MaryAnne Gavrile posts daily updates on Facebook about her meetings, plans or what’s for dinner.

The upbeat posts are usually accompanied by a funny photo or meme. On Aug. 14, however, Gavrile updated her friends that she’d been feeling unwell, dizzy and achy the last week so she was told by her doctor to get a COVID-19 test. It came back positive, despite having been inoculated months earlier with the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

At one point, Gavrile, 67, texted a friend saying she would not die like this. Now the New Castle city councilwoman is on a mission to get more people vaccinated because of what the virus did to her.

“Am I angry? Oh yeah. I did everything right,” she said in a phone conversation following an Aug. 26 city council meeting she attended in person. “I followed every rule you could imagine. I just don’t understand anyone’s reasoning for not getting vaccinated. I had the J&J. A simple shot, never felt it, never had any reaction to it and I went on my way thinking I was invincible.”

Gavrile said she’s not sure where she contracted the virus. The night before she started feeling sick, she was out at an outdoor winery with friends hanging out. To her, there’s no excuse not to get vaccinated. On a daily basis, Lawrence County pharmacies are giving out around 70-80 shots per weekday recently. That number had lagged in recent weeks after several hundred were getting the shot on a daily basis in March and April. Meanwhile, more than a dozen county residents have died from the virus in the last month.

“I guess the best line that I’ve read in the past few weeks is when people say to me ‘I don’t know what’s in it,’?” said Gavrile. “I don’t know what’s in hot dogs either. We live in the city of New Castle and we eat a thousand hot dogs a year without a thought about it.”

Gavrile did end up going to the emergency room when she was sick, but was put in a hallway since a room was unavailable. When finally moved into a room, it was cold and she sat alone for 90 minutes before anyone had seen her. She left, but then got signed up for an antibody infusion session, which lasted about 20 to 25 minutes at UPMC Jameson Hospital.

Gavrile, a smoker, said she never lost her sense of taste or smell, but admitted her love of coffee has waned because it now turns her stomach.

In the meantime, her roommate helped with the cooking and animals, state Rep. Chris Sainato called out of concern and friends and neighbors dropped off food. City solicitor Ted Saad’s wife even sent pepperoni rolls, Syran buns, homemade chicken noodle soup and chicken and rice.

“It was wonderful and lovely and this is how people were,” she said. “I kept thinking to myself I feel like I died.”

Her overall message, however, is clear - get vaccinated to help yourself or others. She said she hopes if one person read her daily updates and felt compelled to get a vaccination, then her life would be good.

“I have no political stance on vaccinations, I have no moral stance,” she said. “My issue is I have allergies. It took me awhile and talking to a lot of people to get vaccinated. Am I glad I did? Oh yeah, or I’d be dead today. That’s how sick I was. I know that vaccination saved me.”

This story was distributed through AP StoryShare.