Covid’s Lasting Impact On One D.C. Family

This article is part 3 of 4 articles on Covid-19 and the Black community. The Intersection Mag received a grant from The National Association of Black Journalists to report on Covid-19 and the Black community.

Family portraits of Victoria, Anthony and their children. Photo by Delonte Harrod.

When Antonika Johnson, daughter, and Victoria Johnson, mother, retell the tragic events of 2020. they speak as if it happened yesterday. Anthony's life and sudden death from the impact of Covid-19 are still tethered to their memories. “We were married for 38 years,” said Victoria of her husband.

Both mother, daughter, and other family members bear the sorrow and wound of Anthony’s death. Antonika’s emotions are not only lacerated by the death of her father, but also long covid, which has injured her body.

Inception

Victoria said her husband was a hard worker. Anthony owned a towing company and worked throughout the D.C. area. Anthony was an essential worker; always working around people. His job put him at greater risk of catching the virus. Anthony rarely stopped working during the pandemic – even at its height. Victoria works for the federal government. During the pandemic, she, like some other federal employees, teleworked.

Between April and May 2020, Victoria and Antonika said, one of Anthony’s family members, who worked alongside him, had become ill, but at that time no one knew why.  “We were not listening to the news or really watching television, so it was like, okay, yeah, he just got a little simple flu or whatever,” Victoria explained. He, the family member, would have bouts where he was unable to breathe. According to both of them, he went to the hospital several times – and eventually contracted pneumonia. The family member also had a stroke, according to Antonika and Victoria. That family member would call on Anthony to take him to the hospital. 

However, Victoria became enlightened and then concerned about the virus. Her knowledge of the virus and awareness came through an unfortunate experience while at work. One of her co-workers became really concerned about another co-worker’s health. According to Victoria, that staff person came to work coughing, which concerned another coworker. Her concerned coworker came to her, wondering if the coughing coworker had this mysterious, deadly virus.

From Left To Right: Victoria Johnson, mother, Zevyn Stubbs, Antonika’s oldest daughter, A’Tahj Jackson, Antonika’s son, and Antonika Johnson, daughter and mother, all sit on a couch at Victoria’s home. Photo was taken by Delonte Harrod

“So [the coworker] said, ‘You didn't hear about it?’ I said, no. What's going on? He said, ‘It's a deadly virus that's going around.’ I'm like, really? So then I started paying attention to it.”

The initial outbreak, according to the latest research, shows the virus first touchdown in the U.S. as early as 2019. However, in 2020, a Seattle, Washington public health official was the first to make it known in the US.  In the early days of the pandemic, though there were many news reports, local public health officials were still piecing together how the virus spread and its many symptoms. Journalists did their best to understand medical language in order to communicate factual information about the virus. But, due to news deserts, the information given wasn’t reaching all Americans. Conspiracy theories and misinformation about the virus were, and are still, running rampant, which contributed to people’s distrust of journalism.

There were data gaps. Black activists had begun to wonder on social media about the virus’s spread among Black and Brown people.  Data For Black Lives, a non-profit organization that uses data to hold people accountable, campaigned on social media for states to release data on Covid-19 infection cases in Black communities. Up until that point, local governments had not released that data. The organization created its own data set. Though incomplete, due to a lack of local public health reporting, it showed that the infection rates were high in Black communities across the country. Soon states, including DC, started to release their own data. It also prompted a conversation about equity in healthcare. 

As Victoria paid more attention to the facts of the virus – she began to worry; and warned her family to be careful. “My husband and my son didn’t believe me,” she said. 

The Collapse 

Antonika Johnson posses for a photo at her moms house. Photo by Delonte Harrod

In March 2020, Antonika, a bus aide in D.C., was at her parent's home recovering from a second accident. In the first one, she was hit by a taxi while driving to work with her two children. The second occurred on March 11. While driving again, she was hit by multiple vehicles.

Antonika has two children: Zevyn, the oldest, and A’Tahj, the younger of the two. A’Tahj is autistic. In early April 2020, Antonika wanted to visit a family member’s home. By this time, Victoria, due to her new awareness, had become really concerned that she could get infected. “I'm like, it's Covid out there,” Victoria recalled saying to Antonika. Antonika was concerned as well. However, her resolve for going was that she wasn’t touching any surfaces. “I was very careful when I went over there,” she said.

Between April 17th - 18th, after returning from the family members’ home, Antonika had lost her taste and smell. On April 20th, she went to Community of Hope, a healthcare facility, to get tested. On April 22, her test returned positive.

Covid-19 is an airborne disease. The virus is often transmitted in — not exclusive to — enclosed, poorly ventilated spaces. When an infected person breathes, talks, sneezes, or coughs, they release droplets and aerosols into the air. Droplets fall to the ground, but aerosols hang in the air like smoke. They can stay around for longer periods of time –even after infected people are gone. People occupying those spaces inhale those aerosols or come in contact with the droplets and are infected. 

