Spend a day with me as you see me (Ashley Hampton) navigate through a normal day in present COVID-19 in Anderson, South Carolina. I vlog about my workplace, shopping centers, and businesses in Anderson to give perspective of how COVID-19 has changed the way these institutions function on a day-to-day basis. Despite statewide coverage, not much is documented about South Carolina and COVID-19 in this archive, let alone, residential experiences. The objective of this video is added to the South Carolina COVID archive as well as highlight how personal experiences with COVID-19 may vary depending on which region you live in and community.
This is a ParentSquare message from the superintendent from the school district that I work at. A student from the Online school that our district provides as an alternative for students because of COVID-19 decided it was a good idea to shoot at fellow students. This is particularly frustrating for me as a school employee because this student put other students in danger and ended the life of at least one student. Actions like this also put the school employees or outside civilians in danger if they get caught in the crossfire.
Gang activity has become an issue in this town and I fear there will be more retaliation and the cycle of violence will continue. This will likely interrupt the student's education even more because of fear or fascination, probably just as much as COVID has. It has become increasingly difficult to engage some students with their students because they are behind maturity-wise after a year of being online due to COVID and this school shooting is not helpful.
The attached is a memorandum for record from the Under Secretary of Defense. This memo was published 1 March 2022 and was a big deal for us in the military and really everyone who works on military installations or in other Department of Defense facilities. Prior to this memo, we were all required to wear face coverings at all times when in doors, regardless of local state or county guidance. This memo was a great policy move as it changed the requirement from an overarching blanket policy to instead replicate local community guidance. I can tell you, we were very relieved to not be required to wear a face covering at all times. unlike many other sectors across the US, many military members did not have the opportunity to work from home during the pandemic. This is just due to the nature of our jobs, therefore we were masked up for a long time, even in places such as Texas and Florida where masks were no longer required according to local state and county guidance.
This news article is from the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Richmond, Virginia. The article contains a recent review of the Hanover Country School Board seeking legal advice from a well-known hate group that disguises themselves as "Christian conservative legal group" also known as the Alliance Defending Freedom. Back in December of 2021, the ACLU of Virginia filed against Hanover County for discriminatory policies against transgender students. The pandemic has bought out numerous laws against the safety of LGBTQ students and individuals. This is just a small example of what queer children have been facing since the start of the pandemic.
At the end of 2020, I was completing my student teaching online for my BA in Secondary Education. I was placed in a school in Seattle. Student teaching during this time is something that was incredibly difficult. Looking at faces through blurry webcams, and seeing the black tiles in zoom from students who wouldn't or couldn't turn on cameras. I will never know what a lot of the students looked like, or what their voices sounded like, but getting to read their work, and see their messages in emails and chats is something that I will always remember and will always hold a place in my heart.
The 12-14-year-olds I was teaching had just been the last 3 1/2 months watching the BLM protests and marches in their city take place. A few students told us that they lived just streets away from the main events. Some students had been active in the BLM marches and protests that had taken place during the summer before, some stayed at home and watched on social media live streams and the news, some had parents who were heavily involved. They watched their friends, their family, their community, and strangers get tear-gassed, hit with "blast balls", and be subject to other physical violence. The levels at which they understood the what and why varied. Some had such an amazing level of nuance that some adults I knew couldn't comprehend. Others had an extremely base understanding of why people were protesting and marching. But all understood that it was a monumental event and would be something remembered in history.
These children were scared, concerned, confused for a variety of reasons. Yet, overwhelmingly there was a sense of urgency for justice from these kids. My lead teacher and I knew that we had to pivot lessons in order to keep them engaged and meet their needs. Focusing on how the concepts they needed to learn could be applied to material that would interest them, and using homeroom activities to try to calm nerves, create a sense of community and answer questions about everything from Covid, to the protests, to the current election.
They wanted to write and read about what was important to them, what they saw around them, and they wanted to read about different perspectives and lives from their own. We honored that. For the final writing assignment of the semester, we gave them some guidelines and standards that needed to be met within their writing, but gave them some freedom on how they wanted to meet those standards. I won't get into the specifics of the assignment, but I will say it worked well and was adapted to best serve students at all levels, and those with IEP/504 plans. We were met with everything from songs and poetry, letters to the mayor and the governor, essays about our anchor text, to reports about youth activists that they researched.
