I’m Vaccinated And Still Got COVID-19. Here’s What A Breakthrough Case Is Like.

"Alabama is probably the worst spot to get infected with the coronavirus right now, especially if you’re uninsured like me."

After I was fully vaccinated in April, I felt like it was finally over: the pandemic, mask mandates, the looming threat of lockdowns. By mid-July, I was so confident that things were safer, I booked a flight to visit an old college friend in Seattle, my sole mini-vacay this summer. My cousin, who drove me to the airport, warned me that she’d been sick a few days. I put on my face mask as I rode with her but at the time thought it was only a summer cold. A week later, I was back home in Alabama where my brother said he couldn’t hug me because he caught whatever my cousin had. A week after that, my mother fell ill. That was when I first heard the ominous words: breakthrough case. My mother speculated that she had a breakthrough case of delta, a highly contagious COVID-19 variant that’s surging across much of the country right now, especially here in the Deep South.