Just off a three-week battle with COVID-19, Keith Faulkner of Mathews wants people to know that the virus is real, can be debilitating, and is nothing to mess around with.

“The doctor said it’ll be two or three months before I get myself back in shape,” said Faulkner at his business in downtown Mathews last Thursday. “By three or four o’clock, my body’s wore right down. By 8 o’clock, I’m in the recliner, ready to go to bed. You just feel so weak.”

Faulkner said he first started experiencing symptoms on Sunday, Oct. 4, subsequent to a gathering of family and friends, but that he could have contracted the virus from any number of people, since “I’m in people’s homes all the time.” He was out driving his tractor, preparing to get hay up for his horses, when he started to feel chilled.

“I got in the truck and cranked the heat wide open,” he said. “I was froze to death.”

When he got home, his wife Mary Anne, a retired nurse, told him he had a fever.

“I could not get warm,” s...