As my friend group’s resident budding “virologist”, I have taken interest in the ways in which people-- who aren’t fascinated by nonliving, infinitesimal entities-- approach the pandemic. I myself don’t have much more knowledge than my friends, despite the fact that I’d like to believe I’m virally enlightened. Nonetheless, it’s still humbling to be asked questions by them as if I’m some authoritative health official.
Most of my friends see this pandemic as a “once in a lifetime” event; however, if we look at the array of existing viral families, the patterns of viral spread, and the often frightening rates of mutation and drift, we would not be surprised at the next epidemic or pandemic event. We’d know that these makers of chaos, hysteria, and seemingly unpredictable outbreaks are actually not surprising at all. Granted, for a bunch of 20-something college students, the way in which this pandemic has obtrusively shaped our lives is indeed very novel, and I also often wonder what lasting social effect, if any, it will leave on us and the way we view viruses. To look to the future means to look at the past—to study how the fabric of the United States has changed as a result of previous viruses, and if the legacy of mistakes has fundamentally changed those who survived it.
The world suffered its worst pandemic in 1918, due to the harrowing H1N1 influenza which stripped away lives at an alarming scale. Yet, the event when cited in literature, is often called the “forgotten pandemic”- as people seemingly mourned the dead and continued with life1. In 1918, although the federal government did not play a large role in public health measures, schools and businesses closed, infected people quarantined, and mask mandates happened on a local level1. Many people refused to comply with mask wearing, calling it “unconstitutional” and even cutting holes to smoke cigars1. At a time where scientists had not even examined viruses up close, society still knew how to slow spread—and United States citizens certainly likewise knew how to resist interventions. The pandemic officials and authorities in many communities had clear communication strategies on what people should be doing, and early action resulted in the best results for both compliance and survival. Leadership and communication clearly correlated with how and if people will cooperate with control measures, and even behavioral changes could reduce blows to the economy. Despite all of these clear lessons and over 600,000 Americans dead, Americans buried the dead and with their desperate search for a post-pandemic normalcy and erasure of the event certainly buried the lessons from it as well. Forgetting a pandemic doesn’t bode well for lasting positive public health outcomes.
In the 1980s HIV epidemic, even with the full-fledged epidemic threat with the virus replicating within thousands of infected individuals, the government downplayed it. AIDS prevention and education resources severely lacked throughout the duration of the epidemic, and the marginalized communities such as homosexuals who dealt with a large proportion of the repercussions got pushed to the side2. The communities which needed the most resources had the least health care infrastructure. Likewise, news outlets in their reports provided insufficient attention to socially marginalized communities2. Even doctors convoluted public understanding by belittling evidence that the virus spread through transfusions, and others did not believe that children got infected through mothers with the disease. Overall, both the prevention efforts to inform people about safe sex and needle exchange and the handling of those infected severely lacked and highlighted the public health failures of the United States.
The parallels between the 20th century pandemics and the one that which we grapple with today are unsurprising but disappointing. The toll on lives that H1N1, HIV, and now that SARS-CoV-2 continues to take would seemingly forever alter the fabric of the United States socially and through a public health lens. In reality, viruses seem to catch governments and the public by surprise consistently, despite a rich history of prior epidemics and a now strong 21st century bastion of scientific knowledge and technology. I’m fairly certain that after the final wave crests of this coronavirus pandemic in the United States, people will write all kinds of literature documenting the inadequate leadership, unclear messages, misguided “toilet paper hysteria”, and infiltration of rumors seeded by ineffective messages. I wonder, then, if we will actually learn something from this or simply lay our words in the history books and document another “forgotten pandemic”. We must prepare for inevitable pandemics and invest in public health systems to protect one another from the reality of the next pandemic. Systems to respond to “unpredictable” viral storms must be in place, and defensive surveillance should exist in the United States. Clear communication to the public is paramount to avoid suspicion and maintain a support in science. The public themselves must hold their governments responsible and each other responsible. Drugs, vaccines, and testing slows viral spread, but behavior and social responsibility does as well.
My friends and most United States citizens believe that mask wearing has entered the scene with the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and will die when it (hopefully) does. I still wonder, though, if the efficacy of mask wearing as well as the ways that which we all handle the personal responsibility of protecting one another will change for future events, even for the yearly flu epidemics. American citizens probably value their individual freedoms too much to turn mask wearing into the next fad. However, we should not be so quick to hang up our masks and return to a warped normalcy when this all ends. Public health systems work when nothing happens. This achievement, however, requires effort, communication, and diligence in not allowing one another to forget this pandemic and those which preceded it.
-Sammy
Word Count: 925
1 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03048-8
2 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK234572/
No comments:
Post a Comment