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  2021-02

  #JOTPYSilver from Marissa Rhodes' Instagram

  @purplegenevre My kids haven’t gotten sick with the perpetual sniffles all year. #JOTPYSilver @lashymueller @resilvies @antonjac @ms.tanya.b.c @daniel.wascak
• 2021-01-21

  symptoms

  im really quite lucky to not have known many people with Covid-19, but there are a few people that I do know personally that have/had it. My friend avarie went to ohio for Christmas and on the trip back, they were starting to feel a little sick. they decided to go get tested and her mom was positive. she described feelings of shivers, runny nose, cough, sore throat, nausea, and feeling tires all the time. She was a very healthy person so it didn't affect her maybe as bad as it did others, but it was still bad.
• 2020-02-28

  Covid on the Media

  It was a typical day for me. I had finished my homework and went to check my phone. I went scrolling through Tiktok but noticed something was off. There was a new virus in China all over Tiktok, so I felt the need to look it up. I did some research and realized how quickly it was spreading and to how to stay safe.
• 2020-12-01

  I've Taken the COVID-19 Test Twice in as Many Months

  I have always gotten sick during the fall semester; it's just how my immune system has always been with my allergies and all of the normal sicknesses that go around this time of year. This year the fall semester and my normal sicknesses during it have been a source of stress for me on top of my classes. I am currently attending Florida Gulf Coast University and we have to fill out a daily health screening app that puts case investigators in contact with us if we report any symptom that might be related to COVID-19. This semester I have been in contact with case investigators twice. The first time was sometime around October 26 when I got my first COVID-19 test. I had a cough, a sore throat, and was experiencing fatigue but no fever. Just to be sure, I scheduled a test at a local CVS. The test at CVS you have to administer yourself and was unpleasant to say the least. My results came back negative on October 29, I told my case investigator, and returned to class. I missed my zoom class that Monday as well as my on-campus class that Tuesday. The following month, I developed a fever that reached 103.8 at its highest but I had no other symptoms except a cough after my fever passed. I tested on November 17 at another local CVS. It was the same self-administered test. I attended my class the Monday before, my temperature during which was between 102.8 and 103. I missed my class that Tuesday and got my results on November 20. It was once again negative, and I was able to return to my on-campus classes once my cough stopped. Like many other students, this pandemic has interrupted my normal school life and has added stress to an already stressful semester. In addition to this, not being able to attend class while I was waiting on my test results like has impacted my grades though I would not have attended those classes anyway if I were allowed to while waiting on my results.
• 2020-08-25

  Corona finally striking too close to home

  Ever since the pandemic has started, nobody I knew as had been seriously close to death because of the virus. That all changed last night. For the first time of 2020 I am afraid for life of a loved one. The virus never felt super real sine I hadn't had any true experiences with it and now it feels like my it has a grip in my life and I'm afraid that it'll never truly let go. Only time will tell in this situation and that may be the scariest part of it all.
• 
  04/19/2020

  Don Sawyer Oral History, 2020/04/19

  Don is a 57-year-old African American man. He works for a marketing research company and also makes films. He had COVID-19 at the time of the interview and discussed the symptoms he experienced. Don discusses how COVID-19 impacted his job. He talks about how Trump and the federal government handled COVID-19 and governors governed their states throughout COVID-19. He remarks on the shortage of PPE, ventilators, and the lack of COVID-19 tests. Don was unable to get a COVID-19 test unless he was hospitalized due to the shortage.
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  2020-04-18

