Fact-Checked Source: 
Allison Wallis, "What It’s Like to Be Immunocompromised During the COVID-19 Outbreak" 

Looking Deeper: Five Facts Checked

"The irony of protocols we are currently exercising during the COVID-19 outbreak is that I moved in order to get around solo on public transportation, and now I’m not allowed to do so. Because I use a ventilator, I would not survive an infection — even a common cold could be my end. So I haven’t been outside my new home and won’t be able to get outside or on transport until there’s an effective vaccine, which is months from now.”
-Carole Zoom

I wanted to address the claim that Zoom makes about her being likely to die due to being on a ventilator, and it turns out that this is true. The Immune Deficiency Foundation has a video of a doctor in the COVID-19 blog feed explaining who is at risk, and people on ventilators are high risk.

"Zoom’s concerned about supplies. She planned ahead enough to order groceries and other necessities a few weeks before she arrived, so her new home is stocked with about 2 weeks of food. But the local stores are out of medical supplies such as rubbing alcohol and sanitizer."
-Allison Wallis from Healthline

I thought it was important to address the claim that medical supplies are in high demand/short supply, and this idea is backed up by Harvard Medical School in their informative article about COVID-19.

“For someone like me, if I contract COVID-19, it will likely kill me. It won’t be just ‘flu-like’ conditions, and I won’t be asymptomatic. I will, at the very least, be hospitalized and may never fully recover from it.”
-Courtney Lynn

These statements regarding Lynn's chronic illness are similar to Zoom's, and also backed up by the same video on the Immune Deficiency Foundation's blog feed.

"She already has anxiety on a daily basis and had been working with her therapist to heal childhood trauma. “This crisis has made things so much worse… while I have never suffered from depression before, I can feel myself becoming more and more hopeless as time goes on. All I can do right now is make sure I am doing my part to stay away from people.”"
-Allison Wallis from Healthline and Courtney Lynn

Mental health in relation to chronic illness is a serious issue, and Lynn's statements here are backed up by research from Kalliopi Megari, a doctor of neuropsychology.

“Just be extra cautious. Slow down a bit. If you can cook at home instead of going out, do that. Watch streaming services instead of going to the movies. Just for a bit. Let this disease slow down so immunocompromised people do not have to isolate indefinitely.”
-Courtney Lynn

These bits of advice given by Lynn are accurate, and also recommended by Harvard Medical School.

Analytic Essay

Chronic Illness and COVID-19: A Recipe for Disaster

Due to the pandemic, people with chronic illnesses are concerned for their safety. They’re scared because they are the most likely to be infected with COVID-19 and die because their immune systems are already weak from their chronic illness; they have everything to lose if the world cannot deal with COVID-19 and eradicate it. They also need people to listen to them and their needs, because people's behaviors are affecting them negatively even now; they want people to listen to doctors and public health professionals so that the situation can be dealt with as safely as possible.

Linked above is a Healthline interview with Carole Zoom and another with Courtney Lynn. These two women both suffer from chronic disease. Zoom has congenital muscular dystrophy and has to get around using a wheelchair. Her illness also requires her to be on a ventilator at all times which puts her at extreme risk for infections of any kind, and would make any infection fatal. Lynn suffers from autoimmune disorders such as Graves’ disease, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and she also has asthma. If she was infected with COVID-19, she would at best be hospitalized and at worst never recover from the virus and die (Wallis, 2020).

These women and people like them are rightfully scared and are urging the public to think about who they are affecting with their actions, as well as urging them to listen to public health officials. They see imminent danger for themselves if this virus continues to spread and they are right to do so. The Immune Deficiency Foundation, a group that serves to advocate for and educate people with immune deficiencies on their chronic illnesses, also encourages people to stay informed. They provide many important videos on who is at risk, along with resources for people with chronic illness and important news about how COVID-19 is being dealt with (Immune Deficiency Foundation, 2020). Additionally, according to Harvard, people with underlying conditions and chronic disease are "at increased risk for serious illness" at the hands of the coronavirus (Harvard Health Publishing, 2020). For these reasons, this stakeholder group is very interested in knowing the facts, lest they succumb to any kind of infection because they didn't know any better.

Their main goals seem to be mitigating the spread and doing what they can to alleviate the situation for themselves and others. Lynn from the interview begs people to “be extra cautious" and stay home as much as they can. She and others with chronic illnesses want people to commit to social distancing and implore people to consider immuno-compromised people’s concerns (Wallis, 2020).

Based on everything mentioned above, it is clear that people with chronic illness put a lot of trust in public health professionals, but also they put a lot of trust in their own community. For example, a lot of news on the Immune Deficiency Foundation is reported directly from people who also have immune deficiencies. Many blog posts in their Coronavirus Updates page are from people who are suffering from chronic illness (Immune Deficiency Foundation, 2020).

