If you've ever set foot in a deli - a real life, New York style deli or in my case a real life Texas deli, then you know about the powerful and delightful smells that can attack your senses upon entry. In my restaurant, the traditional odors of hot corned beef and pastrami mixed with sauerkraut, bacon and horseradish combine with the popular fragrance of Texas brisket layered in a spicy bar-b-que sauce and the undeniable fragrance of apple and pecan pie. Homemade beef stew, French Onion soup and Texas chili are reducing in the kitchen while the entire restaurant fills with the aroma of good food. There is nothing quite like a deli kitchen prepping, baking, grilling and cooking in the morning. These are the distinctive smells of my life before COVID-19. Shortly after March of last year, the city of San Antonio shut down all dine-in operations throughout the city and instantly took away our morning routines and systems, forcing our restaurant to evolve just to survive. Overnight, we became a grocery store with a curbside service selling raw products like eggs, tomatoes, cold cuts and sliced cheeses. The great morning aromas of the deli were replaced with the stale, cold odors of bleach and sanitizer. Sales dipped by seventy percent and even when dine-in was reopened to fifty percent capacity, we were forced to cut our menu by half. Now, as we keep paying for our holiday gatherings, the business has come back by half but it just doesn't seem the same or at least the smells do not. We are more of a to-go business now with items packaged and tagged in sugar cane boxes and biodegradable containers. The sweet mixture of multiple savory recipes and meats cooking side by side has been replaced by vacuum sealed soups and cold cuts prepared in a sanitized and disinfected central kitchen.

I am teaching HST 643 Global History at Arizona State University during the Spring A semester of 2021. For the second time, I am asking enrolled students to submit a sensory history story related to the pandemic. The students were instructed to read at least the introduction of Melanie Kiechle's Smell Detectives before posting their story. This way, they would have a better understanding of what sensory history is and why it matters. I revised the instructions this time to push students toward non-visual stories.

Upon news of COVID-19 spreading in the United States, my parents and I made the decision that we were going shelter in place at home. While a lot of things remained the same, my parents began watching Clinton Kelly's 3H show that he did over his Instagram story. During one of Kelly's 3H shows my mom watched him make a lemon sauce. Since I am a huge fan of anything lemon, my mom decided to make it for my family one day and I fell in love with it. The sauce can be described as creamy, lemony, and cheese-y with a lemony smell. Since making the recipe for the first time, it has become my new favorite sauce. This story is specific to the pandemic since my mom would not have watched Clinton Kelly's 3H show otherwise.

In Hawaii, especially on the island of Kauai there were so many tourist that near the roads and tourist shops and restaurants you most heard traffic or people, and in the evenings live entertainment for tourists. Now, in the mornings you can hear birds and at night the crickets.

Lockdown restrictions to indoor dining at restaurants, which prevents friends from gathering and socializing in familiar locations.

In my line of work, which is construction management and execution, communication is key. Often, this begins and ends with emails, phone calls, and the occasional zoom chat to set a project up. However, once work commences, field superintendents meet daily with clients to discuss progress, delays, opportunities for improvement, and at times, complaining. Morning meetings are at the heart of the daily communications, and have always taken place at 7:30 am, with fifteen to twenty people present. From January 2020 thru the middle of March 2020, morning meeting went as they had in the past. At times, with so many in the room, expressing their ideas, it can be difficult to keep track of what is being talked about. In my role, I attend one or more of these meetings, at different jobsites, throughout the week. As Covid safety precautions took hold towards the end of March, I noticed that the meetings I attended were quieter. This was partially due to masks being worn. Whenever someone chose to speak, their voice, which had been loud a week or so prior, was now muffled and subdued. Additionally, people spoke no more than was necessary, the meetings were shorter than they had been. Gradually, power points were introduced on a screen each day so that talking was not necessary. Instead, the bosses laid out the schedule, expectations, and those in the room simply took notes. By the end of April, the morning meeting changed over to Zoom Chat, with everyone in their office, staring at a screen which displayed those same power points, saying very little or nothing at all. By this point, with social distancing in full-force, there was no need to speak. Notes were made by a Project Engineer containing key points and emailed to attendees after the conclusion of the daily Zoom. Suddenly, there was no face to face conversation, fewer phone calls, and increased emails. With masks across our faces, everyone continued their work in an eerie silence. The robust workplace, full of ideas and plans which must be heard, faded into blank stares saying nothing. With the New Year, I did not expect any change. It would be difficult to say when practices that existed only a year ago might return. This morning, I logged into Zoom for a pre-construction meeting, I was met with the same silence I heard just before the Thanksgiving holiday.

