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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

Food and House Supply Shortage

When the pandemic first started people were out of control buying food and house supplies. There was a shortage on meat and the price rose up to an unreasonable price. Not only that the people were buying all the toilet paper. Like whom would have thought we will run out of toilet paper.

2021-04-19

Susan Rafie's COVID-19 Reflection

My text submission covers my experiences during the pandemic.

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.

2021-02-02

Coronaland

With Carnival parades cancelled, somebody had the bright idea to start the Krewe of House Floats to (a) make up for it and (b) to offer work to unemployed float artisans. The results have gone beyond everyone's wildest imagination with 5,000+ people signing up in New Orleans, surrounding parishes, and around the world. This installation shows “Don't Panic -- Chewy's Guide to da COVID Galaxy” on Camp Street.

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

2021-01-21

COVID 19: Symptoms

Although none of my friends or relatives has gotten Covid, I am very familiar with the different symptoms. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and prevention), most of the symptoms appear 2-14 days after you actually catch COVID 19. The symptoms for the Corona Virus normally includes the fever or chills, a cough, and shortness of breath or difficulty breathing. The list continues with fatigue/muscle or body aches, headaches, loss of taste or smell, sore throat, congestion or runny nose, nausea/vomiting, and last but not least, diarrhea. Because all of my family members have practically memorized this long list, every time one of them gets a runny nose from allergies, they think "Oh no, do I have Covid? I am going to die!" ...only to remember that none of the other symptoms are appearing. Although I have taken MANY precautions that hopefully prevent me from catching the disease, I am still keeping an eye out for the symptoms, just in case.

2021-01-21

How covid affected me

I was driving back from Mammoth when my mom got the email that someone in my church that we see every week got covid. I immediately got worried because I was spending time with them at church. After we got that email, we realized that we had to be more aware of how close the virus was to home. We all got tests the next day and panicked until we got the results that we were all negative. This experience was very stressful and I do not think I want to relive that feeling.

2021-01-11

COVID

A conversation I had probably back in February was with my dad. We had talked about what would happen if the virus came over here to America. He said that the stock market would crash, people would panic and go to mass hysteria, we would obviously have to quarantine too along with not letting people into stores and such. It did worry me at first but I had my doubts of much happening, although there still was a part of me that believed it would happen. But now that we're here I'm surprised he was able to accurately guess what would happen if the virus did come over here. When it first arrived, everyone panicked and stock piled on toilet paper or whatever, the stock market has been doing bad but I think it's gotten better, we were in quarantine for a while and those of us who are sick are still doing self quarantine. The stores and restaurants now have opened back up, some maybe just for pick up and stuff. The self quarantine has changed me a lot though, it really affected me negatively along with a lot of my friends and people I know. The stress and anxiety of just everything going on has worsened my mental state by a lot.

2020-12-10T10:52:28

My Life Before Covid and How I Found Out

My life before Covid-19 was going very well. I was traveling for competitions and doing sports, actually going to school in person normally, and I was able to see the rest of my family. I was very happy, and then everything began to fall apart. Back in January, I found out about the virus, and how it was in China. Everybody thought that it was a joke and we would all laugh when someone talked about it, but we never thought that it would spread to the USA, or cause an emergency global pandemic. I was actually at a competition the weekend before everything shut down, completely unaware of what was about to happen. We got home from the competition and the next day at school, I began to hear that other schools were shutting down and canceling school temporarily. That is when it all hit me. Our school was shutting down, stores were shutting down, restaurants were shutting down, everything was closed, and I thought that the world was ending. Who knew that right after coming back from a normal competition and a regular life that everything was changing. I definitely didn’t. The worst and funniest part about everything shutting down in an emergency rush, was the outage of toilet paper. Everyone was stalking up on toilet paper, for a reason I am not aware of, causing almost all stores and online websites to be completely out of it. People began to panic for this reason, and that is when people began to hoard things like dry foods, toilet paper, water, and that is when getting essential items became a huge struggle. Everyone basically had to fight to get the things they needed. Covid-19 changed the whole world, and it was definitely not expected.