  In Sickness and In Health

  My brother and I have an argument that has been going on since we were children; regardless of our age, however, it has always been a rather vicious, stubborn battle, comprised wholeheartedly of hubris and the unyielding belief that one is right and the other wrong. He’ll say, You have a weak immune system, not me! And in complete disregard of the trap I have already drawn myself into, I will retort without fail, You get sick more than I do! In this situation, we’re both playing the role of the fool, blindly ignoring the vast number of individuals who struggle with legitimate health problems and compromised immune systems, purposefully sticking our heads in the sand as we burrow further and further into the gilded age of misguided youth and immaturity. Perhaps this can be said of me more so than him, given that I am older and also usually the one who instigates these petty squabbles. The question of physical health and strength has always been a sensitive spot, a result of my years spent simmering under a household ruled by gender roles and conventions. But I like fighting, even if I can never win any of these fights, even if the blatant lies I tell my younger brother are merely pitiful attempts to dissuade the truth. In all honesty, Jonathan never gets sick; I do. Like most people in the day and age of COVID-19, I used to take my health for granted (and no, this won’t be a post about having an existential crisis regarding my mortality). But after being hauled in an ambulance twice––got exposed to the perils and fallacies of the American health care system real quick!––both for stupid reasons and resulting in a pair of pale blue socks and two missing front teeth, I have begun to realize more and more how futile my argument is whenever I try to prove to him that I am the child with the stronger body, the stronger immune system, the stronger sense of self. My body has endured a good bit of wear and tear, thanks to several instances but most infamously when I cruised down the roads of Clifftops, a gated neighborhood in Monteagle, TN, going 20 miles per hour on a longboard. Gravity, speed wobbles, and naiveté caused me to faceplant into the ground. I spat out a mouthful of blood when I finally regained consciousness, full-body abrasions wrapped around my arms, legs, and knees, skin seemingly marred beyond repair and my face looking like a swollen, beat-up punching bag. At first, the doctor thought I might’ve broken my face (maybe I wasn’t destined to be a cool skater and carve roads after all). I had two black eyes and pus for days. Taking a shower and unwrapping and wrapping my bandages was a two-hour hassle, one that I dealt with myself, determined to do alone without the help of my parents. Afterward, I would wipe the glass mirror, stand atop the cool tiled floor of my childhood bathroom, and ogle at myself and the mass of wet, rugged flesh sagging along with my wounds. Even when I was in a drug-induced haze of Percocets and could hardly walk, I was afraid of revealing to my mother and father what my body had become after accumulating ink at various tattoo parlors. Aside from the black pigment that permanently stained my skin, I was also scared of them seeing what I’d become after skidding across the pavement. I finally learned what it meant to be selfish when my grandmother saw me after the accident. She turned on the light and moved to look at me, taking a few hesitant steps. Then she came closer, cradled my face in her hands, and stroked the unscarred side of my cheek with her coarse, callous-ridden fingers as tears began to streak down the corners of her eyes. She murmured to me in rough, unbridled Chinese, her voice cracking at the edges and stumbling over words. My father stood in the corner. When she began to quietly cry, he looked away. My reply got mangled in the lower parts of my throat, my voice splitting at various intervals when both of us would falter. With our heads bowed in unison under the dim light of the kitchen, I imagined our two dark silhouettes of hair merging into one. It was then that I also learned what it meant to be loved. I never tell this side of the story because it reveals the ugly, careless parts of myself that constantly depend on others to pick me up when I have been the cause of my undoing. This is the part of me that I love and hate the most, this selfish, childish impetuousness that has allowed me to experience the world, unencumbered, but at the cost of others. Usually, when I explain to people what happened at Clifftops, I am laughing, joking, making myself seem hardcore and dumb all at once. It is pretty funny if you think about it. Over time, though, while I’ve learned that my physical body is fragile and my soul and spirit deceivingly invincible, I myself am still an uncompromising idiot. Despite everything, I am reckless to this day, still very aware of how I have hurt my loved ones being like this and the many ways that I will continue to do so. Just as I sit in a black leather chair and feel the needle prick into my skin, knowing the anger that will make its way towards me if my family finds out how my skin has been violated, I throw myself into hopeless fights with my brother I will never be able to win. Just as I have grown accustomed to hiding my tattoos in extra-large clothing whenever I go home, I cling to the lies that I tell Jonathan, to the fresh, pink flesh that slowly grows along my face and allows me to forget about my grandmother’s tears. The other day, my brother called me sickly, once again setting off another debate. I’d been coughing and developing symptoms of COVID-19, except for a fever; I was sequestered into my room for around a week and a half, and when I came out, I felt victorious. Allergies, I told myself. Just annoying allergies. I went on bike rides and wore makeup. I listened to music and made art. I still coughed, though, which he’d pointed out. And when I woke up at 2 AM with a raging 103-degree fever for the first time in years, I found myself curling up in a ball once more, grieving for something I didn’t quite understand or know.