This is a 'pandemic hacks' upload for my HST 580 internship with ASU

This document contains several of my favorite things that have helped me get through the pandemic, such as video games, music, my banjo, cooking and my dog Dobbs! I submitted this from the ASU HST 580 internship course.

I have uploaded a story of scent. During the first part of the stay-at-home order in Washington state, March 2019, I baked fresh bread daily to help my family during the food shortages. The amazing aroma of bread filled my home and brought hope to my family that everything would be well.

This file contains both a photo and a text story to accompany it, it's mainly just my thoughts surrounding the holidays in the pandemic, firstly with what I did, what my previous Christmases were like, and my family's reasoning with staying home and abiding with quarantine restrictions in opposition to the many other examples of people breaking these restrictions for the sake of family. I think it's important mainly, because the pandmic has redefined, or put a new emphasis on familial love - do we love our family by choosing to stay home during a deadly pandemic? Or do we love them by breaking restrictions to visit them during said pandemic. Submitted for HST 580's first assignment at Arizona State University, Pandemic Prompt: Holiday's.

My wife and I are both public educators at Hamburg Area High School, a rural school district in Berks County, Pennsylvania. The Covid-19 pandemic has caused our district to fluctuate between in-person and virtual instruction. During virtual days teachers have been encouraged to teach from home to mitigate the risk of exposure to the virus. I conduct my American History classes from the office in our home, while my wife, a music teacher, performs virtual music lessons with her students in our dining room. This shift to virtual teaching from home has caused my classroom, which is usually quite traditional, to sound much different. While I attempt to educate my students on the finer points of American History, the sounds of young (and often struggling) musicians fill the air. Meanwhile, my two dogs also interject into class as they battle over toys and pillows. The Covid-19 pandemic has not only moved the location of public education, but also changed the way that education sounds. I recorded the following audio clip while my 3rd period AP US History class was studying primary source documents on the post-Civil War Reconstruction time-period (1865-1876) on Monday, January 11th.

In March of 2020 I made the decision to leave Active Duty Army and pursue a new career in the civilian world. I submitted my resignation and began a six month process to transition out. It was immediately after this drastic step that the effects of COVID-19 on our daily lives began. My state (Maryland) shut down, and my mission essential job that I was in the process of leaving required me to pick up the extra work from at-risk employees. The applications to different government agencies that I had submitted were placed on hold due to the inability of those agencies to conduct in-person events. With less time available, my ability to apply for more jobs was also limited. After a delay of four months, and with only a few more to go before inevitable unemployment, agencies slowly began reinstating their hiring processes. It was at this time that the sensory impacts of a COVID-19 hiring market began to show. Most smaller agencies resorted to telephonic interviews or at the most, video conference calls. Those that did ask for an in-person interview were still heavily controlled with COVID-19 risk mitigation practices. Regardless of the medium enacted, the effects on the senses were the same. Visual senses not withstanding (the inability to see my interviewer was disconcerting, but at least I got to wear jeans), the tactile and auditory senses were also greatly impacted. In every interview conducted pre-COVID, the procedures consisted of shaking hands at the beginning of an interview (i.e. establishing trust through that time-worn gesture), sitting in close proximity to an interviewer with whom you are able to hear clearly, and who can hear you clearly, and in whom you can read facial expressions indicating when you may have said too much or not enough. The interview would then be over and you would seal that act through a final handshake and a smile. None of these basic tenants of interviews occur during a COVID-19 mitigated interview. In my first interview with a federal law enforcement agency, my interview panel and myself were required to wear masks, I was welcomed into the room without any of the standard greetings (handshakes and smiles) and seated behind a plexiglass barrier 8-10 feet from any of the interviewers. Not only did the interview lack the physical interaction that ceremonially marks the beginning and end of the interview, but due to masks, the conduct of the interview was also strained. Questions from interviewers were difficult to hear and understand due to the distance, glass, and masks, therefore requiring awkward repetitions which cast doubt on my competence and confidence. My responses were likewise muffled, which led to doubts as to whether my answers were fully understood by the interviewers. Both assaults on the auditory ability and tactile senses taken for granted in a pre-COVID world lead to an autocatalytic attack on my nerves. The lack of hearing and the absence of a reassuring touch eroded any confidence I may have had going into the interview that would have otherwise remained until I left. COVID-19 mitigation measures reduced what is normally a very personal interaction between human beings to a robotic and numbing experience lacking in all the sensory elements that enables the humanity of an interview. I conducted six more interviews in similar limited sensory manners, eventually evolving my expectations and re-learning a process before finally securing a position.