2020-03-17

Video - Toilet paper fight erupts at Coles in Melbourne

HIST30060 I have chosen to upload this article because I distinctly remember when the public fights about toilet paper begun to surface on social media. Initially, I found it hilarious. And then scary. And then kinda sad. And then eventually some combination of all three, alongside a healthy dose of embarassment at the fact Australians would behave in such a way. While I personally never felt the panic that led to hoarding goods, I know many people who did, and I also remember my housemates and I resorting to using paper towels as toilet paper for a short while because it was impossible to find in the shops near our house.

2020-03-13

Customer Notice at Woolworths

HIST30060: A ‘Customer Notice’ at Woolworths in mid-March, explaining their new returns policy alongside a list of affected products. With half the shelves bare due to ‘panic buying’, grocery stores implemented new rules to avoid having to give refunds to people who changed their mind. I took this photo at a suburban Woolworths, packed with frantic shoppers and overflowing carts.

2020-03-17

Empty Pasta Shelves

When Australia first got hit with news of how devastating Covid-19, many people went onto a panic-buying frenzy, stockpiling non-perishable essential items. This is a photo taken at my local Woolworths with the pasta shelves completely gutted. Toilet paper, rice, hand sanitizer, yeast and hand soap were equally cleared out. Some stores went as far as to post signs out the front of their stores stating "NO TOILET PAPER AVAILABLE". As a young person who lives away from home, my regular diet consists of a lot of pasta (also because pasta is delicious). During this time I ended up eating a lot more vegetable soups, because ironically fresh fruit and vegetables supplies weren't particularly affected by the virus or panic buying as they wouldn't last in an impending apocalypse. It took about a month for grocery stores to re-configure their supplies, and the for the panic to die down slightly. When this first happened, the essential items were piled high front and centre at the entrance of the store: I walked in to this same Woolworths one day with a tower of 24-pack toilet pack stacked as tall as I was. This object shows how crowds can react in unexpected and instinctually self-defensive ways when threatened with a large and sweeping danger. HIST30060.

2020-03-31

Retail Workers Rushing to Fill Non-Essential Shelves

When the panic at the grocery stores happened, essentials were the first to go, but shortly after everyone was forced to stay inside, many were looking for a way to fill their time in their homes. People were creating crafts, sewing masks together, exercising, playing board games, you name it. It’s important because while grocery worker employees were overwhelmed with the demand of essential items that were selling before they could even get them off the pallets, nonessential items were flying off the shelves as well, making their regular duties even more difficult to keep up with.

2020-10-20

Tales From TheVarus

This video was made by a YouTuber known as Internet Historian. It is satirical/journalistic in nature, and seeks to document events and incidents that occurred during the pandemic.

2020-10-19

A Government Against It's People

Finding any type of media that will accurately show what little the government has done and the lack of support the people of America have is unbelievably easy. In fact, I had a hard time choosing between which cartoon illustration was better. I knew our government wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t until Donald Trump being elected and the coronavirus pandemic hitting our homes did I realize how terrible things really are. These cartoons depicted so well how our government has harmed us more than helped us. The dangerous lies told by our own president and how the government won't take responsibility. When corona made its way to the U.S it was deemed unserious. On March 11th, 2020, President Trump said, “The vast majority of Americans, the risk is very, very low.” At that time there were 1,105 cases and 33 deaths documented in the U.S. The next day my highschool as well as every other school within the country closed down as an “extra week of spring break” due to the virus. This “break” soon became eight months and in the U.S alone there are now 8,128,524 ( plus 47,035 new) cases with 218,986 ( plus 475 new) deaths . The scare became real, people started stocking up leaving nothing for anyone else. We have almost 15 people in our home, it took my mom multiple trips to different stores in order to get the necessities for our family. You would think when a pandemic is spreading throughout people in the country you were placed in position to protect you’d address the problem seriously and work hard to find a solution. All Trump and our government has done was ignore the citizens deaths and provide false hope. What we did get was our president being sarcastic and telling us to inject lysol into our lungs. The citizen’s of America have seen other countries rise in numbers of coronavirus with us and then watch their governments actually handle the situation causing their numbers to decline while our numbers are still shooting through the roof. The panic of this virus does not even cross the mind of those who are rich, the group that our current president only cares about. They didn’t have to worry about medical bills in a country where the president doesn’t believe free healthcare is a human right because they know they are important in his eyes. At the end of this virus, it will be the stories from the one percent belittling the destruction of this virus rather than those who have actually suffered. America is running on ignorance right now. Our own president and government is not concerned with the health of the country. It is the government's job to protect and provide for its people, whether it be an outside threat or a threat within the country. When I look at those cartoons of Donald Trump and the coronavirus, it makes me remember how badly I want our country to actually function the way it is intended to.

