My wife and I were visiting one of our children and her family in Redmond, Washington in February 2020. The night before we were prepared to return to our home in Michigan, we learned through the news media that near Redmond, Washington was where the first person was diagnosed with COVID-19. It was an elderly person in one of the assisted living accommodations. Subsequently, we had to make adjustments to our lives as my wife and I are in our 70s. Since I grew up in an impoverished and unsanitary environment during the Korean War era, I overcome many different types of health issues and diseases such as malnutrition, tuberculosis, malaria, etc so I felt confident that I would overcome this new flu pandemic as well.

Here are things we’ve adjusted to protect ourselves and others against this pandemic: we followed the health protocol of washing our hands with anti-bacterial soap as often as we are able; wore masks to public establishments, stores, churches, libraries, restaurants, hospitals, etc and practice social distancing. We often have many friends come to our home for dinner and visits but that has been curtailed but not entirely. We would ask our visitors to see if they have been sick with the COVID-19 flu symptoms before they are allowed to come and socialize with us.

My 82-year-old sister contracted COVID-19 and we took her in after she was discharged from the hospital but was sick with a slight fever, loss of appetite, chills and she was not yet completely healed. We took care of her while we used the disease preventive protocol until she was completely healed. We were asked to be tested after taking care of her for COVID-19 and both my wife and I resulted in negative COVID-19.

Lastly, my wife and I were vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine and both of us did not have any major issues.