For my 25th birthday I found myself sitting in the passenger seat of my girlfriend's car. As we entered hour two of waiting in line at the Orlando Convention Center for free COVID-19 testing, I kept myself busy playing Animal Crossing on my Nintendo Switch. A week earlier I had thought I was getting a cold. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary since coronavirus had already passed through my house and I made it out safe. Then, on Christmas day, I took a bit of pizza and realized there was just nothingness. I could feel the sensation of what I knew the taste was supposed to be, but there was only texture. I didn’t immediately panic, thinking it was probably due to the congestion of my cold. It wasn’t until my girlfriend mentioned that loss of taste is definitely a COVID-19 symptom that the realization dawned on me. The soonest I could get tested was on my birthday, which also happened to be the day I noticed my sense of smell had completely disappeared. Even though I still had two fully functioning eyes, I felt like I was operating completely blind. It never occurred to me how much the taste and the smell of food was so essential to my enjoyment of eating. It was a humbling experience, and I’m incredibly grateful that the loss of senses was my only real symptom. I tried to use my tasteless time wisely and eat all the undesirable food that has long since been shoved to the back of the pantry. Though, I would be lying if I didn’t say the day I got my tasting back, I ordered all my favorite foods for contactless delivery. It was my little 2021 belated new years celebration.

This holiday, we were on an emergency stay at home order. Solano County advised that all gatherings should cease. Meaning that our holiday was unfortunately canceled. My family has been working hard to adhere to the rules and orders, but we are all feeling a little exhausted from it all. I especially wanted to visit my parents in Oregon. Originally, we were thinking of getting tested for Covid right before we headed up to Oregon. But my mom being a medical worker did not feel that she could guarantee our safety. So for a little change in our routines, we made hot cocoa at home and filled up our new mugs. We got warm and cozy (All in our jammies and hats) and piled into the car with blankets. Then we drove to a local neighborhood that is well known for its holiday spirit. The locals call these streets Lollypop Lane, and it adjoins with a road we call Candy Cane Lane. We just cruised in a big loop listening to Christmas music for hours. Whatever, the kids were happy and we felt like we were doing something out of the ordinary for the first time in a long time. At one house, a man dressed as Santa yelled to the children in their cars and told them that he knew they had been good. It was sweet. All and all we went looking for Christmas lights every few days.

Everyone needs to get a bidet! That is my pandemic hack. While everyone was out panic buying toilet paper me and my family were sitting pretty. A few years ago, I was invited to a symposium in India. My dad came with me for his first trip after retirement. I had never seen a bidet in my life and I sure as hell was not about to try it. But by the third day we were there, my dad confessed to me that he had been using the bidet and he loved it. I figured if my dad was willing to try it and admit to me that he tried it, I might as well try it out myself. Let me tell you! This invention is not common in America. I went forty years without ever even seeing one. By the time we left India I was hooked. A clean butt every day all day! Yes! I procrastinated on buying one when we came home but eventually, I ordered two. They stayed in that Amazon box until… that is right. Until the great toilet paper shortage of 2020. We watched on the news of mayhem at the grocery stores and fights over TP! Getting close to our last few rolls we decided it was time to break those bad boys out and install them. Ahhhh heaven. Warning though, teaching kids how to use this is a learning curve. Some minor flooding was involved. Once the shelves were stocked again, we did end up buy a huge box of toilet paper for the boys. But toilet paper still disappears from the store shelves whenever there is a new shut down. We are pretty proud of ourselves whenever we can’t find any toilet paper!

