-I've had asthma for my whole life.
-I have cystic fibrosis.
-I have lupus, fibromyalgia, Sjoegren's syndrome,
and rheumatoid arthritis.
-My latest diagnosis is CIDP,
or chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy.
-I live with a condition called ankylosing spondylitis,
which is an inflammatory arthritis,
and the medications that I take for it suppress my immune system
and leave me immunosuppressed.
Being high-risk means
that I am more likely to have severe outcomes
if I do contract the coronavirus.
-A lot of people with autoimmune conditions have learned
how to shelter at home.
I'm also an introvert, so, you know,
I know how to do this thing.
I spent a lot of my childhood in and out of the hospital
from 2 years to even high school.
-My ability to play with my grandkids is very limited
because I have a fear of falling on them.
So I fall a lot.
My left leg is totally useless.
-When I was born in the '90s,
they'd only just begun starting to understand CF.
It was a death sentence for a very long time,
but with the advancement of medicine and technology,
people with CF are living older and older each year,
but I've always been prepared to die that way.
-You know, I don't want to die.
You know, so I'm taking as many precautions --
we don't have visitors coming in the house.
-I think I would have the resources to survive,
I think, on a physical level, but if the hospitals are packed,
then I could be a goner, easily.
It's a coin toss, you know,
how your body reacts to something like this.
All I know is that if I get it,
I'm at risk for kicking the bucket.
-I have to make sure that I'm refilling all of my inhalers
and my preventative asthma medications.
I have everything, but I'm about to run out.
I have not run into any difficulty with the supply.
However, I do wonder
what I will come in contact with picking it up.
I'm grateful to my friends.
I'm living off of my friends' charity
by going to the market for me.
And I'm grateful for the people
who are delivering things to home,
because without that, I wouldn't have a lifeline.
The normal things that we all took for granted,
everything's really changed.
-Going into stores, talking to people, shaking hands,
all of these things that are just part of life as we know it.
-This has been horrible, being locked up.
-For people who are immune-compromised
or high-risk in some way,
this is going to change the way that we relate to the world,
and I don't know what that will look like.
-We can easily spread this disease around,
and, you know,
I think that people need to stop being selfish
and think about everybody else.
-What one person does affects populations of people.
-It's about the good of the herd, you know?
This is like we're being graded on a group project, you know?
How we combat this right now
is going to affect the people who are most vulnerable.
-Maybe this is time for us as a human race to step back
and look at what is happening, you know,
and not so much why or who caused it,
but what can we do in the future to be prepared
for not a COVID-type virus but something else.
-I beg you, please, remember that this isn't about you.
Act like you have it and you're protecting the person
you love the most from catching it,
and that's why you're gonna stay at home.
-All of us are at risk of getting sick
and, frankly, of dying, and I just don't understand
why people aren't able to sacrifice in the short term
so that in the long term we can get some sense of normalcy back.
-What your action does as one human being can change
the outcome and life-span of somebody you know
or don't even know.