Items

• 2020-09-20

  Discovering You Have COVID19

  It was September of 2020, and I was babysitting at the time. The kids I was babysitting for were sick, but I did not think much of it, babies are sick all the time right? So, I continue going to work throughout the week. I am changing the diaper of the child, and may I add that this is a dirty, poopy diaper. I am thinking in my head, "Wow it is kind of crazy that this does not smell bad, it ALWAYS does." Suddenly it clicks in my head, I cannot smell. I go smell a candle, smells like nothing, an onion, nothing, perfume, nothing, and I am instantly in a panic. I am then wondering if I can taste anything, I try every food in the pantry, again... nothing. I immediately tell the mom I babysit for (she works from home), and she tries smelling her candle, and she smells nothing either. We go together and get tested, and we all had COVID19. We all ended up being okay and quarantine for 10 days, so its okay to laugh at the situation now. That was my most memorable moment of COVID19.
• 
  2020-04-06

  The Year 2020

  2020 was supposed to be everyone's year. The year when everything would be alright. Well, Covid-19 had other plans.
• 
  2021-06-28

  My Pandemic Experience

  When the pandemic was coming, I was initially relieved. I was supposed to fly to Chicago to visit my sister and go to our favorite band’s (Keane) concert, but as a person with anxiety and panic disorder who is terrified of airplanes and crowds it allowed me to back out. The concert was cancelled. It was the excuse I needed to back out without shame or blame. It seems silly now, but at the time covid seemed more like a bad cold or flu to me. It seemed like another Swine Flu or Avian Flu or other scare in recent memory which hadn’t amounted to a plague style pandemic. Lockdown was even kind of nice at first. My husband, daughter, and I got to spend a lot of family time together. I had taught ESL online for a number of years previously, so converting my in school classes to online was easy. I had no problems teaching over Zoom. I’m a homebody anyway, by habit and by anxiety, so this was great… until the body count started. I was horrified and sickened to hear about the freezer containers being used in New York City to store the overflow of bodies. The germaphobia that had plagued me in childhood, that I had gone to years of therapy to overcome, came roaring back with a vengeance. Like everyone else, I went to the grocery store to stock up so I wouldn’t have to leave me house for awhile, only to find shelf after shelf empty. As a super health conscious, organic, vegan my choices were extremely limited. My husband and daughter aren’t vegan, but they do eat only organic, which became impossible. Soap, disinfectant, cleaners, and hand sanitizers were nowhere to be found. At a time when it was so important to be as clean and healthy as possible all those modern conveniences were utterly gone. I felt helpless. I imagined that people living during pandemics like the bubonic plague and Spanish flu must have felt similarly. After a couple of weeks, quarantine started to feel more like a claustrophobic prison sentence than a family vacation. I missed my sister, my parents, my friends, my colleagues, and my students. On my birthday and Easter I just had to wave at my parents through the glass door. My favorite hobby- taekwondo, which I had started in order to relieve stress and help with my anxiety was taken from me. I had to do the classes online from my living room, which was nearly impossible. I felt trapped. A raging epidemic across the planet from which there was no escape. If I spent too much time thinking about it, I would start to feel the claw of panic. By the time summer arrived I was at breaking point. Luckily with summer we had some reprieve. Case loads declined, and I started meeting my best friend outside. We socially distanced ourselves and wore masks, but we were together and that was a start. By the end of summer she and her boyfriend were on our “quaranteam” that is we decided we could see each other since we weren’t seeing anyone else. In the fall school started. Since I teach at a Catholic school we were able to have school in person full time, though we had students in every grade who opted to go remote. But my bestie and I were back in the building with most of the kids, and I started to feel less trapped. I was going to stores masked and my daughter was also in school. But as soon as Thanksgiving hit everything changed again. So many people ignored all of the recommendations and restrictions and got together with family and friends. It made me so angry that people were so careless. A friend of mine had a large family in Pennsylvania who all got together for Thanksgiving. She didn’t go because she thought it was reckless. 8 out of 14 people at the family dinner got covid and 2 of them died. Then at Christmas, my great uncle passed. No funeral. No wake. Nothing. Schools shut down again. We were trapped. Then the vaccines came. It was nearly impossible to get one for a long time even if you were eligible. Slots filled as fast as they were posted. You needed to present a lot of proof of eligibility in order to get one. As a teacher, I was able to get mine earlier than many others. I got the Moderna. The first shot made me feel a little sick for a few hours, but with the second I had a fever of 103.5, aches, chills, nausea for 12 hours and a general malaise for 3 days. A friend of mine in taekwondo, who has some autoimmune problems, had a severe reaction after her first Moderna vaccine. She has had side effects for a few months now that are not going away. She has dizzy spells and heart palpitations regularly. She is undergoing testing and being monitored by the CDC. Despite some horror stories, the vaccine is still the absolute best thing that we could have hoped for. I would like my daughter to get it as soon as they open it to the under 12 population. A lot of people won’t get the vaccine because they are in the “Science is fake, I’m a Trump supporter” camp. In my opinion, Trump’s misinformation and mishandling of the pandemic cost tens of thousands of American lives, and his diversive legacy is going to cost us dearly for many years to come. It is now June again. School just finished. New York State is allowing people to enter buildings unmasked if they are vaccinated, but few people are actually requiring any proof. Given that the people with a cavalier attitude toward wearing masks are many of the same people who are against getting vaccinated, an honors system policy towards wearing masks is really just a no-mask policy. It is very frustrating to me that people can’t just deal with masks for a while longer to fully insure this disease’s eradication before we have another relapse and find ourselves back in quarantine again.
• 
  2020-03-06