Ahhh Covid. From March until December I steadily gained more weight than I ever have (without being 9 months pregnant)! Each month progression was a steady +5, +5, +5, +5, +5, +5, +5 … Until December 13th. The day before my daughter’s wedding. I tried to squeeze myself into ANYTHING that might pass for wedding attire. Work clothes did not fit anymore, not even a cute pair of jeans. Would my husbands slacks work? The answer is nope! Apparently ten months of wearing pajamas and stress eating was really affecting my ability to gauge my own girth. This was traumatic for me. I pride myself in being prepared for any occasion. In my closet I have funeral outfits, wedding outfits, professional outfits. All carefully curated over the years to see me through anything. I thought I was prepared for my daughter’s wedding. I imagined a stroll from the living room to my closet where I would just choose whatever wedding attire I was in the mood for that morning and come out shining! But nope! Not this day. Instead, my husband had to make an emergency trip to the Target drive-up after I panic ordered every size of the same pair of pants and blouse, crying the whole time. All of this, is leading to my favorite thing. A $30 Walmart trampoline. I ordered it on a whim with the groceries I had ordered on delivery. I didn’t even think they would have it. It seems all exercise equipment has been sold out during the pandemic, along with board games and toilet paper. I bounce in the morning, I bounce during passing period, I bounce after work. I watch movies and bounce. I listen to podcasts and bounce! I have (so far) bounced off a total of 10 pounds since December 13th. I still need to bounce off another 30 and maybe my pants will fit again. My husband and kids are annoyed by the constant bouncing. But it was cheaper than most other exercise equipment and I hardly notice I am working out when I am into the latest Netflix binge.

A close-knit family can mean a lot of noise, a lot of home cooking, and a lot of downright work. Care in a large family doesn’t understand the word pandemic or isolation; it only understands that you’re there or you’re not. COVID meant to my family the opposite of what it meant to everyone else on the planet, we would need to be physically closer to help care for those who need it. Instead of focusing on the smells and noises caring for others, I choose to remember the feel of damp earth under my feet and the smell of new ferns in the forest. I remember the whisper of water in the creek signaling the halfway point on Thursdays or the smell of the rainwater pond at the end of Tuesday. I can laugh at the smell of a wet dog; who got into both and had to be bathed twice a week for the entire summer. We took turns going for morning runs or hikes so that one person would always be home with my grandparents. My grandfather was needing more and more supervision daily that my grandmother couldn’t handle on her own. Ironically enough without COVID, we wouldn’t have been able to do the things we did. Now, instead of remembering the smell of hand sanitizer; I remember the clean air in my lungs and the smell of the trail on those morning runs in northern Arizona. I have downloaded a sound effect from https://www.freesoundslibrary.com/mountain-river-sounds/ that reminds me of one of the places I went to get away from the chaos of COVID.

This picture shows how my family celebrated our annual Japanese New Years Open House during the Covid-19 Pandemic. The annual event in my household is one of an open house where there is lots of food, friends, conversations, and wishing of a Happy New Year and blessings to them and/or their family. This year the pandemic affected our annual event by not allowing anyone to come except one person besides our household. This event means a lot to us as we are a multi-racial family with various ethnicities and heritages. We make dishes that bring new and exciting food choices to people who normally would not be exposed to this cuisine.

