Has the Coronavirus impacted your life? Well, you should know that you aren’t the only one.

Over the past couple of months, COVID-19 has swept through our nation, hitting harder than it ever has just this month with almost 13 million cases and Kansas having 143,978 of those cases. The virus has targeted just about all demographics and different kinds of people, and every single one of them copes with it in a different way.

Reading up on the virus can help educate the public on some facts you may not have known that could ultimately help prevent you from catching it. Kristen Scribner, a 5th grade ELA teacher at Pray Woodman Elementary in Maize, thought she knew everything there was to about COVID-19, but ironically ended up catching the virus herself.

“I felt that I had read about the symptoms of COVID forwards and backwards,” Scribner said with confidence, “but little did I know, I would be one of the statistics of actually contracting the virus right before my eyes. I woke up 6 days ago without a voice. I assumed it was from my normal exhaustion from teaching 5th graders ELA all week long– little did I know, it was my first symptom of COVID. Within the same 24 hours, my husband tested positive for COVID followed by my oldest daughter as well as myself.”

Some people tend to think that even if you have broad symptoms like a headache or a small cough you should get tested immediately. Megan Polley, a Maize South mom, prevented even her own family from catching the deadly virus due to proper quarantine procedures within her own household.

“I started out feeling like I was getting a mild cold and went and got a rapid test on Monday,” Polley said. “It was positive and from Monday evening until now I have gone downhill. I have had a fever over 100, chills, a headache, fatigue, nausea, terrible body aches, muscle spasms in my back, shoulders, and legs, and the worse has been the coughing attacks that have lasted sometimes over an hour and I can’t catch my breath. My whole family has to quarantine until December 1st. My two kids feel fine and my husband also got tested, but his test came back negative. We are all in separate rooms in the house and I’m confined in my bedroom so that I don’t expose anyone else.”

College life is supposed to be full of new experiences and friends for recent Maize South graduate Zach Saville. He, however, is disappointed in the way things have played out for his freshman year of college, with Emporia State taking major precautions to fight against the virus after having 20 students test positive just last week.

“COVID has had a major impact on my college experience,” Saville stated. “Emporia State has taken the pandemic very seriously and has limited a lot of what we can do. When dreaming of the college life, I was hoping to meet a lot of new people and make friends, but COVID has severely crippled my ability to do just that. Masks are required at all times and group sizes are limited. With this being said, I have seen friends disappear for two weeks because they had to self-quarantine.”