Beautiful Virgin Islands

Saturday, Aug 22, 2026

A Woman With COVID-19 Shared Her Story In A Viral Facebook Post After Seeing People Deny How "Real" The Virus Is

A Woman With COVID-19 Shared Her Story In A Viral Facebook Post After Seeing People Deny How "Real" The Virus Is

"I am the face of this infection. It is brutal and I'm a healthy 48 year old with no underlying conditions."
A 48-year-old woman from a small town in Ohio is recovering in quarantine after a scary diagnosis of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. She's only the second known victim in Summit County.

After logging on to Facebook over the weekend and seeing people question how "real" the pandemic is, Amy Driscoll had enough. She finally decided to tell her community just how "real" it can be by sharing her experience with the disease.

"For all the non believers and those who are not taking this seriously, if you need [to] KNOW someone who has been diagnosed with the COVID-19, well if you are reading this you know me," Amy Driscoll began her Facebook post, which has gone viral.

Driscoll told BuzzFeed News she hopes her experience serves as a sobering wake-up call for people who don't think the virus can affect them. She said her symptoms dramatically escalated and sent her to the hospital in the middle of the night last week.

"It was so surreal," she said. "I was really sick and I knew something was wrong."

Driscoll, née Brock, said she felt completely "fine" on Wednesday as she headed in to work. Within hours, she was lethargic, ran a fever, and had difficulty breathing.

In her Facebook post, she wrote that she had woken up in the middle of the night to her heart racing; her "chest felt tight" when she coughed, she wrote. She recounted similar symptoms to BuzzFeed News and added that she had even joked with her colleague at work that she had been affected by the pandemic earlier in the day.

"She laughed and said, 'Oh, it’s probably COVID-19,' and I thought, 'That’s funny.' We were joking, but in retrospect it was not a funny joke," Driscoll said.

After consulting with her cousin who's a nurse, Driscoll made the rapid decision to leave her family at home and drive herself to the emergency room at 4:30 a.m. Thursday.

She was met with medical personnel, who had all of their protective gear on and immediately tested her and admitted her to a quarantine room. She would spend the next few days there in complete isolation.

"Everyone that comes in is completely gowned -head-to-toe covered -that was really weird," said Driscoll. "I was very isolated. ... You're just trying to go through everything on your own."

According to Driscoll, she received pain medication for her headache and antibiotics in case her infection turned out to be bacterial. She didn't receive her official positive diagnosis of COVID-19 until close to midnight on Friday.

Fortunately, by then, she said she had already started to feel better.

"The next day [on Saturday] the doctors came in and said, 'We're going to send you home. But don't stop anywhere, go straight home. Be quarantined until we tell you when you're not,'" she recounted.

Driscoll said she was just happy to be in recovery and back with her family -until she logged on to Facebook. She saw many of her Facebook friends posting about not believing in the severity of the pandemic and not understanding why strict restrictions were being imposed on them.

"I saw a lot of postings of how people couldn’t believe we were going through all these restrictions. People were like, 'Let’s get together and have a corona party,'" she said.

"I was trying to ignore it, but then a friend from high school had posted, 'I don’t know anyone with COVID-19. Is it real? I can’t believe we’re going through all of this.'"

The post struck a nerve for Driscoll.

"I am the face of this infection. It is brutal and I'm a healthy 48 year old with no underlying conditions," she wrote in her viral post. "I'm not 100% better but I'm home resting. Please take this seriously. People you love, their lives may depend on it."

Driscoll told BuzzFeed News she's still "weak" with limited abilities to move around her house, but she is "healing." After her Facebook post went viral, she was also uplifted by all the support she's received from her local community.