I don't think the impact of the events of summer 2020 in Seattle on children is thought about. The events that a child experiences and is around affects them for the rest of their lives. Most don't have the skills yet to emotionally process fully what they see. Their thinking didn't stop when the marches and protests did, they wanted to learn and talk about it in order to process. The compounding factors of the summer and prior to that Seattle was essentially ground zero for Covid in the U.S. left most kids spinning. School became a safe place for a lot of these kids, and I hope that it has continued to be one.
While the all-encompassing strength of the COVID-19 Pandemic is waning, it still persists and lingers. This is a critical time where countries can either dreamily and abruptly attempt to return to idealized pre-pandemic existence or continue to return to their visions of normalcy through steps found in scientific methodology. Debates that focused on safety, health, and personal freedoms (especially about masks and vaccines) were constantly in the news the last two years, with some deteriorating into disheartening and embarrassing public displays. Surely, these debates will continue indefinitely, and all perspectives will be important to history.
While browsing this archive, many of the stories are of those who subscribe to the reality of the pandemic, who trust and listen to science, and who have highlighted the way their lives have changed during the pandemic. I am from Arizona, born and raised. I often find myself to be the lone liberal or democrat, particularly at work, in a state formerly known as a red state, now perhaps purple. While Arizona is well represented in this archive regarding life during a pandemic, it has many people living in it who dispute the pandemic's origin, virulence, and the government's attempt to control personal freedoms, as much as I personally disagree.
The attached YouTube video shows a meeting of the Kyrene School District Governing Board from January 25th, 2022. The relevant background is that before the 2021 Winter Holiday break this district emailed parents that masks would no longer be mandatory after the new year. By the end of the break, Omicron infections had increased, and the district regressed back to mandatory masks after the holidays. Please watch, specifically from minutes 20:35 through 38:28. To me, a person who reads a diverse group of news sites daily, this clip has brought me hope. Of all the ugly comments I have read on far right or left news sites, debate like the one in this video is instead mostly constructive, passionate, and respectful. I may not agree with everything discussed in this sample, but I respect people's right to debate their beliefs. I believe studying other perspectives is useful for future generations. Historians one hundred years from now may wonder why certain people thought masks were useless in schools. Hopefully, between this J.O.T.P.Y. archive and the articles that exist on the internet, a thoughtful sample of diverse perspectives can be researched.
Additionally, I hope this video adds to material in this archive that demonstrates the anti-mask perspective to historians who could research and educate future generations on state and federal authority during health crises to hopefully prevent conflicts as we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This video is owned and uploaded by the Kyrene School District to YouTube.
The day my life completely changed, QUARATINE had been announced in my district. What had begun as a light conversation with no expected impact on us later came to crumble our walls of reality and how vulnerable we really are. We live in a time of the future a virus wasn't expected to take so many of us out the thought that we've evolved beyond this point was false. We were unprepared for anything that was to come.
I never got to enjoy my senior year complete my senior year, a year I'll never get back. I had begun with so much excitement it was my senior year in cross country I gratefully got to finish my season with all my teammates and some of my best friends from high school. However that would later come crashing down as I was getting excited for prom season shopping for a new dress and planning the night out with friends we were sent on a "2 week spring break" I never got back.
Classes continued online, I no longer was able to do my daily routine of going to school then practice with friends. From now on any interaction was via Zoom or FaceTime we longed for reconnection. I'm someone who thrives off interacting with my friends especially pre quarantine the lack of interactions was draining me. I had to find a new way to cope which as you can see led to many hair color changes within a couple months.
The four walls I would be so excited to come to after a long practice now became a prison cell. I would't change the way I chose to quarantine because I saw the negative affects of socializing with sadly one of my neighbors passing during that height of pandemic. However we are all only human and selfishness is part of who we are and I think it's fair to say my mental health took a large toll during the couple months that felt like years. Once my family as well as others became more lenient I was a able to hangout in small groups of people but never large and still fear it a little over 2 years later.
I don't believe I have fully recovered from the situation this time period put us through. The isolation did allow me to discover new interests and how to spend time with myself which can be difficult, as well as an appreciation for long walks on your own. However it was a confusing time and one that only brought about more anxiety and fear with someone who deals with this struggles on the daily.
I described how ending the school year during COVID-19 was. I am a high school teacher, and we went on Spring Break and never came back. I include an e-mail I sent to my students.
