They're young and they survived COVID-19. But the worry isn't over

Words by Helen Wieffering, with photos by Catherine Rafferty

View this story in The Arizona Republic

To have COVID-19, even as a young person in good health, can be frightening and strange. Maybe it starts as a creeping feeling that something is “off," or the telltale signs stack up gradually — fever, fatigue — until a nasal swab returns a positive result.

Deaths and severe cases have captured most of the attention, as the majority of young people who get COVID-19 experience mild symptoms. Yet physical defenses don’t shield them from an outsized worry about how the sickness will affect their health, finances and community in the future.

The pandemic could mean a canceled wedding, a lost loved one or the fear of damaged lungs. It could mean a quick return to health but the guilt of having spread the virus to others more at risk. 

People under 45 represent 61% of all cases in Arizona as of Aug. 19, a share that mirrors the national trend, and their numbers could rise as more young people start returning to businesses, places of worship, gatherings and more.

The Arizona Republic spoke with nine people under 40 who spent part of their summer sick with COVID-19.

Here’s what they had to say.

ALEXANDER ARANDA, 30 

Phoenix 

"We're going to be a small community, those of us that have had it"

Alexander Aranda witnessed the spread of the new coronavirus while starting a new job. His work linked him to uninsured patients at Arizona hospitals — a group increasingly comprised of victims and survivors of the pandemic.

He spoke with people out of work and out of benefits, people hospitalized with COVID-19 symptoms or grappling with medical bills after a family member died.

Then Aranda tested positive himself.

His morning runs, 4 miles around the neighborhood, had become strangely exhausting. He ran shorter distances, then found he couldn’t run at all. He retreated to his bedroom, sore and fatigued.

One night, Aranda’s arms went numb and his fingernails turned blue. His chest was tight.

“I was having breathing difficulties,” Aranda said. “I started talking to God, and I told him that I thought I wasn't going to make it.”

Three weeks passed while he stayed in isolation, closing his door against his mother and her husband, with whom he shares a house. Later, his mother said she stood in the hall some nights and listened for signs of life.

After returning to work in July, Aranda said he felt a quiet solidarity with the coronavirus patients on the other end of the phone call.

“We're going to be a small community, those of us that have had it. We're going to be able to relate to each other a little bit more,” he said.

ALEX MERRIAM, 24

Phoenix

"Let's just try to weather the storm"

Alex Merriam tested positive on the same day he’d once planned to fly out to visit family. He planned the trip in January, well before the new coronavirus induced a culture of staying at home.

By spring, he watched hospitalizations surge on the East Coast and learned his brother in Connecticut had COVID-19. Though his grandmother escaped the virus, she died when New York City hospitals were overwhelmed and her funeral was a small, socially distant affair.

Cases in Arizona at the time were still mounting at a slow trickle. That soon changed, and he canceled his flight.

Now Merriam, recovered from his two weeks of headaches and fatigue, is prepared to forgo seeing his family until a vaccine is available. It’s not worth it to fly across the country only to wave at his mother from afar, he said.

“Let's just try to weather the storm,” he said of his thinking. “We'll see where we are when we come out the other side.”

He didn’t tell many people in his life about testing positive, but he believes everyone by now has a story about the pandemic — whether it's their own illness or a furloughed job, a family member or a distant acquaintance, or the end to plans they’d looked forward to all year.

“I think it's kind of a shame that some people don't realize how serious something is until it affects either them or the people close to them that they love,” he said. Despite his own stress over the pandemic, “I can’t imagine being in a lot of other people’s shoes right now,” he said.

DAVID BRITO, 23

Phoenix

“You kind of panic in your own world, in that room"

David Brito knew from a young age that he wanted to be a chef. He graduated from culinary school at 17 and, until this spring, staffed the kitchen of a Phoenix five-star restaurant, painting flavors across every plate. 

Nearly six months after the restaurant closed due to the pandemic, though, he wondered about his future in an industry that revolves around community and close contact. He used to think he could find work at any restaurant — “I’m pretty confident in my skills,” he said — but his optimism is muted now that eateries have closed left and right. 

To change professions is still unthinkable. “Especially when you love it, it’s hard,” he said.

Brito fell sick after spending time with his father, an airline mechanic who was exposed to the virus at work. His symptoms tumbled in every direction, improving one day then tossing him back into fevers, a sore throat and sweats. He learned a high school classmate, someone his own age, had died from COVID-19. He saw stories about the virus spreading around the world. 

“You kind of panic in your own world, in that room,” he said.

His illness made him frustrated at people who called the pandemic a hoax or flouted state guidelines to stay home. Despite his own loss in income and his career put on hold, he didn’t question the restaurant’s decision to close.

“People are lenient during the wrong times. … They don’t know until they get sick,” he said. “I'm sitting here living it.”

