“I’ve had the flu twice as an adult and this is not like the flu at all. When you get the flu, you get the symptoms, but then you’re back to normal right away. That didn’t happen to me. I’m still dealing with lingering symptoms.”

After Paul brought it home, COVID-19 spread like wildfire to everyone in their house. Though they had some similar symptoms, they all experienced it differently and for varying periods of time over the next month.

"The second day in the hospital, my health started to decline. It's as if my body was starting to shut down. I felt like death was in my room. I literally felt like I was dying..."

Julia’s symptoms crept in like a rolling fog of fatigue and aching back pain, easy to write​ off as “anxiety” until more symptoms emerged. A couple of weeks later, flattened by COVID’s effects, it brought home that her life and her health were not in her hands.

After being hospitalized from COVID, Yvonne asked herself if she had died, would she have done everything she wanted to do. “No,” she thought. So she began to secretly work on one of her dreams.

“Then a light bulb went off. Twelve days I was asleep. The only information I had was I got shot. And the nurse said, ‘I'm glad you're better now.’ That's what I took and ran with.”

“If COVID is a hoax, then I’m a hoax. I’m proof that COVID is real.”

“People talk about the physical effects of COVID-19, but no one really talks about the mental health impact. I was not mentally prepared for this.”

“COVID didn’t come with a receipt. I don’t know where I got it and I can’t take it back.”

“I remember getting a call and in the faintest voice, she said goodbye to me. My mom, who I love and often refer to as my best friend, said goodbye to me.”

“When the cruise was to end they were told a passenger that had gotten off in Hong Kong had tested positive for COVID-19.”

“I don't know if it was an angel or God, but my lungs were shutting down and they were trying to weigh out options for me to get more air. Then…”

“I was diagnosed May 16, 2016 with Multiple sclerosis (MS). I've had it since 2006 undiagnosed. I managed it up until recently with COVID.”

“My body doesn’t respond to bacteria and viruses in the way a healthy person’s immune system responds. You’re supposed to fight it. I kind of invite it over for lunch and help it hurt me.”

“For the first week when I did go somewhere, I carried that letter that I was free of quarantine with me just kind of to show people.”

“I know I got it from my wife being that we’re together most of the time. She came home one day from work and said that everybody in her pharmacy simultaneously lost their sense of smell.”

“Even though our New Rochelle community got a really bad rap in the beginning, I believe we will be part of the cure. Because we were some of the first to get it, that means we were some of the first to recover and donate our blood and plasma.”

“As more survivors were looking for ways to help, I realized we had to create a more efficient system, a better platform, to connect the survivors with the researchers to better stem the tide of this pandemic. So, we launched Survivor Corps as an open group on Facebook where anyone could join.”

“The minute I had a fever I knew I had the virus.”