Victoria was overwhelmed by her daughter's positive test. She once had cancer, making her vulnerable to catching the disease. She became scared that she too had caught Covid.

“I got scared and started having shortness of breath,” Victoria told me while sitting at a living-dining room table in her home. “I think it was more panic than anything. I wound up taking myself to the emergency room.” 

She drove to the hospital from D.C. to INOVA, a hospital, in Alexandria, Virginia. Victoria said physicians told her, after checking to see if she had heart-related problems, that her bodily functions seemed fine.

Antonika quarantined in her parent’s upstairs room. Her family fed her using plastic spoons, and paper plates. For Antonika, being in isolation meant that it would lessen the chance of her disabled son, and her mother, getting infected. While in that room, she started to experience shortness of breath. She tried to call her mother, who was asleep, to dial 911. Victoria didn’t answer. As her mother’s phone rang – her daughter heard it upon getting out of the shower. She answers – and then calls 911. Upon arrival, a white paramedic assumed that Antonika was just having a panic attack. Victoria told the paramedic that it wasn’t just a panic attack. She was right. When she arrived at Howard University Hospital, medical professionals discovered that she had pneumonia and that it was causing shortness of breath. She was treated and sent home. Staying at her parent’s home provided a space for her to get well.

Today, Antonika, due to surgery, has regained some ability to smell. Although, she told me, at her mom’s home, that she can mysteriously smell cheap perfume. “Less expensive perfume smells like rubbing alcohol,” she said. “ My mother wears expensive perfume. It doesn’t smell like that.” She has racked up many medical bills due to her injuries, and surgeries. She would catch covid two more times, in 2021, and 2022, but none as severe as the first time, she told me. And at times, she has memory loss. 

Aware & Troubled 

Due to Antonika’s positive test, Victoria was concerned about Anthony because he worked with that family member whom Antonikia visited. She continuously tells him that he should get tested. In May, she said, he finally does. His test was positive. According to Victoria, he called his doctor and told her that he had been infected. She tried to reach him, but he never returned her phone call. He was working. Anthony's job provided the income needed not only for his immediate family, but also for other family members.

It was Friday, May 22, 2020. On Fridays, Anthony often purchased a fish dinner for his mother. He would drive it to her home. But on this particular day, before heading out to work – he said he was getting a fish breakfast. He asked Victoria if she wanted some food. Victoria had awakened before Anthony. She already had breakfast and was teleworking. She told him that she didn’t want anything.  He told her that he was going to head to Deli City Restaurant to get a fish breakfast.  Anthony returned with three plates of food. “Why do you have three plates of food?” asked Victoria.

“Well, I got you one. I got my mom one, and I got me one,” Victoria remembers Anthony saying.

Victoria said she reminded him that he needed to quarantine. He agreed, but said, according to Victoria, he had to go to his job first. He took the plate to his mom’s house before heading to Texas Avenue in Southeast, D.C. to complete a job. While there, he died. After being informed to call a specific family member, she does. That’s when he informs her of Anthony’s death. Victoria, and her children, drove down to Southeast, to see him.

“So we get there, he's laying on the ground,” said Victoria. “They wouldn't even let me see him. [Covid] took him out of here.”

The autopsy revealed that he had hypertension, and pneumonia. “My husband must have been asymptomatic because he did not have any symptoms,” Victoria explained. “When I say nothing, no coughing, no fever, no downsizing to him – energetic. He was like an energizer bunny, and he kept working.” 

Initially, Antonika didn’t understand how her father contracted Covid-19, so she blamed herself for his death. “I couldn’t sleep, nor eat. I had suicidal thoughts. It was just a lot,” she said. Antonika and Victoria suspect that he may have contracted it from a family member – the one who was in and out of the hospital.

Antonika said her children miss their grandfather a lot, especially Zevyn, her oldest. She said they saw both of their grandparents daily – but now they only see their grandmother. 

But, according to Antonika, it wasn’t only her father’s death that disrupted their family’s community structure. As the months carried on; as Covid spread. Three family members died from gun violence, some from Covid-19, and cancer. About a year later, in 2021, Anthony’s mother died. The one he often bought fish dinners to. Antonika and Victoria believe she died of a broken heart due to Anthony’s death. Antonika said Anthony was her grandmother’s favorite. Antonika said her grandmother had kept the fish breakfast her father had given her the morning before he died.

Victoria said she always thinks about her husband. 

“ I grieve every day,” said Victoria. “ I don't think that will ever go away.”

Antonika carries the impact of Covid-19 in her body. However, Victoria and Antonika both carry the memories of the man who cared for them. Both Victoria and Antonika credit their faith as a source of strength to help them carry on.  

“It has definitely been a journey,” said Victoria. “As I said, the only thing that has sustained me, or that keeps me, is my strong belief in Jehovah. I believe in the resurrection. I believe I will see him one day.”  

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