2020-10-05

A barista's pandemic story of retribution.

This is a short viewpoint from a Starbucks barista in a city setting and gives an idea of some of the panic that set in initially during those few days leading up to lockdown.

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.

2020-03-14

The Toilet Paper Chaos

Me and my family would go to the store to get grocieries, the shelfs were basically empty and had nothing on them. We needed toilet paper but there really wasn't any there, so we had to improvise and get paper towels which were about gone. The meme says a lot about the pandemic because it was a hassle to go to the store and get groceries cause there wasn't anything there.

2020-03-24

We're Not Going to Run Out of Food—so Don't Panic Shop

Of many ways in which the coronavirus has changed American life, people are panicked and started to go shopping. Food producers, distributors, and warehouse operators say supplies are plentiful, so long as stores can be restocked. People are panicked and their buying patterns reflects how this coronavirus affect their lives.

May 1, 2020

Boonville,IN: City Hall 3

These photographs were taken to document some of what people in Evansville and its Tri-State region saw and experienced as the realities of the Covid-19 pandemic came to the area in the spring of 2020. Many of these images represent literal signs of the time, while others figuratively depict signs of the pandemic.

2020-05

Tweets from Inside a Prison 5/17-5/23/2020 by Railroaded Underground

These images follow the Tweets of an incarcerated person using a contraband cell phone to educate the public on how coronavirus is impacting people inside of corrections facilities. This week he talks about missing his baby brothers graduation, inmates feeling panic about eighty prisoners being transferred in and their worry they could bring covid with them, the tension and fights breaking out, being in a human cage, and the prison administration.

2020-07-03

Media and Covid

This meme speaks to how the media controls and causes panic.

2020-06-10

Pandemic Panic

The pandemic is a struggle for everyone, and [it's] also hard for me who also lost income sources. As much I can, I take photos whenever I go out to buy supplies. I also felt the frustration of government processes with long lines and unnecessary procedures. But at the end of the day, I am relieved to always come home which I can always feel secure.

2020-04-22

Humans of Covid-19 AU: Adam Yip

“At the moment, the news industries are scraping just to find stuff! There isn’t much happening. A lot of my shifts have been ‘Go down to Bondi and see if there’s social distancing happening’, which isn’t really an inventive role, and I stand there scratching my head. I wonder when people will stop wanting to see those images. On the other hand, if we didn’t have the media the pandemic could have been a lot worse, they scared a lot of people into staying home (but also scared a lot of people into panic buying). I’d like to think that next pandemic we have, because there will certainly be more, the government will be more active in the beginning, and have everything ready to go. Also, I hope that people will stop panic buying and being so selfish. The scenes of people fighting over toilet paper are horrible. I’m lucky to be in photojournalism though because a lot of other freelance photographers are really suffering at the moment. I used to do lots of portrait shots, but haven’t done one in a while.” Instagram post on Adam Yip, photojournalist, and his experience during the pandemic, which was created by a psychology student living in Melbourne who was interested to hear about how COVID-19 was impacting on different peoples’ lives.

2020-03-17

Costco Lines Are Outta Control!

When the pandemic hit, and even just before, people ran to the stores and cleared out all the cleaning supplies, bottled water, hand sanitizer, canned food, rice and beans, rubbing alcohol, toilet paper, and paper towels. Costco is a big membership warehouse store with large quantities and good prices, so people flocked there. This video is typical of all of Southern California's Costco lines. The lines circled around the entire 150,000 square foot store! We watched the news footage in amazement. Shot by journalist @mrmarkpotts for the LA Times. I cut off the last few minutes and sped it up to 250%, but it took him 7 minutes to walk down the line. The apocalypse was surely nigh!

2020-03-07

Pandemic Diary Entries

These are entries taken and edited from my diary. They describe my thoughts and life during the pandemic, from March 7 2020 to May 18 2020.

2020-06-05

Panic

Because of the pandemic, I was so scared especially when I saw people walking without mask on street. I stayed home for three months and barely went outside. I did not have any social life, which almost drove me crazy.

