For the better of two years, the only thing on my mind has been COVID-19. Case rates. Outbreaks. Vaccinations. Reopenings. Even during that small patch of time earlier this summer when everybody was getting vaccinated and everything looked peachy, not once did it exit my mind.

   Most of my friends are aware that I’m a germaphobe, but that never was the case before the pandemic. At least not to this extent. During the summer of 2020, I would only go out once a week. I would stay outside, with an N95, and the second I got home I would put all of my clothes into the laundry and jump in the pool (to “kill the Covid,” I guess).

   The N95 masks would make the bridge of my nose bleed and the excessive use of hand sanitizer would make my hands grossly dry, but it was all worth it for that slight bit of reassurance.

   Me and my family all got vaccinated last spring. That gave me a window of about two months to enjoy a semi-normal summer with my friends. Then about three people we knew, all vaccinated, tested positive. The relief was over. The guard went back up.

   When I went on a trip to Hawaii at the end of the summer, every moment of enjoyment was paired with the dreaded afterthought: “What if I have COVID?” It didn’t quite ruin my vacation, but it definitely added unnecessary stress.

   Did I have any logical reason to have this much stress about testing positive, for my own sake? No. Not in the slightest. I have no underlying conditions that would put me at risk, I’m not at all immunocompromised, and the virus rarely spreads through surfaces. And I have not yet gotten COVID (fingers crossed).

   Yet I still had those anxious thoughts. “What if I spread it to my family and friends? What if I ended up joining that small percentage of young and healthy people who are affected by the virus badly?”

   But, all things considered, I still believe that I was completely correct in having those fears. I have friends that could quite literally die if they got COVID. Some of them go to this school. So, although my methods have been excessive and slightly insane in the past, I implore everybody who walks around this school with their noses showing, rocking the “chin diaper,” to grow up and do the bare minimum.