I once heard from my uncle that the pandemic has rendered buildings useless. When people started working online, going to work has plummeted. Nowadays, many people prefer working at home over going to their office. They find it more convenient working online because they do not have to waste their time traveling back and forth as well as losing their money on gas. Due to the development of technologies, people can pretty much do things online. We can work online, shop online, and do all kinds of entertainment online too. Thus, many businessmen lost much effort and money in paying off their building rent. Some trying to sell off their building but the condition just makes it more challenging, because no one would want to carry that burden to themselves. My uncle told me that, in his prediction, buildings will disappear in the near future and that people only go out for traveling or in some necessary circumstances. I thought about that a lot and somehow I kind of agree with his prediction. I do not think that buildings will completely disappear but people will definitely work online more in the future.
The pandemic has disturbed my sleep. During the quarantine, I did not have to do much except for sleep and doing my homework. Since my school was doing the asynchronous study, I stayed undisciplined to myself. I sleep whenever I want to and started staying up late. For the whole summer, my sleeping routine had totally changed. I slept during the day and stayed up at night. Because I slept too much, I even skipped meals and had lost so much weight during that time. Due to this unhealthy lifestyle of mine, my health has deteriorated a lot. Once school started, I was having trouble with falling asleep at night. It felt like I was having jet lag. Therefore, every time I went to school, every step I walked felt so heavy, and I was always in a state of sleepiness, and loss of concentration. Even now, I still find it difficult to sleep for many days. I also lost my appetite for food and exhaustion keeps following me until these days. The reason that leads me to this action, I think, is because of all the boredom I felt during the pandemic. All I could do was hang around my room. I was lack of vitamin D because I barely walked out in the sun. Moreover, I lived far from my parents and I completely had no energy to do things or to find things. No one was there to encourage me or talk to me. I was with a host family by that time but we rarely talked so I would rather lock myself in the room and sleep through the day. When things started opening back up, I figured many people have also had the same issue as me. So in conclusion, the pandemic has caused sleeping disorders in many people.
Assignment prompt given to the spring 2022 ASU graduate student interns. The prompt asks them to document one day in March 2022 and reflect on 6-8 daily routine moments and how they are influenced/not affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
I remember when I had just finished school on an early February day and I went to Whole Foods before going to work to buy some lunch. I was watching Tik TOks on how bad the disease was spreading in China and how they were building makeshift hospitals to handle it. As I waited to checkout I thought to myself and was hit with a rush of fear. I called my then boyfriend and asked him if we were being ignorant by trying to ignore what was happening. Shortly after that I watched another video with a deeper explanation and the person states, " These are the good times, everything is about to change for the worst." Although I was scared, I could not ever imagine how bad it would actually get.
I was worried before the virus as to what would happen to the world if we just kept moving forward like we were. It seemed that the world was in the motion of forward, keep going going going going. Do not stop, do not stop, keep moving forward. In a way the virus showed us more than we could have ever asked for. Once we were all stripped of the things we all enjoyed and loved, things changed. We were introduced to new things that we did not feel or experience again because we left them behind in our continuously moving forward lifestyle. The people that needed to do some internal viewing was able to stand back, and work on themselves. The people that did not know where they were going in life had a chance to breathe and catch up with the state of the world. Do not get me wrong, the virus was the worst thing to happen to our society...but it also showed us that we are all not different. Sadly some aspects of it were politicized and given a merit for your views, but in the end, the people that took it for what they could .. learned.
We become better fathers, better mothers...better friends, better siblings,, a better us.
We seen the things we were missing that were in-front of us all along and that was each other.
The virus forced empathy upon us and everyone around us. The world will forever be changed by the one thing we could never fight against and that was ourselves.
I spoke to Sam at the Arizona Historical Society's 2nd annual Covid Remembrance Event. Sam was with his son, Alex. Alex did not wish to be interviewed but he gave permission to have his health information included in the interview. He was present during the interview.
Sam describes his family life during the initial lockdown, how he kept working at the hospital but his wife and son stayed home. Sam called himself the "hunter gatherer" during that time as he was the one getting groceries and running errands. He describes how he got the first dose of his vaccine but also got infected with COVID at the same time. His symptoms were mild, but his son and wife had different experience.
Sam describes losing his wife to Covid. He also describes how he has dealt with his grief and anger by joining a support group and Marked By Covid group. He shares his story as a way to honor his wife.
