Op Ed 1
COVID-19 has been the only thing on our minds at the very least for the last year but at most, the last 16 months depending on where you lived, the type of news you consumed, and where you worked. On the surface, we know how COVID-19 has created lots of problems but what we didn’t realize to the extent that we know now, is how deep those problems run. Ones that were there before the pandemic even began. Sure there have been large disease outbreaks in the past, but nothing to the extent of what we are seeing right now in real-time with all of the technology that we have to analyze every single second that of what is going on in real-time. With the help of brilliant minds in multiple different specialties aided by multidisciplinary teams using advanced technology, slowly but surely we are starting to figure this thing out and curb it.
After watching the first three lectures in the University’s Covid Speaker Series in addition to the supplemental readings and TED Talks given to me from this class, I am starting to get a better understanding of the true gravity and significance of the situation. The material that I first want to focus on from the start of this Op-Ed would have to be the TED Talk by Ernesto Sirolli. While it does not pertain to anything having to do with infectious diseases and/or epidemics, it does have something to do with attacking a real-life problem head-on. Something that I took out of his TED Talk was the lessons that he learned while working abroad in various countries in Africa trying to figure out the best to help people overcome their economic strife and get out of poverty. One of the stories that he told was of when he was trying to teach the villagers how to plant Italian Vegetables as a cheap and easy way to feed their families. The villagers knew coming in that this plan would not go as planned as the land the Italians choose would not work due to the surrounding ecosystem, however, the Italians never allowed them to speak and, therefore, made the problem worse when all of the time that they spent growing the fruits and vegetables went to waste when the whale population ate them. Ernesto, instead of continuing to try more and more things without listening to the villagers' ideas, decided to first listen to their ideas and figure out how to help them all based on what they had to say. What they said exactly changed his entire perspective and actually did something productive for the African economy and not just the ego of the foreigner.
Just as Ernesto listened to the people in the African village, professors and researchers listened to the news come April 2020, when students were home isolating from the pandemic and the University had to figure out a plan to get them back in the fall. In a plan spearheaded by Paul Hergenrother, Rashid Bashir, Martin Burke (and others), they were able to form a multidisciplinary team and answer the question the university proposed to them. After many hours of reading research papers with small sample sizes and lots of trial and error, they were able to produce a highly sensitive and accurate COVID test that could be mass-produced while at the same time, develop a whole testing infrastructure and present it to the students, faculty, and families so that they could put their trust in them to have a safe and as close to normal as possible fall semester. While granted it looked very different from years past and there were some kinks in the early going when students were disrespectful towards protocols, overall, the plan worked. What was so impressive about the plan that they had devised was that they listened to what was needed by the university- not just what they thought was needed.
Even though I am nothing more than “a scientist in training” according to this university, I still felt that maybe there was still a place for me where I could make an impact on not just the University’s response to COVID-19, but the rest of the United States. With the help of the WeCU team, I got into contact with the organization Letters Against Isolation where I, and thousands of other Americans, write letters to the elderly who must for their safety self-isolate from COVID-19 away from family, friends, and the rest of the world. While I may just be one of many trying to answer the call of how to make vulnerable communities feel less lonely, I still feel like I am listening to the voices of those who wish to be seen and wish to be heard.
What I have learned over the last three weeks starting this class is that it is great to solve a problem, but what does that mean in the grand scheme of things? Many problems in this world are yet to be solved, but in truly figuring out how to find a reasonable solution, you must dig deeper into the actual question you are trying to ask. Looking back on where the United States and the rest of the world have been regarding epidemics and global pandemics, we should keep in mind those who are hurt the most by these unprecedented events so that inevitably, when the next “unprecedented” event happens, they will find themselves in a better place than the last time the world was flipped upside down.