I welcomed my first child into the world at the very beginning of the COVID-19 crisis in the United States, leaving my fiancé and me isolated at home with a newborn. After three months, we desperately needed a night away from our precious bundle of joy. The only restaurant open was a sketchy looking German beer garden blasting accordion music, but we were just thrilled to be spending some adult time together while our son was with my mother for the evening. Upon walking into the restaurant, I readily pumped some off-brand hand sanitizer into my hand, and nudged my fiancé to do the same. I rubbed my hands together as we were seated, and breathed a sigh of relief that we were free from the colicky cries of our beloved child for the night. Suddenly my nostrils filled with the stench of bottom shelf tequila. The hand sanitizer wasn’t simply off-brand, it had been homemade by the restaurant. It was as if whomever had concocted the sanitizer was convinced that the best way to ward off the COVID-19 virus (and the fear attributed to it), was to completely bombard the olfactory system with the smell of alcohol. My fiancé remarked that because the sanitizer smelled so horribly, it must be killing all of the germs; unknowingly, he became a perfect example of how individuals have come to associate certain scents, like alcohol, with the illusion of cleanliness. Thinking back on that experience, I find myself pondering just how effective their homemade hand sanitizer really was. Or, more than likely, was it a last ditch effort (forced into action by society’s panic buying of cleansers), to provide their customers a sense of security through unconscious sensory associations.

With quarantine entering its eleventh month, and looking for ways to exercise when it ‘s cold or wet outside, we turned to our garage and roller blades. With 70s disco and r&b bumping, it’s not too hard to pretend we’re at the roller disco. Time to get on Amazon and get some colored lights! Anything to keep us active and having fun even as the pandemic outside these walls shows no sign of slowing.

One of the longest lasting memories for me of the Pandemic will be the olfactory association I will forever have between the smell of musty, soiled fabric and this period of time. The combination of coffee, toothpaste, sweat and laundry detergent was a defining one for me this year. As a high school teacher and coach, my days were long and required extensive periods of lecture based discussion and non negotiable face coverings. While the requirement was understandable from a safety perspective, the result was a facemask that always either smelled like it needed washing or had just been washed. For that reason, these scents will always remind me of this period

For the past four or five years, New Year's Eve was always something I greatly looked forward to. Usually my night was spent with friends, playing games or enjoying a drink while waiting for the all-important countdown to the new year. One year, my roommate's mom came to visit and we celebrated by bombarding each other with silly string as the clock struck midnight. The next year, my friends and I decided to participate in the Spanish tradition of eating 12 grapes at midnight, one at each stroke of the clock, but forgot until about 5 strokes in and risked choking as we attempted to catch up with the clock. In 2019, which seems like so much longer than a year ago, I celebrated with a friend who worked for a dog-sitting company; as midnight came and the fireworks began, we toasted with champagne while comforting the nervous pups. Despite what had happened in the previous year, or whatever challenges I already foresaw for the upcoming year, New Year's Eve was a chance to end the year with some fun, and start the year with good company. Obviously, this year was different. Leading up to December 31st, I felt a sense of loss. In 2020 I had moved to a new state, and the friends I usually celebrated with were over two thousand miles away. Even if I was in the same state as them, it would have been irresponsible to celebrate in the way we previously have. What was usually a night I looked forward to every winter was instead serving as a reminder of the often overwhelming sense of loneliness this pandemic can bring. I was heading into the end of this year melancholy and disappointed. But then one sentence, which I saw on instagram, changed my outlook. While I did not screenshot it, it said something along the lines of this: Celebrate New Year's Eve by going to bed early, so you can start 2021 rested, refreshed, and ready to take on the year. So that's what I did. After finishing work around 7:00 PM, I went home, took a shower, read a little, and called it a night. I recall briefly waking up to the sound of fireworks, but for the most part I slept well and began 2021 rested, rather than exhausted from staying up all night. While I was still a little sad to have spent the night alone, without the usual fun activities, I think it was a good way for me to start out the year. I can use that night as a reminder that even though 2021 will still be unusual and, at times, a bit lonely, I can take this alone time to focus on myself, and what allows me to feel rested and refreshed. It's not the most revolutionary resolution, but as far as New Year's intentions go, I think it's a pretty vital one.

