In conversation with Dr. Gonzales, Audrika asked him a question that I have been wondering throughout this entire course: “If the system is irreparably broken, as we have shown time and time again, what can we do to fix it?” If I were to have asked the question, I likely would have added, “And if you’re working in such a broken system day in and day out, how do you keep any sort of passion? How do you not just constantly feel like you’re screaming into the void?”

Although I did not ask the second part of the question–it was not phrased the way that I would have phrased it–someone did ask Dr. Gonzales a question of the same sentiment as what I would have asked. He answered both questions in a similar manner, which is that the best way to make actionable changes in the world of public health is through supporting small causes. Every city likely has grassroots harm reduction centers and organizations, and you will be able to see and feel the effects of the work that you do in those organizations. Above all, passion is something that absolutely must be present to find any satisfaction in the world of public health.

With every public health leader that has come to speak with us, I have either asked them or heavily considered asking them the exact same questions. They are what I’ve been considering throughout this entire course.

Dr. Gonzales also discussed something at length that I have heard–and thought–a plethora of time: “During Covid, ‘public health’ failed us.” He argued that that is an entirely unfair sentiment, by quoting an essay that he’d recently read: “Who has the power?” How is it fair to say that public health failed during Covid when epidemiologists are not the ones making decisions about how to lead a country through a pandemic? How can a career so underfunded and disregarded be said to fail when they weren’t even involved in the process?

The idea of public health “failing” is one of the reasons that I am a bit apprehensive to enter the field. I don’t want a repeat of the past 2 years, but with me being at the head of a sinking ship with nothing other than a bucket. I don’t know how I’ll be able to find my inner passion in the face of a system that seems rigged against the work that I’m trying to give to the world.

But then… I think about the stories that we’ve heard this past semester. I think about the young doctor that had Thanksgiving dinner with Dr. Del Rio. I think about the millions of lives that were lost to so many pandemics–the millions of lives that were lost inequitably in so many pandemics–and I think that doing nothing in this field would leave me far less satisfied.

The conversation that Dr. Raper facilitated last Tuesday was one of the most successful Zoom classes I have ever been a part of. Our conversation tackled topics that I’ve seen many people tip-toe around with grace–suicide, domestic violence, depression, hopelessness, and ways to deal with those things in non-destructive manners.

However, one topic that I feel often gets forgotten in the conversation of Covid-19 and mental health is the way that the pandemic “did away” with the sick day. In fact, as I write this blog post, I am sick (though I’ve tested negative for Covid). My past few days have been filled with sending e-mails to professors all but apologizing for daring to fall ill, and attending Zoom meetings for classes that I would much rather be sleeping through. In fact, to get over whatever bug I’ve caught, I probably should be sleeping through them, but the fear of having my Zoom box called on keeps me awake.

My head is cloudy, it is an immense struggle to conjure up an intelligible sentence, yet I feel guilty for even thinking about the prospect of some extra rest when I could be doing an assignment. The fear of falling behind in my classes is outweighing my body’s call for rest. After all, how can I rest when the pandemic lifted any chance of taking a full sick day? Everything can be done online, so why wouldn’t it be?

Resting while ill is imperative for making a full recovery as quickly and gracefully as possible. Although this is anecdotal, I’ve found that trying to do work while sick makes me feel horrible, mentally. I find it near-impossible to focus, and the difficulty that I have in producing coherent work makes me feel useless. I often find my already sick mind begin to tumble down thought loops of “not being good enough,” when all I need to do is get some rest while I’m fighting off whatever ailment is affecting me.

However, calling for the disbandment of Zoom classes while things “return to normal” is an ableist thing to do. For many students who are dealing with chronic illness, Zoom sessions are their chance to not be forced to take time off from school. I certainly understand the benefit of having a Zoom option; nevertheless, I wish that sick days would be re-normalized.

Thinking back to the beginning of the pandemic, all the way back to March of 2020, is strange.

I was in my junior year of high school, and I was starting to become burnt out beyond belief. I remember hoping every single day that something, anything would happen in order to let me slow down, take a break, and rest. When my wish was granted, I felt as if I’d been praying to a monkey’s paw.

Virtual learning at my southern Georgia public high school was a joke. Videos of lectures were posted on Google Classroom, we were sent quizzes, tests, and worksheets to fill out asynchronously, and school was a lonely chore. I wasn’t learning a thing. Although that did matter, as I had IB exams to take at the end of my senior year, in which I would be tested on things that I was learning during this “COVID break,” it didn’t really seem like it mattered. I mean, the IB exams were free, and I was going to a public high school–it wasn’t like I was paying $75,000 per year for an extremely diminished education.

Others, obviously, were not so lucky.

During the presentation, Dr. Eric Weeks mentioned that, in a survey of Emory students, at least one (if not many) requested a tuition reimbursement. In fact, one (Oxford College!) student filed a class action lawsuit against Emory requesting a full tuition refund for the virtual learning part of the semester, on the basis that the education that was provided was an “inadequate substitute for the tens of thousands of dollars paid in tuition for the semester.”

In hindsight, giving a tuition refund for the lackluster few months remaining in the spring semester seems almost obvious. The severe lack of preparation, the hardships in mental health, and the absence of any actual learning lend themselves to, at the very least, a partial tuition refund for the $26,500 students paid during the spring semester. However, it does make sense that the university likely saw this move as a slippery slope–if Emory had to return to classes virtually during the fall semester of 2020, what basis would they have for charging students for classes? And, in all fairness, classes were still happening, and professors still had to be paid. It’s a difficult question that I am certainly glad I did not have to wrestle with the answer to.

