AuDN4T

Thinking back to COVID – I think everyone had some whirl wind story around it – it felt like some weird ass foggy dream, no? I know some have said COVID had impacted a lot of people’s mental health.

I didn’t really think about it at the moment – but I can admit it did impact me.

Coming from a science background – having exposure to public health topics like biostats, epidemiology, infection control and communicable diseases – you had profs emphasize that every 100 years there was always one big flu that wipes out a huge portion of the population. Statistically, this is something that comes up, is based on how diseases mutate and jump from communicability between animals to humans and from humans to humans. T.Sly spoke often talked about the avian flu – the right still is there and can be more deadlier than COVID which worries me about how people will truly take its seriousness.

Profs also talked about how important it was to have proper communication about the facts around public health topics so that you don’t lose that trust from the public. What I don’t think we ever considered (or even predicted at the time) was disinformation from others and how social media could swing views so drastically. After all, when we entered university, Facebook was just starting off. People were just concerned about posting pictures from their university parties. It turned into some weird beast afterwards with algorithms and creating polarized views. You couldn’t even argue with dumb thoughts because half the time they were bots.

I’m not an epidemiologist but I understand how important public health is. They are not there to protect the government but rather protect the people – through potable water, food, STIs, exposures to communicable diseases (restaurants, healthcare, long-term care facilities, tattoo parlours, flu clinics, etc.), health in general (educating the public about various topics like dental, smoking; we had public health dentists visit our elementary school). When we remove resources from public health we are removing guardrails to protect the public. These are not people out there to control you but protect you with education and prevention… like the Ministry of Labour.

Seeing the disinformation online – on Facebook. It was bothersome. Having family members repost content that was very incorrect was so harmful and disturbing. People ended up being armchair epidemiologists and thought it was just a hoax or communism or whatever bots spewed out there. I had family members block me on Facebook because I spoke facts about other family members getting COVID and their grandfather passed away. It was fucked up. People ended up dying but people were so stubborn in believing this garbage. The ironic thing was this individual ended up on a ventilator and luckily they came out alive after 3 months. Having my MIL’s partner on a ventilator was also a messed up situation.

All the while, meeting every week with our HSE team at work to document and track COVID cases in the workplace and trying to mitigate along with various provinces and states COVID protocols (some were stringent while others not at all).

Some may argue that it targeted only the older population – but you saw cases of young individuals who did pass away. You had people losing their parents way too young.

It did trigger rigidness in me. I think this is where the ASD really showed it’s ugly head. I did wash my hands more frequently. I disinfected my phone and keys after coming back from walks or the store. I refused to touch the elevator buttons (and still do). I’d use my key to press the buttons. I remember walking to the park and losing my mind as cyclists would pass by on bikes worried this would result in some sort of exposure. Maintaining physical distance became like a ritual. When people approached too close you got super uncomfortable. When people coughed, you got nervous (and the funny thing is during SARS we joked that if you wanted the subway all to yourself, you just cough). Fun fact: the school of occupational and public health intrigued me because of the experience with SARS… but I didn’t want to do public health lol.

The ironic thing is when it all started I don’t think I took it initially seriously. I also questioned how effective masks were due to their filtration (surgical vs N95). I think when things get super serious and we know how critical this communicable disease is, anything will help… even surgical masks. I remember conducting a project at a psychiatric hospital and seeing employees getting training on hooded SCBAs and realizing this is serious… how will we actually be able to protect ourselves. This is where public health information (regional, country, global, etc.) is so critical in informing us. It determines on how we can protect people and how much strain we put on the healthcare system.

I can’t imagine what it would have been like a healthcare professional during that time. Seeing some share their experiences – being tired and having mask indentations on their faces, I can sympathize with them. My mom’s healthcare colleagues shared their difficulties navigating through this time. One individual ended up leaving because it was too difficult. I remember reading news stories about healthcare professionals commuting suicide (this was also the case of one of my mom’s colleagues/friends). I can’t imagine what they went through – if they had to isolate from their families to ensure they would not infect them or seeing patients dying in front of their eyes so frequently and you can’t do anything about it. Some could have been desensitized and made comments about people not making it. Do we know how their mental health is now? Have they processed all of this? Listening to some of the stories my mom has as a nurse – I think these moments stick with you a lifetime. I remember her telling me some while we were camping years ago and it sounded like she needed to get it out of her system. She’s admitted that she’s overprotective due to the things she’s seen in healthcare. She did have a fear of bringing home some sort of communicable disease… even with SARS.

