“You’ve never had it?!” the music teacher asks me as I’m washing my dry and cracked hands for the 80th time today. I guess he hasn’t realized that he has never seen my mouth or nose before.

I feel this. I avoided it for three fucking years and when, complaining to my friend recently about how I managed to get it after attending a funeral back in August where - of course - I was like 1 out of 10 people wearing a mask despite everyone crying and touching their eyes and hugging eachother & I was the only one hand sanitizing throughout the entire thing.

“What do you mean you’ve never had it??” Exactly what I said asshole, why are you shocked?? “I mean - at least you’re getting it now when its way milder than before” I DIDN’T WANT IT AT ALL AHHHH

I’ve straight up ended up insulting people a few times when they made snarky comments about my N95 in shops. I can’t imagine what it must be like working in education / in contact with parents, deep sympathies.

The parents says their son is now worried they’ll get sick

Sounds like the son is smarter than the parents.

I was an Essential Worker so I didn’t get a choice in whether or not I got it before vaccines were available. For two weeks I could smell nothing but my own blood. Which I smelled, constantly.

that’s absolutely dire

Love and support to you. Being a full time teachers is rough and what your describing is definitely not okay. My university is almost entirely maskless and there was already a wave that hit a bunch of people.

Schools are petri dishes of Covid. Nothing has changed except administrations wanting teachers to stop saying it’s Covid.

22F here. My mother is a nurse who worked on a PACU unit that shut down and turned into a covid unit in 2020. I drove 9 hours home from school (I was a freshman in college & had just turned 19) in the middle of the night to go be with her right before the state/nationwide lockdown was in effect because while there was no way to diagnose it yet, I knew she had it. At this point she was 49, she was so sick & so little was known about it…. I was worried she was going to die. Thank goodness, she was okay. I immediately got it though, and so did everyone else in my family. “Worth it,” I thought to myself. I’d rather contract this disease from my mother and be with her in the event that either of us passes away from it as opposed to quarantine and risk not saying goodbye to her. She continued to work on the Covid unit, and slowly her opinion began to change… she was no longer scared of it, and actually thought of it as harmless. April of 2020, she’s permitted my younger brother who just got his license to go see his friends & his girlfriend if he wants. I’m shocked, baffled, and disappointed. She takes us to go see my grandparents & starts regularly pressuring me to get out of the house. I remember feeling so confused as to why she’s feeling this way until she starts to tell me that as a frontline worker, she’s more scared of covid when she comes home and watches the news than she is when she’s at work. She starts to pour alt-right propaganda into my brain about covid while I’m trapped at my parents’ house (who are both healthcare workers, both telling me the same thing. She’s certainly the main propagator of this narrative though), and she backs it up by telling me she, “works with it every day!! it’s not that bad!! It’s all overhyped.” She and my father then both start pumping anti vaxx narratives into my mind when the covid vaccine comes out, and being that they are both healthcare providers, while this is all so confusing to me, I’m inclined to trust them…. My mom’s a covid nurse… my dad, an ER doctor…. They’re so well versed on these topics, right? I can trust what they’re telling me, right …??? I get covid again at the very beginning of 2021. Thankfully, the first and second time I had it, I experienced no major, long term impacts. Finally I’m out of the house at a new school by the end of 2021, and despite how scared I now am of the covid vaccine, thank fucking god i get the first and second shot. My mother is extremely disapproving of this decision & tells me I’ve probably been sterilized. October of 2022, I have not gotten a covid booster because she’s put the fear of God in me at this point (I’m not religious btw. I just use phrases like this for the embellished effect). My new boyfriend encourages me to wear a mask & get a booster shot, desperately trying to educate me on the long term risks. I half-ass wearing a mask; I’m still so uncertain about all of this.

Then, I get covid a third time.

& it’s one of the most devastating things that’s ever happened to me.

[TW: TMI, medical information]

I don’t remember much of it; the brain fog is earth shattering and immense. I do, however, remember feeling like I couldn’t breathe or catch my breath though. I remember my lungs spasming & coughing so hard that I’d start vomiting mucus for days on end. I remember texting my mom at 1am, telling her I think I needed to go to the hospital, and her telling me doing that would kill me just like it did my aunt (for context, my aunt passed away from covid; she was hospitalized, intubated, and never extubated unfortunately. She fell victim to my mother’s anti-vaxx narrative. The weekend of her funeral, my mother talked about how covid was a hoax in front of my aunt’s widowed spouse/her own brother. She then posted more anti-vaxx content on facebook later that week. How terribly sad and inappropriate!!). I’m honestly not sure if I’ve been right since I’ve had covid. It’s hard to say, there have been a lot of life stressors since. I learned a very hard lesson from all of this though; I now mask diligently every single day without fail. I have 4 vaccines under my belt thank goodness. I’m still working on not trusting my mother’s medical advice. She’s my mom…. She’s a nurse…. It’s devastating to think she really is so far right that she can’t even provide proficient care as a healthcare worker because her viewpoint is so heavily influenced by facebook. It’s hard for me to come to grips with. I don’t really know why I’m writing all of this. I guess just to relate to you and to tell everyone to PLEASE DEAR GOD, FOR YOUR OWN SAKE AND EVERYONE ELSE’S, WEAR A MASK. IF YOU’VE READ NOTHING I’VE WRITTEN AT THIS POINT, PLEASE WEAR A MASK!!!

Covid’s rocked my world. The brain fog I experienced the third time around lasted for months. Sometimes I wonder if I still have it. I don’t know. Wear a mask everybody. Thank you to my amazing boyfriend for educating me on the dangers of COVID-19