SYMONE WRIGHT-FLOWERS, 22

Glendale

"I was scared for my grandma, I was scared for my dad"

Symone ­Wright-Flowers started her sick days with a solitary drive. She pulled on gloves and a mask in the mornings, packed Lysol wipes and started the engine.

"That's the only place I could be where I wasn't going to hurt anybody," she said.

She often wandered by car through the shady Phoenix neighborhood where she grew up, passing by her family’s house. In the ten days when Wright-Flowers didn’t know she had COVID-19, she’d seen her parents, her grandma, her younger sister and brother, and her aunt, uncle and cousins, too.

Half her family got sick. Her mom moved into a hotel room to protect her dad, who has a lung condition.

Wright-Flowers’s own symptoms were light, limited to headaches, fatigue and body aches that were easy to write off as an everyday feeling. “The next thing you know, you've tested positive and you’ve spread it,” she said.

“I cried. I cried so much. Because I was scared for my grandma, I was scared for my dad,” she said.

There’s a stigma among people her age about the virus, Wright-Flowers said. She rarely tells people which members of her family got sick or reveals the source of her own exposure, which she traced to a hangout with her best friend.

Even if the virus rippled through her family, she hoped her daily drives and isolation would keep her roommates safe. They placed meals outside the door to her bedroom, where she practiced yoga and waited to reenter the world.

STEPHANIE PARRA, 36

Phoenix

"It was an incredibly frustrating process for me"

“We really have to talk about the dangers of asymptomatic spread,” said Stephanie Parra about her experience with COVID-19.

She waited for her test results for a week, unsure whether to stay home or go out. When the results came back positive, she quickly told her superintendent at Phoenix Union High School District, where Parra leads the governing board.

“If I am positive and I have no symptoms, how is it safe to reopen schools?” she asked. District leaders soon moved to start the school year online.

Parra considers herself an advocate in the community: Someone who fights for public education and strives to support Latino students, who make up 80% of her school district and whom she sees as the future of the state. Whenever a problem arises, she usually knows whom to call and how to act.

But she struggled to navigate the shifting health guidance around COVID-19. Parra tested negative, then sought a third test to rule out a false reading. Ten days passed before the lab said it lost her results.

“It was an incredibly frustrating process for me, and I'm an informed advocate,” she said. Finally, on her fourth test, she was cleared.

"I want our systems to be better for our families," Parra added. "We have to meet the moment that we're in right now to ensure that no families are left behind."

RESHAUNA STRIGGLES, 27

Phoenix

"I knew that I was going out for a good reason"

Returning to the protests after weeks of quarantine made Reshauna Striggles anxious in a setting where she’d often felt at home. She shied away from hugs, and chants of "Black lives matter!" overwhelmed her after days of whispers — her roommates knocking at her bedroom door to say, “Hey, are you OK in there?”

Early this summer, she helped orchestrate some of the largest protests in Phoenix following the death of George Floyd. But Striggles said she thinks her exposure to COVID-19 wasn’t in the crowds, where most people wore masks, but from her roommates at home. It was the only place where she allowed herself to uncloak.

Everything hurt, Striggles said. Her skin was burning.

She used her feverish days to study civil rights history. A documentary about Martin Luther King Jr. that described his nervous tic — a hiccup — stayed with her.

“His tic finally went away when he realized that his death was inevitable,” Striggles said. Whether by assassination or old age, death would come, and she admired his faith in the legacy he was creating.

Alone under the covers, she thought of her family and her dedication to fighting for racial justice. She decided the protests were a risk worth taking were she to fall sick with COVID-19 again.

“I knew that I was going out for a good reason,” she said. “I actually felt a sense of pride and a sense of peace.”

EUSTACIA JORVIG, 36

Chandler

“There's way too much uncertainty"

Eustacia Jorvig, a nurse practitioner, watched the coronavirus spread in her community and around the country with concern. Then her sense of smell disappeared.

She tested herself, waving powder-scented deodorant and swabs of rubbing alcohol under her nose, but everything was flat. She suddenly couldn’t taste anything spicy, salty or sweet.

A COVID-19 test confirmed her suspicion, and Jorvig lied low in June. The illness meant keeping away from her 12-year-old daughter, but it also offered a sense of relief. Amid the wide range of possible symptoms, she no longer worried about how her body would react.

The coronavirus rippled through other circles of her life. Her grandmother died in July, also positive for COVID-19. Her daughter prepared to start school online. And she and her fiancé made the painful decision to cancel their upcoming spring wedding in Hawaii.

“There's way too much uncertainty,” she said, to risk getting sick over "a day."

“It's the biggest day of my life, but still. ... I would rather be safe.”

Jorvig hopes the pandemic will push society toward healthier habits in the future — that hand-washing and staying home when sick will become the norm.

And while she still sees patients and holds virtual visits, she is thankful for the nurses and doctors caring for COVID-19 patients and working to save lives. 

“They are the ones to be grateful for during this gut-wrenching pandemic."