“We went to the registry and saw it was worth $ 300 worth of testing,” says Mayers, who shared his stock with friends and family in the weeks that followed. “It hits you then, when you realize how expensive this pandemic is to make sure that you are safeguarding your own health and safety and that of others. What particularly struck me at the time was how privileged I was to be able to afford $ 300 worth of tests. “

In Chicago, Rainey Wright, 27, and her boyfriend spent around $ 125 on rapid test kits in less than three weeks after both experiencing symptoms of COVID just before Christmas. Wright says the wait times for the free COVID tests were “over two hours,” so they ended up buying a combination of single test kits sold for $ 10 and two test kits for $ 25. It took Wright’s boyfriend several days of testing negative before he tested positive; Wright did not test positive until about a week later.

The symptomatic but still testing negative trend also meant an accumulated bill for Kamaria Morris’ family. Thirteen family members in three households formed a group so that they could safely spend the holidays together. Morris’s mother roamed their hometown of Chicago shopping for family home test kits, first buying them for $ 24 at Walgreens before finding the same kits for $ 14 at Walmart. For a bit of seasonal flair, Morris’s mother delivered the tests to family homes as Christmas gifts, wrapped in red, green, and white striped paper.

Yet everyone in the family except Morris, who lives alone, tested positive for the virus – and it took all “three good tests to finally get that positive.” By the time the family of 13 determined who contracted COVID and made sure they all tested negative, Morris estimates, they collectively spent nearly $ 1,000 on test kits.

“You have to test people three and four times,” Morris says. “You have to test at the beginning, but then you also have to test yourself at the end to know when you are negative and when you can return to the world.”

Meghan Schiereck, 23, and her boyfriend were eager to see their family in December after not visiting them for Thanksgiving. But after taking the subway to work every day, they were concerned about the exposure, so they shelled out over $ 200 for home tests. “Now the rest of my budget is really tight for the rest of the month,” says Schiereck. “I probably shouldn’t have [bought so many] because now we eat peanut butter for two meals a day.

One of the main criticisms of the federal government’s response to the pandemic so far is that it requires people to individualize risk and safety rather than establishing public health as a collective endeavor. As a result, the most insecure, vulnerable and marginalized people have had to bear the brunt of the economic and medical risks of the pandemic.