Because of their interest in trusting scientific facts and trying to stay informed, these people work well with public health professionals and other health-related stakeholders. They would be at odds with say, stakeholders more concerned with the economic health of the world, as those stakeholders would prefer to rush things to get the economy back on track while chronic illness sufferers would be more apt to listen to a doctor. Evidence of their willingness to work with public health professionals is on the Immune Deficiency Foundation website. They have organized a survey of people with chronic diseases and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on them, and plan to make the results available to doctors and researchers (Immune Deficiency Foundation, 2020). Also, in the Healthline interviews, it is very clear that Lynn and Zoom listen to their doctors and are desperate to visit them for council on their health whenever available. They are both practicing self-quarantining behaviors and regularly visited doctors before the pandemic, so now they are trying to avoid canceling appointments and hope to meet with their doctors whenever possible. Zoom calls her doctor every day to see when she can get an appointment (Wallis, 2020).

People with chronic illness experience a lower quality of life than those without, and excess stress during times like these lead to complications and negative psychological effects (Megari, 2013). In the Healthline interviews, Lynn confirms this, saying she is beginning to feel depressed (Wallis, 2020). Because of all the additional stress added to their plates, these stakeholders just want to get out of this situation alive, and need to listen to public health professionals and do whatever it takes to alleviate the situation.

 

Bibliography

Harvard Health Publishing. (2020, April 15). Coronavirus Resource Center. Retrieved April 15, 2020, from https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/coronavirus-resource-center 

This source is primarily concerned with educating the general public on everything there is to know about COVID-19, from how it works, to who it affects, and how to stop the spread/what to do if you think you've been infected. This serves as a good source for fact checking thing written in other sources, as it was made by a highly regarded medical school and is being updated daily as new information comes out.

Wallis, A. (2020, March 31). What It’s Like to Be Immunocompromised During the COVID-19 Outbreak. Healthline. Retrieved April 2, 2020, from https://www.healthline.com/health-news/what-its-like-to-be-immunocompromised-during-the-covid-19-outbreak 

This source is directly asking a person who is immuno-compromised how they feel during the pandemic. The main purpose is to inform people how it feels to actually be at risk of something more than boredom in this pandemic. Carole Zoom, a woman who has lived on a ventilator for years and would die if infected with corona, is concerned at all the food and medical supply hoarding. She is unable to get important things that she needs due to the public's behavior. Courtney Lynn has asthma, graves disease, and a number of other autoimmune disorders and is desperately urging people to practice safe social distancing because she fears for her life. This source is good evidence because it is direct testimonials of two people with immune disorders and how they feel about the pandemic. 

Immune Deficiency Foundation. (2020). IDF Corona Virus Updates. Retrieved April 2, 2020, from https://primaryimmune.org/idf-coronavirus-updates 

History about the Immune Deficiency Foundation shows that it was founded in 1980 as a nonprofit patient advocacy for people with immune deficiencies, fighting to get them better treatment and improve the lives of people with immune deficiencies through advocacy, education, and research. This source points out all the different types of immune deficiencies (anti-body, asthma, T-cell, etc.), which ones are at risk, and how they are affected. They want more people with immune deficiencies to have the facts and they're planning a huge survey of their members so they can tell the public how they are being affected. People with immune deficiencies, depending on which one they have, are at a much greater risk for COVID-19 and it matters how they feel. This website's evidence is strictly scientific and they often use explanations on the cellular level, most likely because of their purpose as an educating website. This organizations whole purpose is to fight for people with immune deficiencies, so their stake in the issue is helping them out.

Megari, K. (2013). Quality of life in chronic disease patients. Health Psychology Research, 1(3), 27. doi: 10.4081/hpr.2013.932

Kalliopi Megari has a PhD and works as a clinical neuropsychologist. The author has a lot more research in neuro-diverse patients and neuroscience, but I believe her work still makes her an expert, as although she is an expert in areas concerning the brain, her research in the article that I cited is concerned a lot more with how patients are actually feeling/living their lives than what chronic illnesses actually are. She uses theories and models developed by other respected researchers (ex: Wilson and Cleary model) in her approach to analyzing her results. She used questionnaires to asses the quality of life of people dealing with chronic illnesses. People with chronic illness can have a major decline in quality of life that are connected to their psychological, social, and physical health. They often have to take a variety of precautions and these precautions can get in the way of having a good quality of life. People with chronic illnesses have to make many adjustments to keep their quality of life at a "livable" level, and many other factors can effect their quality of life, like body image, a lack of feeling understood, and other personal issues. This research paper talks about how people with chronic illness lead very different lives than the average able-bodied person due to all the things they need to prepare for and take precautions against, including the possibility of a pandemic like H1N1 or COVID-19.