*Editor’s note: Mallory Shingle, a resident of San Francisco’s Mission District and regular contributor to El Tecolote, shares her experience of being tested for COVID-19 on April 25. Here’s here story.
Hi everyone! My neighborhood here in the Mission is offering free testing to everyone in a particular area. This is an effort meant to shed light on health disparities impacting my predominantly Latino neighborhood. And even though this testing should have been universal from the start, it wasn’t. So now all many of my neighbors have seen about the tests are scary diagrams shared in the news. Even I hesitated to sign up because anything mysterious can feel scary. But I’m here to swallow my discomfort once again in order to share an awkward video of me explaining how I got to sign up for the study and how getting the antibody and viral test actually doesn’t hurt at all (I will admit the nose swab thing is slightly uncomfortable but it did not go all the way up my nostril like I thought it would). I hope this encourages my neighbors, who are able, to participate, so we as a city can have accurate information about who was most affected here in San Francisco. If you live in the Mission go to unidosensalud.org