Claire and AJ Oral History, 2021/12/07

DISCLAIMER: This item may have been submitted in response to a school assignment prompt. See Linked Data.

We took a class about global pandemics, and we are explaining how our perspectives on pandemics have changed.

December 7, 2021

Claire

AJ

Claire Ma

interview

English Health & Wellness

English Education--Universities

history

government

society

12/07/2021

05/31/2022

05/02/2022

12/07/2021

Claire

AJ

Claire

AJ

audio

English

00:05:20

Two college students interview each other to compare COVID 19 to past pandemics. In this interview they discuss societal differences and similarities.

Claire 00:01
Hi, my name is Claire, and I'm going to be interviewing AJ today. Do I have your consent to record?

AJ 00:07
Yes.

Claire 00:08
Okay. And can I ask you to state the date and the times.

AJ 00:12
Tuesday, December 7 at 3:47.

Claire 00:15
So my first question is, what pandemic, out of the ones that we've learned so far, is the most similar in your opinion to the current COVID 19 pandemic?

AJ 00:25
I feel the influenza virus is the most similar to our current COVID 19 pandemic, for they're both, for one, they're both viruses and travel through the air from one person to another. They also show similar effects for the world aside from making people ill such as political and economic problems.

Claire 00:41
What was your perspective on the pandemic before this class?

AJ 00:45
Before the class I viewed the pandemic as an example of poor medical decisions, and the inability to formulate plans under pressure. I knew the virus was very serious, and it was important to quarantine. But it was interesting to learn about how diseases adapt to stay alive and mutate.

Claire 01:02
And then how do you think that perspective, your perspective has changed because of this class, if at all?

AJ 01:08
My perspective definitely changed. I realize how easily diseases can spread across the world and complications they can cause a society.

Claire 01:15
And what impact on your life do you think your perspective on COVID has?

AJ 01:22
People need to learn to come together to help fight pandemics. And I understand that people have different beliefs than others. But when it comes to fighting a worldwide pandemic, people need to learn to put their differences aside and work together.

Claire 01:35
So do you think humans have learned to better handle pandemics?

AJ 01:39
I don't think so. All the pandemics we learned we can see kind of the same pattern, there's always going to be of those people that deny, like wearing a mask or social distancing and don't want to follow like the government protocol to help fight disease because they believe in their American freedom or whatever it may be. They don't really want to consent to everyone working together. And I think that's going to continue to happen in the future.

Claire 02:04
Yeah. Thank you.

AJ 02:09
Hi, my name is AJ. Today, I'm going to be interviewing Claire. Do I have your consent to interview?

Claire 02:14
Yeah.

AJ 02:14
Can you list the date and time, please?

Claire 02:16
Yeah. So it's Tuesday, December 7, and it's 3:49pm.

AJ 02:21
All right. So what can you relate to past pandemics after living through the COVID 19 pandemic?

Claire 02:26
So I think something that's really interesting across time is that people are always cynical when something big like a pandemic happens. So there's always going to be a lot of tension and mistrust between different groups of people. So for the COVID-19 pandemic, we see like a lot of tension between people with differing political beliefs and people who identify differently like Asians versus non Asians. And like, seeing as the nature of COVID-19 comes from China, there's a lot of like, hate towards those people. And then we can kind of see that in India, with the smallpox virus and things like that. And then we can also look to the past and see a lot of similarity and skepticism in medicine. So there were a lot of people who didn't trust like modern developments. And that's still prevails today.

AJ 03:15
Has learning about various pandemics, change your outlook on our current pandemic?

Claire 03:19
Honestly, I don't think it did. Mostly because this class only served to rectify a lot of the beliefs that I had before about the pandemic. I thought before coming in, that we could have been more proactive, plan things out more, like you said, in our response to the pandemic. And I still believe that if we were more proactive in handling the pandemic, we would have saved a lot more lives.

AJ 03:47
Do you think humans have learned to better handle pandemics?

Claire 03:50
Um, honestly, no, we consistently make the same mistakes over generations and generations, because it's, I think, as a human nature thing, like we're all pretty selfish, I think. And a lot of like, governmental leaders are very egotistical. And they believe that like pandemics have like borders, which they don't. So they make decisions based on like saving face and like saving their own asses, basically. And they'll cover up outbreaks.

AJ 04:22
So basically, to wrap it up, throughout this course, what pandemic did you find the most interesting and why?

Claire 04:29
Honestly, smallpox was the most interesting because it was pretty widespread. And that was when globalization started happening with like colonialism and everything. So you really got to see a lot of the social tensions between different groups of people like the British Raj, and the native Indians. It was interesting for me as well to see the rise in vaccinations and how different people responded to it. Like the Indians who viewed inoculations as superior because of their cultural belief in it. And then there were a lot of racial tensions in America regarding the vaccinations because it was suggested by a black slave. So many people thought that there was no way something could work if it was suggested by someone who was different. Yeah.

AJ 05:20
No, thank you.