SOCIAL MEDIA’S NEWEST TRENDING TOPIC: COVID-19

Photos courtesy of Lauren Nichols (left) and Heather Statham (right)

   Sitting on her neatly made bed, a black baseball cap atop her head and a jug of water nestled at her side, Lauren Nichols recounts her experience with Covid-19, coughing every so often and pausing to catch her breath.

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   Covid-19, also known as the coronavirus, has had a surprising effect on everyone across the globe. This new virus with so many unknowns has caused a pandemic across many countries, including the United States of America. With a lack of readily available testing, it’s hard for people to know when they’re sick with the virus, causing it to spread like wildfire. The overwhelming amount of patients and little knowledge on the subject has made it difficult for people who suspect they may be sick to get the medical help needed.

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   Many people sick with the virus have taken to social media, and have publicly started to share their experiences of the virus. They want to educate people, in hopes that it will help decrease the spread, allow people to mend, and help life get back to normal. 

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   Nichols, 32,  lives in Boston and has been suffering from the virus for over five weeks. She says it hurts to talk, but she’s lucky that she can. When Nichols first started feeling sick, she tried to get a Covid test from her primary care doctor but was refused because of her young age. 

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   After a few hurdles, Nichols was able to get a test that would eventually come back as positive. But it wasn’t until her third week of suffering from side effects of the virus that she decided to post about her experience on social media.

“Once I passed the 14 days, and my symptoms really started to change and I started to notice the roller coaster effect, that’s when I realized ‘okay there is so much misinformation out there, I’m not getting good information from my doctor, and I don’t have access to other patients who can tell me if they’re feeling similar experiences.”

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   Nichols took her Instagram and routinely has shared videos and posts about her Covid-19 experience. With each post, she includes the hashtag #thisiscovid19. “I’m trying to get the hashtag to trend, trying to get more people to share their stories.”

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   “I want there to begin to be a database on social media of patients’ stories, where doctors, scientists, and other patients can look at it. I want it to advise data, and advise patients who don’t have support groups.”

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   Over a thousand miles away in Atlanta, 48-year-old Heather Statham sits in an empty Georgia Tech University sorority house, where she is the house director. Her WiFi is choppy, breaking in and out due to a recent storm.

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   Statham thinks she contracted the virus after attending a church choir practice where one of the 200 members would soon test positive.  

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   Initially, Statham didn’t go to the doctor, thinking she just had a bad cold or sinus infection. But as her symptoms grew worse, Statham decided it was time to seek medical help. She eventually was able to see a doctor and take a Covid test. Her results, like Nichols, would soon come back as positive.

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   “I was completely frustrated. I felt like I was doing everything the folks in charge were asking us to do. ‘Stay at home, only be concerned if you have X, Y, and Z symptoms.’ Had I known my symptoms were closely related, I would’ve called way earlier.”

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   Statham started to feel better a couple of weeks after her diagnosis and decided to post about her experience and symptoms in multiple videos on her Instagram page: “I had a very good understanding of what occurred to me over the past two and a half weeks, and I thought I could deliver that information without rambling or being emotional.” 

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   Statham hopes her posts will help people understand more about the virus. “I have friends who watch my videos and told me, that since they knew me, it became real to them. I had another friend who said they didn’t take the virus seriously at first, but since watching my videos they are.”

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   Sharona Berken, RN, BSN at Putnam Hospital Center in Carmel, NY thinks sharing coronavirus symptoms on social media is a good thing.

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   “Any information we can gather anecdotally, like from social media, is really helpful because it’s (people’s experiences and symptoms of the virus) so varied, and that way people can understand, it could be this or it could be that. It could be these symptoms or it could be those symptoms. It could cause somebody to die, or it could not even be a big deal.”

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   “I would have to say, thank you, to all the people who share their experiences. They’re doing a really good deed.”

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   Not everyone has been happy with the trend of people sharing their Covid stories on social media, like Berken is. Nichols shared that she often receives hate from strangers and people close to her for posting about her experiences and political views regarding the virus. Some people believe she is sharing too much. 

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   But as Nichols puts it, “if there’s two people who think I’m the devil for sharing, but five people who are benefitted, then I’m sorry but that outweighs it absolutely.”