At the Arizona Historical Society's 2nd annual Covid Memorial event, I spoke with Rose and recorded her story about losing her brother, John, to Covid. Rose describes the challenges she faced being far away from her brother as he was diagnosed and then ill. She currently has her brother's dog, Emma, and is trying to re-home her according to her brother's wishes. Rose describes how her last communication with her brother was a text for help.
After the recording was turned off and we were walking out, she described how she felt when she was parked and walking to the hospital to say goodbye to her brother she saw anti-mask protestors at Central and Thomas Road. She was so sad and angry that these people were arguing against something that might save lives. She said that she couldn't argue with them and just wished them good health and walked away.
Over the past few years, the COVID pandemic has become a pretty lonely time for me living in Missouri, where I am originally from. I moved out to Arizona over five years ago and have not left. When the pandemic hit, my job moved to be online for a while, and therefore I made the trip to go back home and be with my family. We realized that we became increasingly stir-crazy through the pandemic by staying in the house all of the time. There was no more travel to the restaurants, shopping, and entertainment places. The past summer, with the pandemic on a decline, my family and extended members traveled to the Wild Animal Safari park.
There was my Aunt Pat, my Niece, Morgan, my mother Robyn, and myself in the car as we traveled an hour away to enjoy the safari animals. The great thing about the excursion is that we did not have to get out of the car to remain safe during the pandemic. We received our animal food at the entrance and then proceeded through the park. It was one of the best times of the year because I am not sure I have laughed so hard in my life. I had no idea animals had that long tongues that they would stick in the car windows to get the food pellets. It was delightful seeing my niece squirm around in the car as she tried to get away from the animals. It was one of the best times during the pandemic, and I cannot recommend this excursion or something similar.
My plaque story begins in March 2020, right in the middle of my senior year of my senior year of high school. that day we were let out of school for, what we were told, 2 weeks. One of my friends was away at a baseball camp that night and he had left his car in our school parking lot so me and my friends decided to go to the grocery store, buy a bunch of Saran Wrap, and Saran Wrap his car. At this point the amount that the pandemic would affect our lives hadn't sank in yet but when we got to the grocery store to buy the wrap we saw a very surreal sight. Hundreds of people were there wearing masks and gloves, and even goggles. People were buying canned food and toilet paper in mass quantities and there were numerous empty shelves. It looked like something out of a movie and that's when it began to sink in how crazy the situation was. that same week I remember going hiking with a couple of my friends and talking about the pandemic. I remember us wondering if anyone that we knew would end up getting the virus or if it would fizzle out before it hit Pennsylvania and if or when we would go back to school to finish our senior year. It turned out that we would never go back and "two weeks to slow the spread" turned into months and then years. It is now February 2022 and our lives are still being turned upside down by this pandemic. All we can do now is hope that things eventually return to normal and that we as humans can learn from the mistakes made during this pandemic.
This link goes to an Anderson Cooper interview with Eddie Case, an Arizona man infected with Covid, placed on a ventilator and respirator then placed in a medically induced coma for 20 days. When he woke he had no idea why he was in the hospital. I met Eddie Case yesterday when he shared his COVID Story with me at the Arizona Historical Society's Marked by Covid memorial event. His story is in the archive as well. The interview originally aired on July 16, 2020.
[curator's note] I recorded this interview at the Arizona Historical Society's 2nd Annual Covid Memorial Event at the Arizona Heritage Center. Eddie spoke about his experience as one of the first cases of Covid in Arizona, and his illness and long recovery. He views his story as a blessing.
A variety of submissions to the SMhopes website, designed as posters and banners by Paula Goldman, and installed in the Teen Lounge at the main branch of the Santa Monica Public Library. The Library asked for a variety of hopeful messages as they begin having students visit the Teen Lounge again.
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.
This picture, it is showing me having my high school graduation in a parking lot. All having to stand 6 feet apart, outside and listen to our names being read off through the speaker of our cars. Not your typical graduation from high school and I'll never get to go back and have one because of covid.
This is mine and my brother’s Nintendo Switch, although I use it the most since I have more free time. It has two joy-cons that slip lock into the main screen or can be slipped out to play one-handed or play with multiple people as multiple controllers. On the top left of the screen is each of our accounts, listed from left to right it would be my account, my middle brother’s, then my eldest brother. A lot of the games we play together are considered “party games” such as Super Smash Bros Ultimate (the first game on the left), some are single or two-player games that we end up taking turns playing in one sitting like Mario Odessey (the second from the left), Others would be a single-player game that each of us would play in each other account such as a social simulator like Animal Crossing (Furthest on the right).