2020-05-24

Nobel Prize-winning scientist explains why COVID lockdowns may have cost more lives than they saved

This article is important because it gives expert testimony that the lockdown has not saved people from the virus.

2020-03-25

Panic in the Toilet Paper Aisle on the Record with Dr. Eiko Maruko Siniawer

Japan on the Record podcast by Tristan Grunow, talking with Dr. Eiko Maruko Siniawer about crises and toilet paper panic buying.

03/18/2020

I can only hope

The image makes fun of how many some Americans overreacted to the news of toilet paper shortages and that they were stupid for doing so. It also shows that not all important events will make good movies.

2020-05-14

Times in covid-19

A personal account of the pandemic.

2020-04-18

Toilet Paper Aisle in Walgreens- Waxhaw, NC

The toilet paper aisle at a Walgreens in Waxhaw, North Carolina with only one package of toilet paper left

2020-03-07

Covid -19's Major Impact on Grocery Stores Nationwide

The image I displayed shows the sheer panic Covid-19 has caused nationwide. It shows the distress and precautions Americans are taking to make sure they are prepared for the situations the pandemic could cause.The image was originally by Tacoma News Tribune and expressed the seriousness of taking precautions before Covid-19 becomes a serious issueThe empty shelves in a grocery store caused by the panic of Covid-19.

2020-04-27

Brief on quarantine (Author: Gennady Khodov)

Here comes the second month of quarantine in our country. There are people who observe quarantine, and there are people who do not care about the situation and they continue to live as they lived before. Students, schoolchildren are studying remotely. I envy them, of course. Studying at home is so great. But there are disadvantages of such an education, schoolchildren are stupid. After all, some parents do their own homework, and children are not explained anything. Beauty salons, trading houses, markets are closed. Only grocery stores are open. In certain shops we only let in 5 people, and at this time on the street 20 people are waiting for their turn to enter the shop and people do not even keep a distance from us being on the street. There are practically no cars on the street. In our city, it is completely banned to travel by private transport, allowed only to certain people. It became so free at once. Public transport has been restricted, it only goes in the morning or evening, but these buses go in small quantities. It's quicker to walk to work. Some people are panicking. They don't know what happens next...

2020-04-18

Working at a Grocery Store

This all takes place in March around the week of the 20th I believe? Sadly, I have not been keeping tabs during when the pandemic was actually announced, but I did work that week a few days when the news hit everyone. The week following the mass panic in my area I paid attention to what was going on in the other parts of the U.S. People were stocking up on toliet paper and handsanitzer, so I knew to be ready when I was here. I bought my stuff and people thought I was crazy. When the week came, my little store with only 6 registers was packed. All day long there were from 3-5 people lined up at every register. They bought everything. The shelves were just bare and the meat department was empty. People paniced that we would never get food back in as if trucks weren't going to come on their correct dates with fresh supply. Every single day the trucks came the food was gone. People thought we were hiding stuff in the back, but in reality the moment it got here it was put on the shelves and then gone. I did not work in the morning, but since grocery trucks (the ones with toilet paper) were stocked overnight in the morning it would be packed. Halfway through the week, we put limits on things like meat, eggs, hand sanitizer, and any other sold out items. This concludes for those weeks.

2020-04-08

First Case of Peach Springs Community Member Testing Positive for Coronovirus

"We encourage community members to remain calm, and take this matter seriously and be aware this case may be a result of 'community spread.' Please continue following CDC reccomendations at home and refrain from visiting other homes unless necessary. As you make necessary visits consider elderly and youth." #IndigenousStories

2020-04-03

Working in Retail During COVID-19

2020-03-16

Panic Buying in Walmart

Empty shelves

2020-03-16

Meat Section of a local Grocery Store

The image shows the panic that people are feeling, and how they're rushing to purchase all their essentials from the stores which shows the uncertainty that people feel about their future.

2020-03-09

The psychology behind why toilet paper, of all things, is the latest corona virus panic buy

CNNhealth

2020-03-21

Facebook advertisement for satirical TV show Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell on the ABC.

A photo of Francis Greenslade’s character Liam O’Malley, Chief Deputy Medical Officer Intern with the text reading “The important thing with panicking is we don’t want to rush into it. We want all Australians to wait until we can declare a state of national panic and we can have an ordered, timely descent into chaos.” This resource shows the comedic response to panic in the broader community.

2020-03-17

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