I live relatively close to the home where I grew up in Belmont, Massachusetts which is about 10 minutes outside of Boston. It’s a simple home where six of us shared a bathroom and thought nothing of it! My parents, one of whom just hit ninety years old, still reside in our home and never plan to leave with my mother asserting that she will only leave on a gurney. My parents now feel essentially locked in due to the pandemic which makes visiting, which I did this weekend, both more important but unnatural in some ways. We are Italian, for the most part, and Italians are a touchy group, always hugging, which in my family is our non-verbal communication of love. With the risks involved with close contact there is no more hugging, and it’s hard to even want to express ourselves to these 90 year old's with a tacky elbow tap or fist bump. Verbal expression has been temporarily substituted but it is an inadequate alternative and will never replace the connection one feels from a sincere and long held hug.

Home cooked meals have always been the norm for us, but in our pre-COVID lives of working full time, gymnastics competitions, church commitments, piano lessons, Kumon, trips to Disneyland and on and on, eating out definitely factored into to our lives at least once a week. In March, that came to a grinding halt. With COVID cases in our area high, and being fortunate to work from home, we quit restaurant food cold turkey when quarantine began in hopes that the numbers would decrease. Ten months later, with daily case rates of COVID in our county now reaching into the 1000s, restaurant food is a distant memory. It was a bit shocking to realize we’ve only had restaurant food five times since March, and each time it was dropped off on our porch for a special occasion. With the kids begging for McDonald’s, we almost caved in December when the McRib commercials started. Instead of giving in, we spent December tackling the challenge of making McDonald’s at home. Big Macs, Egg McMuffins, McDonald’s pies, and yes, even the McRib made it to our homemade menu. It’s been a really fun challenge to try and get the taste just right. Also, a very odd and strange Christmas Eve to attend Christmas Eve service online and then to eat homemade Big Macs. But then, there was something perfect about it, too. What can I say? It’s a good time for a great taste in quarantine.

Halloween is usually a month long celebration at our house. We plan our costumes months in advance. We go to Disneyland at least a dozen times to enjoy the special Halloween treats, decorations, and to wear the insane amount of Disney Halloween shirts we own. On Halloween night, we serve at our church running game booths for the community and come home just in time to trick or treat (and usually get A LOT of candy because we’re some of the last trick or treaters). This year, of course, every single thing listed above was cancelled. With so many disappointments this year, we committed to making Halloween a celebration from morning until night. Making our own backyard carnival, the kids bobbed for apples, carved pumpkins and played Halloween soccer (okay, it was just soccer but we were in costumes!) My daughter was over the moon to have us all dress as Hogwarts students, except for her little brother who dressed as her owl. Lunch included ghost shaped chips, jack-o-lantern quesadillas, grape “eye balls,” and guacamole in a jack-o-lantern pepper. To make dinner extra special, we brought out the fondue set we registered for when we got married over 15 years ago and never opened. The kids loved a dinner of dipping into cheese and chocolate. The one thing my son repeated all of October was he wanted to “trick or treat to all the doors in the house.” Undaunted, we turned off most of the lights, put a bowl of candy inside every door in the house, and put either an adult or a dressed up stuffed animal (there’s only three adults here and way more doors) at each door. The kids were genuinely excited to trick or treat and actually knocked at every single door, and gleefully filled their bags with candy. It’s easy to focus on all that has been lost this year, but this simple, stress free, at home Halloween may have ended up their favorite one ever.

