pandemic has been awful for a lot of reasons, but as a silver lining, I hope that we have learned how to be more efficient with our time and to realize that the bulk of our waking hours do not necessarily need to be spent in an office when we can accomplish the same amount or more remotely, while greatly increasing our mental health.

The biggest change for me since COVID-19 became a fixture in my day-to-day life is transferring permanently from a physical classroom to a virtual one. Teaching online has its own unique set of challenges in addition to the ones that it shares with classroom teaching. While I personally do not find teaching online to be as satisfying or engaging as the physical classroom, I am hesitant to return. I hear from colleagues about the behavioral issues, the lack of motivation, and the additional stresses placed on teachers by administration. While these are things I also deal with in a way in an online environment, compounding them with the potential risk of COVID when I have immunocompromised loved ones isn’t worth the risk for me at this time. Another big change in my routine is using more delivery services than I did before March 2020. I started ordering groceries through Instacart to avoid having to go the stores after experiencing the chaos more than a few times. Even though grocery stores have calmed considerably, and the shelves remain stocked with most in-demand supplies, I still use Instacart for shopping and having my groceries delivered. Some of this is convenience, but I think that the pandemic has simply changed the way I deal with groceries for the time being. At some point, I will more than likely return to the grocery store to resume shopping in person, but for now using delivery services will remain my weekly routine. Since the pandemic relegated many people to quarantining and spending more time at home, working and going to school virtually, I have noticed that I am not as social as I used to be. While I’ve never been a very sociable person, I’ve noticed that, not only do I not crave social interaction outside of my family and close friends as much as I used to, I have to “prepare” myself for social gatherings and interactions. I have more social anxiety than I ever thought I would and going to events where I may have to hold long conversations revolving around “small talk” make me anxious and tired. I hope that I am able to work through this over time as things become more open and social gatherings and events become more common, but it is another way in which the pandemic has affected me most. When I would leave the house prior to 2020, there were certain items I made sure I had: keys, sunglasses, purse, water bottle. A change to this routine now includes making sure I have a mask in my purse and masks in my car. It’s interesting to note that they have become both a physical and symbolic item in everyday life. Yet, as we all know, it’s an item that is important to have to make sure I am prepared in the event a business requires it or I’m interacting with places and people where it’s smart to wear one. To expand on the symbolism of the mask, another example of change in my life is interacting with anti-mask strangers who think they have an obligation to comment on or ask questions of people who wear one. My daughter came home a couple nights ago very upset because a customer had been rude to her because she was wearing a mask at work. My daughter is 17 and works in a grocery store. She wears a mask to protect herself and, in her words, “to protect her family”. I’ve noticed that the pandemic seems to have made some people feel like it’s okay to comment on and berate complete strangers on personal health decisions like it’s their right. Being socially distanced for months has made some people forget their manners or maybe it’s simply brought out the worst in them. Either way, the idea that a grown man might get in a teenager’s face at the grocery store over something that is none of their business and affects them in absolutely no way, is a startling shift in how people interact with one another since this all began. Lastly, COVID has not been kind to those working in the healthcare profession, and certainly it has made visiting people who are in the hospital much more restrictive. Last September my husband was hospitalized with a collapsed lung. Visiting policies essentially made it so that one person per day could visit him. Where previously I, his parents, children, and siblings might have been able to visit him, now it only made sense for me to be the one since I could bring him what he needed, talk with his doctors, and update everyone else. This most recent February, my mom was hospitalized for a serious health concern. During her entire stay, I was not able to visit her because it was most sensible for my dad to be there for her and ensure he could bring her things from home to make her comfortable. I was able to send flowers to brighten her room, but still the one visitor per day policy held firm. Last night my mom was readmitted to the hospital for health issues related to her previous issue. My dad stays with her all day, and I am not able to because of the visiting policy. It’s frustrating and heart breaking to not be able to see her and be there for her – and to also be there for my dad who needs support and time to recharge as well. The pandemic has highlighted so many privileges and everyday things that were once taken for granted – things most people (including myself) never even thought about.

My daily routine has definitely been affected during the COVID-19 pandemic in multiple ways. During the height of the pandemic when most classes at ASU were virtual, I took advantage of the fact that I didn’t have to leave my house and got used to sleeping in late most days I could do so. I also noticed that as a result of being home all the time, I tended to order less food out, and regularly started making my meals on my grill again. Unfortunately, another thing I began to notice is that since began isolating at home, I have been very tempted to procrastinate on the work I have to do for classes. As a result, I sometimes had a hard time getting started on my classwork in a timely manner, so I would end up stressed trying to submit it closer to the deadline than I would have preferred. Additionally, since I have been stuck inside more than I would like, I have been using my bench and dumbbells much more to keep in shape. COVID-19 has also just made me instinctively feel very naked without a mask on, and it has just become a habit to wear one everywhere at this point. On another related note, I also have made it a habit to avoid large groups or crowds of people in general because of COVID-19, so I unfortunately not seen any live music since the start of the pandemic. I have however gotten into the habit of playing more music and video games, which has been a fun way to keep myself occupied when I am not busy with work or school. Although my daily routine definitely has changed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, I have gotten used to it in the many months that have passed since it began.

When Covid first started, I never imagined it becoming, as serious or being as long as it was. I was a senior in high school, and on March 13, 2020 I never thought that would be my last day of high school. All I wanted was to participate in all the fun activities, but that never happened as life never really went back to normal.

Living in Las Vegas, it was quite noticeable when Covid hit. The city that always seemed to have something going on suddenly ground to a halt. Working at a casino, I noticed as our usual volume of guests and tourists started to lessen until we were shut down altogether. So, getting back to work after the shutdown was a bit of an adjustment. My workstation, usually with 6 of us working together now had half that amount. Hotel and casino floor capacity had to be kept low. I also remember the temperature checks that both guests and employees were required to do at the entrances. Enforcing the mask mandates with guests would also prove to be a hassle at times as some guests were more receptive than others. As travel restrictions and mask mandates started being lifted, it didn't take long for many of our regular guests to start showing up again. We recently started having live music performances at our property that guests had been inquiring about quite regularly beforehand. As of now, we're basically operating at full guest capacity again with a full casino floor and regular events. While there are still people wearing masks, myself included, there is a sense that the worst is behind us.