  Pandemic Street Art: skubzmope says DON'T PANIC

  Graffiti of a toilet paper roll and the text, "DON'T PANIC"... People were panic buying items like toilet paper when the pandemic really started to take off in infection and death rates and quarantine/lockdowns were initiated in the spring of 2020.
• 
  2020-03-19

  Toilet paper being cleared out dubbed with Walking Dead zombie noises

  A video meme making fun of the panic buying of toilet paper in march of 2020. Appears to be a Costco. Dubbed with zombie noises from The Walking Dead. I feel its important for videos of these events to be preserved as well as the social/ popular response to events like panic buying
• 2021-02-07

  Covid Rice and Beans Stock Use

  When Covid hit in late February/early March, wide-spread food shortage rumors started to circulate everywhere. The news, social media, friends and family, and seemingly everyone continuously talked about the likely shortages that were going to start to take place. For a good week or two in March, it almost felt possible that our networks for food supply could be shut down, which resulted in everyone stocking up on certain items. One of the few things that I picked up was a big bag of brown rice and a pack of 15 cans of black beans. I hid those away in case the worst would happen. Now, nearly a year later, I am using those supplies and reflecting on the unprecedented panic that was going on at the time that I purchased these items.
• 
  2021-01-24

  Grabbing for Groceries

  Grocery shopping is part of nearly everyone’s life. We’re used to going into a store at most hours of the day and night and finding what we need. Many of us eat out quite often so don’t stockpile food supplies at home and don’t cook at home very often. So grocery shopping pre-pandemic was a relatively easy and boring task. With the pandemic came restaurant closures and restrictions and people started eating at home more often. People started buying greater quantities of food and other grocery items (particularly toilet paper!), which led to shortages and quotas on the purchase of particular items. The grocery store became somewhat of a combat zone, with people battling each other for items and viewing others as the enemies who either were going to steal their food or give them the virus. The entire grocery shopping experience changed precipitously for most individuals and reflected a major shift in how society acquires and shares its food.
• 
  2020-10-03

  Jessica Fisher Oral History, 2020/10/03

  Graduate student at ASU, Angelica S Ramos interviews mother of a new born baby. In this interview she discussed the struggles with prenatal care and her experience with birth during COVID. Fisher also discusses family support as a new mother amidst the pandemic and how her interactions with her family has changed. She mentions her worries with being high risk for contraction and how she copes with her worries. She also talks about her work as a teacher and how much that environment has changed for her and her students. In this interview, Fisher also talks about her close relationship with her grandmother who lived in assisted living and how their relationship has been forced to change. Lastly, she talks about her hopes for the future.
• 
  2020-03-25

  Whataburger Employees Considered Essential Workers

  This is a short post from someone that works at a Whataburger in Texas. This story is important because while I believe fast food to not be essential, but rather an expensive convenience, it is important to keep in mind that some customers were not able to get their regular groceries at the stores during the pandemic. There was a panic that ensued amongst not only the nation but the globe as COVID-19 spread. Although fast food would not be something we would view as essential normally, during the pandemic, it may have been vital for some people as their shopping abilities may have been limited.
• 
  2020-04-07

  Permission Slip for Essential Workers

  This photo was sent to me from a former coworker that was “served” a “permission slip” as she called it, for being an essential worker during the pandemic while working for Walmart. It’s important because while we would normally think of an essential worker as someone who is in healthcare or emergency services, grocery employees were considered essential for the items they sold that were in serious demand during the panic of the pandemic. All hands on deck is the most appropriate phrase here.
• 
  2020-03-13

  The great costco chicken shortage

  My partner and I went to Costco to do regular grocery shopping for the week when we stumbled on the emptiest isles we have ever seen at any Costco. I remember turning to my partner and saying “This feels unreal. I have never seen a store this empty and I don’t think that I ever will again”. It was still March, and my partner was just told by his job to stay home and that the office would be closed for a while until Covid was under control. We didn’t know at that time seven months later he would still be working from home. It was eerie being in a store that was so empty and it is hard to explain what it felt like to see that. It was at a time of high panic for others but I hadn’t felt that same panic until that moment. I was very worried we wouldn't be able to get chicken for the foreseeable future and I didn’t know what we were going to do. I panic purchased a five pound bag of dry pinto beans that are still living in the back of a cupboard in my kitchen, unopened, on that trip. I think of my quarantine experience in multiple stages, the first to being before Costco, and after the great Costco chicken shortage. I think other people felt the same way I did; After they saw people panic buying, they started panic buying or fretting more than they may have been in the months before quarantine. The beginning feelings of panic did do good for me though, they made me more conscious of what we are eating and how much food we actually buy. I feel like the changes have benefited me for the better. Arizona State University HST485
• 
  2020-08-23

  The face behind the mask

  We went to get ice cream for a job well done at school. My mother was driving and my sister and I were in the bed of the truck. That’s when we stopped at a stop sign and someone yelled, “Put on your mask!” We looked around to see where the voice was, but couldn’t find it. This made me realize that even though we were far enough, people still panicked, people still wanted to get assured, and people got mad. We then put on our masks, afraid that people would think that we had the virus.
• 
  2020-08-20

  The Inner Turmoil

  The pandemic has led me to often sit alone in my room for hours at a time. This type of free time and idleness has fixated my brain on the vast negativity circling around the coronavirus. From the array of mental health issues from the picture, I have been battling anxiety, stress, and panic, mostly coming from the idea of losing nearly six months of my life. I will never be 18 again, will never have these six months back of being an adolescent in my last year of high school, and will never get a chance of making my final mistakes while it is still ‘acceptable’. I have to enter adulthood without truly finishing off my adolescence.