In March of 2020 the state of Idaho enacted a stay at home order. As a teacher I began teaching from home and my husband (a second year medical student) began attending all of his lectures from his office. In my mind I thought, "wow, we're going to get to slow down for a moment." I was so wrong. As a teacher I felt well prepared to move my students online. We already had the tools and platforms in place to make the transition go well. However, I wasn't ready for the overwhelming anxiety that came with the idea of walking away from my computer at the end of the day. Needless to say we continued on with our busy life from the confines of our 3rd story apartment. I continued my grad school class and teaching online while my husband continued studying and preparing for his first board exam. Over the summer I interned with JOTPY. The 12 hour / week commitment to the internship seemed doable and I was ready to be working on something. I'm not entirely sure what happened over the summer but I seem to have been so busy that it quickly turned into a whirlwind. The pandemic was supposed to have this major impact on what I was doing but I found ways to stay exceptionally busy. All of this to say I didn't have time to really reflect on my summer and internship experience. Looking back all I can say is wow. I was cleaning out my desk area last week in preparation for the return to work and grad school and as I was flipping through my notebook I found this page. This page represents a night from this summer that is hard to forget. I was busy working through my curation assignments in preparation to take the weekend off. However, about halfway through my assignment my curation group (shoutout to group 4!) starting chatting via Slack. We we just 4 students who were assigned to a group and we hadn't really chatted before. Suddenly we were talking about everything under the sun while all working through our curation assignments. I don't know that I have more to say on it except that it was fun and joyful. As 2020 turned to 2021 I started to reflect on the year that turned life upside down and I realized that it brought so much joy. While my husband and I have been blessed with our continued health throughout the year we acknowledge those who have not.

Santa Fe, New Mexico is a popular tourist destination because of its art scene, culture, cuisine, historical sites and landscape. It brings in an average of two million visitors each year. However, because of the COVID-19 Pandemic those numbers have drastically dropped in 2020. TOURISM Santa Fe has created a webpage that provides visitors with current information on New Mexico's COVID-19 restrictions, rules, and policies.

Chengdu has been to test every members in Pidu community to make sure there were no more members that were infected with COVID-19. The local government plans to test 34 thousands people within 24 hours.

The 90-year-old woman, Maggie, became the first person to received the fully tested and approved COVID-19 vaccine as the United Kingdom became the first country to approve the vaccine. This was remarkable due to how fast the vaccine was developed. This could be considered the beginning of the end of the pandemic.

Just because someone gets vaccinated does not automatically mean that they are completely immune to COVID-19. The article states, “A lot of people are thinking that once they get vaccinated, they’re not going to have to wear masks anymore,” said Michal Tal, an immunologist at Stanford University. “It’s really going to be critical for them to know if they have to keep wearing masks, because they could still be contagious.” People can be vaccinated and still contract and spread the virus.

On December 9, 2020, the United States broke a single-day death record with over 3,000 deaths in 24 hours. These deaths come as a result as the huge surge in cases the United States is seeing as winter sets in.

One week after being sworn in as New Hampshire's newest House Speaker, the 71-year-old House Speaker died due to COVID-19 complications. Per the governors request, all flags were lowered to half-mast.

New Hampshire House Speaker dies. Politicians are not immune to COVID-19.

Hilarious choice of words for the ceo of Pfizer to use. Considering this is the first time in history a random disease ravaged the people, and a vaccine was created within a year.

Apparently, according to a pastor, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris (who have a history of mistreating LGBTQ+ people are their rights) are building an atheist army for the Anti-Christ full of transgender individuals. Humorously someone decided to accompany this headline with an image of people in maid costumes at war, adorned with a transgender pride flag on a tank with guns.

Queer history is one often unknown sector of history designated to historians writing things such as "good friends" or "roommates" to muddy the waters when it comes to discussing queer individuals. In such examples, people who write to their "friend" of the same sex of their undying love for one another in a romantic sense would be played off not as lovers but "great friends". Another example would be the painting dubbed "Sappho and her Friend" where they are quite literally two women having sex. This Twitter thread goes through the ins-and-outs of bits of queer history that have been hidden and not much discussed for these aforementioned reasons.

Tech Giant Adobe announced a while back that flash would end on December of this year. By 2021, it will be sink or swim with any sites that are slow to update and change from flash. God Speed Adobe Flash, as much as I hate Adobe as an artist, Flash games did make part of my childhood.