The weeks were slow and exhausting. Covid-19 caused whispers of fear throughout the neighborhood, from worry to frustration. One problem shared a lot with these households was the exhaustion of seeing the same people 24/7. Some had it harder than others, from parent to child and between siblings, irritation just burned between them as patience grew thin.
As an introvert, I was one of the people that was excited about the lockdown! However, reality hit hard quickly. As more and more news about the virus spread and talks about other people experiencing the terrible aftermath grew. My family would convene every evening to turn on the news and witness how the world dealt with the virus. Similar to Kaashif Hajee in his The Pandemic Radically Altered My Relationship with India. I Don’t Know If I Can Ever Go Back writing, I felt like the world was on its head and things that I was blind to were revealed, such as the concealment of cases. Among actions that I was uneasy in facing were the required actions that the Saudi Government took but felt wrong, such as the banning of gathering for religious gatherings. While it is of course understandable, I could not deny the uncomfortable grip on my heart when, during the first day of Ramadan (April 1st), I witnessed the once full-of-life crowd become practically empty around the Kaaba. It hit really hard for me and my family, especially since it is kind of tradition to watch a Livestream when breaking our fast.
Another issue due to the lockdown was the disconnect I felt with my two older brothers. We weren’t “disconnected” to the degree that we hated or were annoyed at each other (not always anyway). It was a “disconnect” that felt like we were there for the sake of being there, we talked for the sake of having a normal conversation, not because there was any meaning or purpose. I presume this comes partly due to the fact that we are all in different stages of our lives. We were all busy in our hectic lives but due to lockdown, we were kind of forced to interact to fulfill our societal needs. “You needed something to connect with!” our mother would tell all of us privately, but when you all have your own things to deal with it turns more difficult and stretched out.
That is until my eldest brother bought something very nostalgic home. A brand new Nintendo Switch. At this point, this console made by Nintendo has been already released for a while, but with life being exhausting and taxing as it is, brothers and I were unable to get our hands on it, let alone any time to do so… until late march. My eldest brother took my mother’s words to heart and scoured the internet for something fun for us to do. One of the most fun things we used to do together was to play on Nintendo consoles like the Wii and play games like Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. These games were competitive to a fun degree, it never got too heated but with time and age, the family-friendly Wii console was forgotten. When the Nintendo Switch was released it took the world by storm. It’s fun and the joy-cons mechanisms were easy to use and split between multiple people, so we were ecstatic!
We are lovers of anything nostalgic and now we were able to relive the fun competitiveness we shared in our childhood. What was even more nostalgic was Nintendo’s new Super Smash Bros Ultimate, a game that is connected to another game in the Wii during 2008 that we bonded closely with. It held the same premise, It was a beat ‘em up platformer-style game that had hundreds of story features as well as major customizable levels. Nintendo made the new Super Smash Bros Ultimate like its predecessor, but better with more features including fighting others online! With this, me and my brothers were able to talk like we used to, with no awkward pauses and long meaningless conversations.
After receiving a Nintendo switch, my cousins, who I am very close with and missed greatly over lockdown, grabbed a hold of their own consoles and played with us through the internet. Although they were not as emotionally connected to the games, it was fun for them nevertheless, especially since they were the same age as me and my brothers when we first started playing on the Wii. I felt a sense of warmth that the Nintendo Switch did not only make me remember the warm feelings of childhood, where we had no worries and fears, but I was also able to see these same warm feelings occurring in my younger cousins. It gives me happiness and comfort knowing that even if Covid-19 was terrorizing the world, at least there are objects that are able to help shift your mind from hard matters into a more calm and safe place.
Medical mask mandates on public transport had been in effect for a while now when this happened:
There are always the inevitable idiots who refuse to wear their masks (or just wear them below their nose, which in addition to being stupid also looks stupid) and usually people will just roll their eyes but say nothing - that one morning went differently.
The train was neither particularly crowded nor empty, for each 4-seater there'd be 2-3 seats occupied. We rolled into a station, people got on, among them a young woman who sat down on the first available seat. Directly behind her, some middle-aged guy, in possession of a mask but having it bunched up beneath his chin like a face-diaper. Upon seeing the woman sit down, he suddenly started ranting at her because apparently he'd wanted to sit in that seat (note that there were plenty of seats left), insulting her with a barrage of sexist and racist terms I don't care to repeat. She ignored him. Another passenger, however, didn't, and told the mask-less idiot to stop making an ass of himself and put on his mask before speaking and 'spreading his aerosols' indoors, which drew the idiot's ire on him.