"Quarantine is not fun, but I would much rather be in quarantine and know I’m not exposing anyone else to this and I’ll take that," she added.
Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
Petrol Bombs Set Luxury Cars Alight Outside Birmingham Wedding as Police Hunt Three Men
Bitcoin Surges Toward $80,000 as Short Squeeze and ETF Inflows Ignite Crypto Rally
Twenty-Nine US States Take Meta to Trial Over Alleged Child Addiction on Instagram and Facebook
Former Scottish National Party Executive Peter Murrell Jailed for Five Years Over £400,000 Embezzlement
Moderna and Merck's Personalized Cancer Vaccine Succeeds in Historic Late-Stage Melanoma Trial
Prince Harry and Meghan to Move Back to Britain With Their Children
England and Wales Have Fewer Than 1,800 Prison Places Left for Men
Suspected People Smuggler Arrested After Investigation Identified Him
Children's Doctors Warn That Vaping Can Lead Young People to Smoking
Hundreds of Thousands of Students Receive GCSE and Vocational Results Across England, Wales and Northern Ireland
Here Is What Can Never Happen in Your Country: Taiwan Is Giving Money to All Its People Because It Collected Too Much Tax
UK Inflation Rises to 2.9% as Energy Bills Jump
UK Issues New Conduct Guide for Asylum Seekers on Consent and Respect
A Sleepless Night on Wall Street: Nasdaq to Begin Nearly Round-the-Clock Trading
"The First in the World": 69-Year-Old Protested Artificial Intelligence—and Went to Jail
Ukraine's Ousted Defence Minister Calls for Wartime Presidential Election
China’s Lifelike AI Humans Move From Livestreams Into Real-World Service Roles
Sarah Ferguson Reportedly Retreats to Late Ex-Boyfriend's Swiss Chalet
Cristiano Ronaldo and Georgina Rodríguez Sign Prenup Protecting Their Separate Fortunes
Thieves Steal Antonello da Messina Renaissance Masterpieces From Sicilian Museum
Better.com Founder Who Fired 900 Employees on Zoom Is Ousted as CEO
Italian Speed Camera Issues Nearly 32,000 Fines in 10 Weeks, Worth More Than €3 Million
AI Manager at San Francisco Store Recommends Firing Human Employee
Google Launches Pixel 11 With Gemini AI at the Center of Its Hardware Strategy
Reform UK Unveils Plan to Cut Welfare Spending by More Than £50 Billion a Year
Prime Minister Andy Burnham Praised Extinction Rebellion for Doing a 'Great Service'
UK Wildfire Phone Alert Triggers Backlash as Users Switch Off Emergency Warnings
Heathrow Roads Reopen After Burst Water Main Floods Access to Terminals 2 and 3
Former NBA Players Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White Say They Will Enter 2027 WNBA Draft
Former Cambridge Professor Jason Arday Found Dead Days After Resigning Amid Plagiarism Row
US Appeals Court Rules AI Agent's Website Actions Are Legally Attributed to the User
France's Constitutional Council Blocks Social Media Ban for Children Under 15
Liechtenstein Changes Royal Succession Rules to Allow Women to Inherit the Throne
Women Allege Rape and Sexual Abuse at British Army College for Teenage Recruits
Minnesota: Two independent investigators posed as Muslims (one wearing a burqa) and showed how they could vote in elections without identification.
China’s Kimi Launches AI-Focused Credit Card With Agricultural Bank of China and American Express
Former Labour Adviser Arrested on Suspicion of Spying for China Held Privileged Access as Top Party Donor
Turkish Parliament Passes Landmark Bill Granting Conditional Amnesty to Disarmed PKK Members
Donald Trump Warns FIFA Against Ousting Gianni Infantino Amid Revolt by Global Football Leaders
Jeff Bezos Joins Investor Group Closing In on $6 Billion Liverpool FC Stake
UK Councils to Receive Sweeping Planning Powers to Ban New Vape and Betting Shops
Russia’s A7 Builds a State-Linked Payments Network Beyond Western Sanctions
Hyper-Realistic Reborn Dolls Draw Collectors Seeking Comfort and Craft
Gen Z Cuts Back on Dating as a Night Out Nears $200
Patients Turn to Artificial Intelligence for Therapy as Psychiatrists Warn of Privacy and Clinical Risks
Couples Embrace ‘Sleep Divorce’ to Protect Rest and Reduce Tension
Meta Ordered to Pay $567 Million and Change Facebook and Instagram Safeguards for Children
Up to only 10 Months in Prison for Swedish Officer’s Murderer Sparks Anger
Success: Nvidia Turned Gaming Chips Into the Engine of the AI Boom
Jorge Messi, Lionel Messi’s Father and Longtime Agent, Dies at 68
×