Lily Conway and Mulan Ozeki Oral History, 2021/12/08

Perception of COVID-19 Changing Due to College Oral History 08/12/2021

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It says how educating yourself on the past can always provide insight on current struggles.

December 8, 2021

Mulan Ozeki

Lily Conway

HIST1219

Northeastern University

Audio Interview

English Health & Wellness

English Social Issues

English Government Federal

English Politics

The Black Plague

Bubonic Plague

Spanish Flu

The Forgotten Spanish Flu

political

12/08/2021

05/19/2022

05/25/2022

06/03/2022

04/28/2023

12/08/2021

Lily Conway

Mulan Ozeki

Lily Conway

Mulan Ozeki

English

00:07:11

Lily Conway and Mulan Ozeki are both college students discussing their reactions and views surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic and its relation to past pandemics. Mulan discusses the reality of the situation and theorizes about how future pandemics will go. They verbally consent to be interviewed.

Lily Conway 00:00
Hi. I'm Lily Conway and I give consent to be interviewed.

Mulan Ozeki 00:04
I'm Mulan Ozeki and I give consent to being interviewed. The date is December 8 2021 4:10pm, and we're going to be interviewing each other about COVID-19. So compare how you viewed this pandemic before going into college. And now, what differences are there.

Lily Conway 00:25
So before going into college, obviously, I hadn't taken this class yet, so I wasn't aware of how many other global pandemics have occurred. This is the only one that's been really present in my life. And I didn't know about any other ancient pandemics or anything like that. And also being in college, you see how people respond to it. If people are willing to follow protocols. If people are upset about the regulations, you see that in real life also, like, coming across the country, you see how people react in your hometown, and how people react. And where you're living now, and sometimes it's very different. So yeah, there's been a lot of differences between before college and now.

Mulan Ozeki 01:14
I see. Which pandemic that we learned about, do you think had the biggest impact on your perception of COVID-19?

Lily Conway 01:21
I think the, the plague had uh-

Mulan Ozeki 01:25
The bubonic plague?

Lily Conway 01:26
Yes, that had the biggest change with me in terms of my perception of COVID, because I saw a lot of similarities that I had never thought of before in terms of how they had to attack it. Using the masks, the plague masks, the plague, costumes, everything like that. I also think the population that feared the pandemic had a lot of the same fears, as a lot of people do now. There were fears about government controlling them. There are fears about different treatments. They're all types of things, and I see that happening now. And I think that our response now is better, but I think that a lot of times it reflects how we acted in the past.

Mulan Ozeki 02:15
Why do you think that we have incidents of repeated history in regards to global pandemics?

Lily Conway 02:20
I think that a lot of times when a pandemic clears up, or we go back to normal, we forget about what happened in the past. A lot of times, it just fades to the background. And we think it's never gonna happen again. And when it does, we just end up reacting the same. A lot of times, it has to do with the fact that, you know, a lot of funding doesn't go to something that we have to prepare for it goes to current issues. If a pandemic isn't happening in the moment, then we're not inclined to prepare for it. Because you never know when it's gonna happen if it's going to happen, even though it should be something we're prepared for. Sometimes we don't, and in those circumstances we just end up being in a state of panic every time. Underprepared every time. So I think that's a pattern we saw in this class is every time we see that it's a little bit underprepared, and a little bit crazy.

Mulan Ozeki 03:20
I see. Do you have any predictions for the next global pandemic?

Lily Conway 03:25
I think that probably a lot of the same is going to happen. I think maybe because of how many advancements have been made during this pandemic, in terms of getting the vaccine out so quickly. Things like that. I think that we have better medical resources now. But humans are always gonna react, you know, with anger or fear. It's just natural human nature. I think we're always gonna have groups of people that don't want to listen to people or want to have you know, conspiracies, we're always going to have those people. And they have, you know, valuable opinions as well. But I think that it's going to be probably very similar. So do you think taking this class affected how you view global pandemics?

Mulan Ozeki 04:17
I think it definitely did. Before I took this class, I kind of saw COVID as like, a fever dream, almost like I was walking in a fever dream and things weren't real people were just wearing masks like whatever. And once I came into college and started learning about all these other pandemics, I felt like it kind of like grounded my perception into reality. So it became much more of like a serious thing that has like occurred many, many times in history and had these consequences. So yeah, I started taking things a lot more seriously once I came into college,

Lily Conway 04:51
Which pandemic that we learned about do you think had the biggest impact on your perception of COVID-19?

Mulan Ozeki 04:57
I would have to say definitely the flu, mostly because I didn't know that much about it. Like, I've heard like whispers of it in history class, like, oh, there was a Spanish flu going on, like during World War One, I think. And they just never really talked about it. So I didn't know that much about it. And then when we learned about it in class, it was kind of like, shocking to me, because it was like this whole crazy like pandemic going on. And, like, it's not really talked about, and I think I read an article that was like, "The Forgotten Spanish Flu" or something like people literally forgot that there was like this crazy pandemic going on. And it really made me think about, like, what we're gonna think of COVID, like, maybe 30 years from now, like, are we gonna forget about it or not? So yeah, I was, like, I was able to make like connections between COVID and the flu. So I think that one has the biggest impact.

Lily Conway 05:48
Yeah. Leading from that, do you think that humans have learned from any of the prior pandemics?

Mulan Ozeki 05:53
I think humans have definitely learned from prior pandemics. But again, like when something really terrifying happens, like a pandemic, everyone tends to resort back to human nature, which is like being scared and like being irrational, and not really thinking about what you're doing, because you're just kind of like, I don't want to be sick. I don't want. Like, there's just like, a lot of fear surrounding pandemics. But I think in terms of like medical advancements, like people being sick, pushes more people to look for cures for diseases and all that. So in terms of that, like I think people have definitely, definitely learned and policies like with health policies during pandemics, you kind of like make more of them, and you could see what works and what doesn't. So yeah.

Lily Conway 06:45
So do you have any predictions for the next global pandemic?

Mulan Ozeki 06:50
I can't say for sure. But I definitely think I think there's a trend of pandemics becoming increasingly politicized, especially in America. So I feel like for the next global pandemic, it's definitely going to be like, even more politicized than it is right now.

Lily Conway 07:11
Yeah. All right.