After realising that neither the woman nor the other passengers would offer their seat to him in response to his insults, the idiot moved on to the next 4-seater - only to find that the people there used their bags and jackets to occupy the empty seats there to prevent him from sitting down there, responding to his cussing by telling him to just put on his fucking mask again. He moved on, everyone on the next row of seats blocked him as well, again and again. One woman, lacking a bag, went as far as full-on man-spreading in the middle of two seats to occupy them both. In the end, the idiot had to move to a whole other train car to find a seat.
The rest of us was left with smug smiles and a sense of petty satisfaction for the rest of the ride!
This flower represents the growth I have attained and hope. While the petals represent the things I felt like I lost during Covid. I think it is important for people to see how Covid affected everyone. This may open their eyes or give them something to relate to.
I (and many others) am feeling like disasters just keep compounding one another since March 2020. I know a lot of folks around my were anticipating a “return to normal” this summer but it feels really difficult to just celebrate “normal life” when innocent Ukrainians are suffering and the whole world is watching.
The pattern of small, blue, unorganized, squares reminded me of a hospital or a doctor’s office, the first place I would go when I am sick. During this time, it seemed as if everyone was sick, there were no appointments available to meet with a doctor nor beds for individuals who were experiencing peak Covid symptoms. Words that describe a hospital: white walls, clean floors, sterile rooms, and order, or at least it was before the pandemic. The background is far from orderly, red is also present amongst the blue squares. This is to represent our health care professionals doing their best with the knowledge we had about this novel virus, but still witnessing many deaths. There are also green rings hovering around the two individuals. Green is often connected with germs or sickness. In the beginning cleaning products were flying off the shelves, people wanted to clean all surfaces as a preventative measure. This meant that consumers were buying several jugs of bleach, rubbing alcohol, hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes, and many other products in surplus (creating many shortages). The air around the two individuals is filled with images of the Covid-19 virus under a microscope. Masks became a way to protect oneself from catching the virus, ultimately leading to mask mandates. The two individuals facing one another represent the mass separation we experienced during lockdown and with social distancing.
During a difficult time in which we are separated from one another, it is important to make the most out of every small moment. We don't notice all the tiny things that pass us by each day. This is my view.
I illustrated a CNA drowning in a molecule of sars-coV-19, also known as COVID19, to show the extreme conditions healthcare workers have been trying to push through during this pandemic. We have been working countless hours of overtime, sometimes for 24 or 48 hours straight due to understaffing, healthcare workers quitting, and others getting fired from refusing the vaccine. Our jobs have become very overwhelming, with the amount of cares we must provide for our patients, and with the thought of this pandemic having no end in sight, it's as if we're drowning in this pandemic. Healthcare workers are drowning in all the cares they must provide their patients, that they're unable to take care of themselves, and soon we won't have many healthcare and medical professionals left. That is why I chose to portray this CNA the way I did, and I hope others can agree with my experiences.
Stress is associated with the past two years. This incident was one of my most stressful contact with Covid-19 testing. You'd win the bet if you guessed there is a happy ending.
This photograph is a selfie photo from my time working at my local grocery store in Wakefield, Rhode Island, USA. I don't have many photos from this period that reflect the pandemic and my memories of it, but this photo represents the early days as the USA first began to adopt masking after the CDC realized that non-symptomatic spread was happening. Experiencing the pandemic through the lens of a grocery store was very interesting. It was a unique perspective for understanding different people's anxieties and doubts around the pandemic. It was also a strenuous place to be during the pandemic, having to constantly adapt to supply chain issues, worker shortages, and the mental strain of working in a likely unsafe environment.
About a month into the pandemic I was asked to move from my home department of prepared foods, and help the grocery-stocking staff catch up with the unpredictable shipments coming in. Shortly after that, I was moved over to the front of the store to help keep count of the people in the store and encourage customers to use masks/hand sanitizer. I remember being met with a wide variety of gratitude, skepticism, resistance, and more--even including a lecture on covid as a conspiracy! At times, this role brought me anxiety as I saw news stories of door-people and security guards being killed or harmed for asking visiting customers to wear a mask.
In a weird way, when I left my job to attend grad school at UMass Boston, I felt a bit of suvivor's guilt. Whenever I come home to Rhode Island, I hear that the folks at my old store continue to struggle even over a year deeper into the pandemic.