Either way, at a university that does its best to offer mental health support–but often falls short–I have found that money is something that is not discussed often enough when talking about student mental health. Although it may have set a “dangerous” precedence, when millions of Americans have lost their jobs due to COVID, doesn’t it make sense to offer families a bit of mental and financial reprieve for a singular semester? Dr. Glass often talks about the many worries that he sees students come into his office with, and he often lectures about how students should stop the “over-glorification of busy” and how we should stop comparing ourselves to others. However, when the university (the same one that costs almost $80,000/year) offers full ride scholarships only to the students who have made the most actionable changes within their community, how is it possible to not glorify business? When I open an assignment on Canvas and see my grade on a plot line, directly comparing me to my peers, is it even comparing myself to others when the software does it for me? After having my educational world mostly stopped for close to two years now, and with my Emory education costing as much as it does, why would I not do my best to be as involved as possible?

To me, it seems that many of the impacts of education came down upon students, with the university trying its hardest to ignore the one thing that most people are worried about: money.

“We are each other’s harvest/We are each other’s business/We are each other’s magnitude of bond.” – Gwendolyn Brooks.

When Dr. Stephen Thrasher mentioned the two separate people who shared this poem excerpt with him after reading his book The Viral Underclass, I felt so much of my interest in infectious disease click into place.

Being as intensely interested in viruses and infectious disease as I have been for as long as I can remember has often felt more macabre than uplifting, but hearing Dr. Thrasher describe how viruses exist in the brief spaces of connection between us made me feel something that I am finding difficulty in explaining. Perhaps it was a sense of belonging? I truly felt that Dr. Thrasher put the reason behind my interests into the words that I could never find. I find the way that humans interact with each other and with the world around them to be intensely interesting, and viruses are the byproduct of those interactions.

Humans are social creatures. We thrive in communities, in family units, and with those that we care about surrounding us. The idea of a minuscule, invisible to the naked eye, single-celled organism being able to threaten one of the tenants of our species is fascinating, in theory. In practice, deaths from COVID-19 were not only from the virus–the United States experienced the highest ever combined rates of death due to alcohol, drugs, and suicide during the COVID pandemic. As with the virus, however, those deaths disproportionately affected a certain group of people more than any other: the same group of people who are named as The Viral Underclass. These deaths disproportionately affected poor, people of color.

Within the United States, racism rears its head in an innumerable amount of places. It seems that most issues currently afflicting our society are either caused or worsened by racism. As Dr. Thrasher discussed within his 12 vectors, and as we have seen through our studies of both COVID and AIDS, racism cannot be ignored whatsoever in the world of public health. Yet, many people–even senators–do their best to argue that racism no longer exists within the United States.

In my opinion, one of the reasons for the increasing politicization of public health is the way that it seems to be intrinsically intwined with leftist thought. How can one examine any public health issues without understanding the United States’ ever-going attacks on Black bodies? How can someone look at the amount of acute and chronic infections that disproportionately affect people who have/are experiencing incarceration and not believe that there must be a better system possible?

We are each other’s harvest, business, and magnitude of bond. We must take care of one another, no matter how hard viruses–or any other factors–may make it.

When considering the United States’ COVID response, a large majority of people will immediately think of former President Donald Trump. Of course, this response is not unfounded–if it were not for the politicization of science, as well as his defunding of the White Houses’s Pandemic Response Team, we certainly would not have seen the abysmal case and death numbers that the US touted throughout the pandemic. However, in an interview with 60 Minutes on Sunday, September 18, 2022, President Joe Biden declared that the “pandemic is over.”

Although messaging is, obviously, not the only piece of a government’s response to a pandemic, statements like that from the face of the United States’ government, are a particularly interesting contrast to the ~400 COVID related deaths per day that the US is currently averaging. Such statements often come with lessening financial support, as well as an even further amount of public flippancy toward a disease that is still ravaging communities.

Perhaps I feel particularly strongly about COVID because my mom is an ICU nurse. I’ve heard countless horror stories from her times at work in the throes of the pandemic, and I’ve watched her come home day after day absolutely wrecked by her 12-hour shifts. From the perspective of a healthcare worker, the pandemic is anything but over. Healthcare workers are certainly not the only people who are still actively avoiding COVID, of course; many people who are disabled and/or immunocompromised are staying home to protect their lives.

However, to the general public, the pandemic is over. At least, the pandemic as we knew it pre-vaccine, in the midst of lockdowns. Many people have gotten COVID and survived–I (finally?) got it for the first time in August of 2022, right after I moved back in for the school year. As I isolated in my dorm room, I could not stop thinking about how I currently had the disease that I once regarded as a death sentence–and I was surviving.

What is more important, then, when issuing public health guidance: the general public, or the marginalized–often disabled, and/or poor, and/or BIPOC–communities? Although my heart wants the US to emulate New Zealand in its COVID response, my mind knows how unrealistic that is. Guidelines, as we have discussed time and time again, should be strict enough that they will keep people safe, while being lax enough that they are realistically able to be adhered to. Regardless, is it responsible for the “leader of the free world” to tout that the “pandemic is over” despite so many factors pointing in the opposite direction?