Bailey Fox

Bailey Fox was the only person in her inner circle of friends who tested positive for COVID-19 over the summer. Her friend group, which consisted of around four people, hung out over the summer. Fox wasn’t worried about contracting COVID-19 because her friend group typically only interacted amongst themselves. 

Fox found out that someone her friend knew tested positive for COVID-19, so she and her friend group decided to get tested as a precaution. 

“I wasn’t really nervous at all because I knew that even if I did have it, I’d be able to quarantine with my friends and we could watch movies for a week and it would be great,” Fox said. 

After Fox got her results back, she was bummed that she was the only one in her friend group who tested positive. The doctor who called Fox and told her the results said it wasn’t likely she would experience any intense symptoms since she was asymptomatic when she tested positive. 

“I knew from the get-go that it wouldn’t get super bad. I wasn’t really upset about that or worried,” Fox said. “I was just mostly bummed that I had to be completely alone for two weeks.”

Fox’s friends were shocked that she was the only one who tested positive. They went to Lexington to do rapid tests and all of them tested negative again. Fox was upset and shocked about her results and wasn’t looking forward to quarantining. 

“Whenever you’re self isolating and you have coronavirus, obviously you’re self isolating for the good of everybody, but it still feels like a punishment anyway,” Fox said. 

Fox took her temperature every morning to see if she had a fever, but she never did. She felt fine the entire two weeks and never developed any symptoms of COVID-19.

The worst part of quarantine for Fox was the isolation. She said she’s an independent person, and she felt helpless not being about to cook her own meals, clean her house or change her cat’s litter box. To cope with the isolation, Fox FaceTimed her friends, played iMessage games and watched TV. 

Fox said she was depressed during quarantine. She called her doctor and had her antidepressant dosage increased. 

“It was horrible feeling super alone and also knowing that you have the illness that’s killing thousands of people—that’s just not a good feeling to sit with, especially for a week,” Fox said. 

Fox said she’s more cautious now that she’s had COVID-19. She wears a face mask to the store and sanitizes her hands, groceries and mail. 

“I’m more conscious of where germs can live. At the beginning of the pandemic, I was like, ‘oh, I could go grocery shopping and not sanitize my stuff.’ I could get stuff in the mail,” Fox said. “But now I’m like, ‘no, I’m just going to spray Lysol on everything that someone else could have touched.’”

Fox said she feels lucky that she didn’t have any symptoms and that she didn’t lose her life to COVID-19, like so many people have. She said coronavirus is something people don’t want to contract and that the fear people have about it is valid. 

Having COVID-19 made the pandemic more real to Fox. When cases started increasing in China, Fox understood that the virus was bad but thought it likely wouldn’t come to the United States. It wasn’t until all of her classes at NKU transitioned online did the reality of the pandemic feel real. 

“I think as more and more people I knew got it, the more real it felt, but it didn’t feel entirely real until I actually experienced it,” Fox said. “But even then, I didn’t even get like the full coronavirus. I was completely asymptomatic.”