I did some heritage work for this hospital a couple years ago so I follow their social media. Apparently they’ve founded a COVID support group for people who have been profoundly impacted by COVID-related illness, death, and disability. I sometimes think that the chronic illness and disabling nature of long COVID is often overlooked. Who can blame anyone for overlooking it with all of the more obvious, loud, visible problems wrought by the pandemic? Anyhow this is something to think about.
This email chain documents a series of incidents in my workplace where an anonymous individual has engaged in acts of vandalism against COVID safety signage.
Since the quarantine, my life has been completely turned upside down. I wake up later, eat irregularly, and am also much lazier. At that time, I was really lonely. I don't communicate with anyone and I don't want to do anything, I just lie in bed scrolling through my phone and playing games. I study superficially and have no interest in it at all.
After a while, my sleep was completely reversed. I sleep during the day and stay awake at night. Every time I wake up I sit at the table and play games until morning, forgetting to eat and study. I have lost a lot of weight since then. Only when I play games do I feel happy because I get to meet my friends online. I got to know a lot of new people, even though we don't talk much now, but the time we spent together was really meaningful to me. Although I really enjoyed the quarantine, it also made me feel very weak. My lazy life ended when I went back to school but it took me a lot of time to get back to my normal life. I feel more positive and my life becomes more meaningful when the quarantine is over.
This event offered Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson vaccines, free Uber rides and Spanish and Hmong interpreters. The event was sponsored by the NCNW Sacramento Valley Section and La Familia Counseling Center.
This flier describes a virtual town hall arranged by the Observer Newspapers and the Sacramento African American Coalition on COVID-19 that focused on the issues facing Black businesses due to Covid 19. Speakers included Moderator Larry Lee, President and Publisher of Observer Newspapers; Chelsea Rae Crowder, Vice President at JP Morgan; Khalil Ferguson, Executive Fellow at California Urban Partnership; Sfensa Ari Antch Shepsuaba, Proprietor of Cleo Cartel Inc and Sankofa Workx; Mark Adams, President AHI Construction, Inc.; and Stephanie Bray, President and CEO United Way-CCR.
As most young adults my age, I suffer from severe anxiety. Dealing with anxiety daily, can be very challenging at times, especially during a pandemic. I have been fighting a battle with anxiety most of my life. At this point, I am really used to the extra thoughts in my head. I have learned to help manage it, but not completely get rid of it. I believe that anxiety has made me who I am, in a way, because I do not remember a time where I was not struggling. In 2020, a pandemic instantly flooded the world. This completely impacted my entire life. I was not able to experience my last year in high school, I was not able to be around the one person that helped me with my anxiety, etc. I was forced to wear a mask that I could barely breathe in. I lost touch with most of my friends that I developed over my lifetime. This instant wave of depression suddenly hit me. I was so nervous on what would happen next, and how long will this last. People were dying from this pandemic. I constantly worried about if the sickness would hurt one of my family members or someone important to me. Over the time of being in quarantine, I thought to myself ways on how I could relax and not worry so much about the pandemic. I told myself every day, “Everything happens for a reason”. This is what I truly believe and for some reason it really does calm me down. I am Catholic. I am a very deep believer in God. To me, trusting in the Lord is the best anxiety reliever around. Covid-19 is still around today. Without Covid-19, I would not be where I am today. Although this pandemic has an abundance of negative impacts on my life, it also had some positive ones, too. I would not have attended Duquesne University, met so many amazing people, and made a plethora of memories that I would not trade in for. I believe talking about my anxiety, especially during the pandemic, is very critical because I am not the only one who is suffering, too. Everyone is nervous about what is going to happen next. To me, this is HUGE on helping me with my anxiety. I can finally think to myself that I am not alone.
I believe that people who suffer from anxiety, especially from the pandemic started in 2020, can have a place to go if they are nervous. When I was struggling, I felt alone, and I was the only person who felt this way. My story will allow people to realize that they are not alone. Everyone is dealing with this stress and anxiety that I suffered from. My story tells people that I have worries and doubts, too. The pandemic not only had negative impacts, but they also had positive impacts. Focusing on the positives, will distract you from the anxiety and worrying. My story should help prove that. My story should allow people to see and find new ways to cope with the stress. I hope my story leaves a positive impact on people who did or are struggling. Everyone is in this together, and nobody will be alone in this major impact on the world.
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