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IMPORTANT NOTE: My professor, Dr. Blake Jones, approved of the anonymity of my interview subject. My subject is highly private and wishes to maintain that anonymity for business and personal reasons. Max is a businessman from the United States. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Business and holds an M.B.A. He has been conducting business in the electronics industry for over 40 years. He has a wife, adult children, and dogs. Max has been heavily involved in Asian markets in his business for multiple decades. He was a vital part of the explosion of Japanese electronics onto the American market in the 1980's, the rapid introduction of the Internet in the 1990's, and has most recently been working to implement the next generation of lighting displays for consumer electronics. Max’s life and work has been one that has been vital to the development of the world’s technological progress in the past 40 years, although he is not a household name. Max has lived through multiple important events and has a unique perspective on all of them as a businessman, agent of free enterprise, and average American providing for his family. He holds several unique opinions on current events and is not afraid to state them plainly. In this interview, he reflects on the difficulties and silver linings that COVID-19 has thrown at him in his work and personal life.

Tiffany Asher is a wife, mother, and she suffers from a terminal illness called cystic fibrosis. She chooses to care for elderly people suffering from COVID-19 against the wishes of her healthcare providers.

This oral history is a retelling of what it was like to attend college, graduate from college, and then hunt and find a job during the Covid-19 global pandemic.

James W. Morrell has worked with Wal-Mart for over 20 years. In this interview he describes his experience working for Wal-Mart before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

After the 2020 Thanksgiving holiday, the United States has begun to consistently break the 1 day infection rate record. Even before the holiday the U.S. was breaking records, but despite this fact many families still held large gatherings. However the Thanksgiving holiday is only unique to the U.S. and as Christmas approaches there could be a global increase in cases if families around the world gather together.

After 9 months into the pandemic, people all over the world are experiencing COVID fatigue. The 2020 holiday season shows people are taking the pandemic less seriously than they were at the beginning. While many isolated themselves or had significantly smaller gatherings, some forget that the United States continuously breaks infection rate records. Nine months after the shutdown, the United States saw its largest increase in cases with 210,000 reported positive tests in a 24-hour period.

In an interview with CNN, President-Elect Joe Biden asks Americans to wear mask for his first 100 days in office, a symbolic time when Presidents exemplify how they will govern. He said he will mandate masks be worn on all federal land, buildings, and roadways. Americans might need to wear masks longer than the first 100 days as the first week of May would mark the end of the President-Elect's first 100 days.

The United Kingdom became the world's first country to approve a COVID-19 vaccine, and will begin distributing the vaccine to its citizens. The apparent rush to approval drew criticism from Dr. Fauci. He later apologized saying "I have a great deal of confidence in what the UK does both scientifically and from a regulator standpoint." He further clarified his point by saying that the United States's approval process will take longer, but will reach a decision soon.

In order to place faith and security in the mind of the American people, the three former presidents vow to get the COVID-19 vaccine once approved by the FDA, Dr. Fauci, and other leading experts. Some people have expressed criticism about the vaccine due to its relatively quick development, however once many prominent Americans get the vaccine these concerns might go away.

This is an interview with Clay Carpenter. Clay Carpenter was born in Devils Lake, North Dakota and grew up multiple small North Dakota towns. He studied Elementary Education and Physical Education at the University of North Dakota, where he met Melody Carpenter, his wife. They moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where they work in the education system. They had a son, Dakota Carpenter, and moved to Arizona shortly after. In Arizona they continued to work as educators with Clay teaching in elementary school, middle school, and high school before becoming a high school administrator,. While working in Arizona they adopted two sons, Artem Carpenter and Andrey Carpenter. Clay’s long experience in the field of education as both a teacher and an administrator provides him with a wealth of knowledge, experiences, and a view of the changes made in the education system. In this interview, he reflects on the coronavirus and the affect it has had on the education system, students, and teachers.

The US Surgeon General talks about the upcoming distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine, case spikes, and travel over Thanksgiving.

Scott Campbell was born in Panama to military parents. He and his family moved to Colorado when he was young, living close to his father's family, where his interest in a sort of do-it-yourself lifestyle was awakened. After high school, he moved to central Alabama, working several retail jobs before landing his job at FIS Financial Solutions. After buying his own property, he began gardening and doing a bit of homesteading on his own in Alabama. Scott now spends his days editing financial programs and his down time taking care of various projects and plants around his home.