My rigidity also extended to travelling abroad. People talked about wanting to go places and they did and I got angry with them, without actually telling them… like my best friend. I think I had to process it without saying something I’d regret later. I guess I am my mother’s daughter… in a different sense.

Getting the vaccine was a difficult thing to do – despite my mom being a nurse, she still has some reservations around vaccines (including the flu shot; historically it has always made her feel unwell). I’m not sure if she read disinformation on the vaccine. Reading abstracts on studies about some vaccines attributing to myocarditis and pericarditis)… I wasn’t sure what the risks were for females.

Re-entering large crowds got very odd when things levelled out. I never realized how much difficulty I had with that. I felt very uncomfortable. Going to the exhibition was… a lot. Trying to get onto a train when they weren’t arriving was a lot as well. I did get emotionally dysregulated; one might find IG stories in archives on this.

Above all – I feel really sad about how we treated our healthcare workers and public health leadership.

What the “freedom convoyers” did to Ottawa… blasting truck airhorns for long periods of time and causing sleep deprivation. 90dB inside homes is unacceptable. For someone to be able to sleep they need about 30dB(A) or less. This is a basic necessity for people to get proper sleep. This continued for 3 weeks. I can’t imagine how they did get proper sleep. Did it cause psychosis? I’m surprised no one went out there and drove a car at the “freedom convoyers”. I feel like this would cause anyone that sleep deprived to lose their sanity. Wearing a mask was never about taking away rights. Getting a vaccine also is not taking away your rights. This is not the equivalence to communism. This is basic science. Facts. Communism, Stalinism is something different that I don’t hope anyone has to ever endure. No one is sending the KGB after you for speaking poorly about Trudeau. I’ve had family friends lose their grandfather because he talked Lenin for not having food. The KGB came in the middle of the night and took him away and he was never seen again. My cousin’s grandmother’s family was packed into a train and sent to a labour camp to Siberia. Her grandmother died along the way and they had to throw her off the train car… having a dead body in the train car for 2 weeks would have caused some sort of disease. That is communism. My great uncle was sent to a labour camp and was there for 25 years. He fought against Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and Poland. He fought for a free Ukraine; for people to speak Ukrainian, for Ukrainians to exist despite hundreds of years of genocide and repression.

Imagine being a restaurant stating that you will not follow public health protocols because it is communism and damaging to your rights. If you are a patron of the restaurant, would you feel comfortable about eating there where they refuse to refrigerate food or notifying people about someone handling food with a cut has Hep B? As a restaurant owner – would you feel comfortable about making people sick? Where do your rights end with other people’s rights to health?

Was it a messed up time? Yes. Was the mess worth it? No. People who died could be alive today if we were more stringent.

Did it affect my partner and I? It did. It hit my partner more than myself. But it was still not a fun time.

The crappy thing is – I always said when this is all over and done with, our first vacation would be Iceland. Except it wasn’t. Still need to add that to our plans when things level out.

Moving between three organizations during this time was interesting as well. Having cautious projects in the first org, then the second org had a more structured process in mitigating risk and having full on shut downs (while some states ignored them) and moving into a third org when things easing off. I still ended up travelling to California with an N95 mask on a plane. It was tiring and did ended up causing an itchy throat because of whatever particulate was in the mask.

Did I get sick afterwards? Yes. And it kind of felt like COVID, but I’m not sure. Not sure how much it has levelled off now. But I think we need to process it and understand how it did impact us.

Unfortunately, there is proof that the Kremlin did have a hand in much of the disinformation around these topics and the freedom convoy… to some extent.

I just wish the science is understood and if questions come about… further discuss the possibilities around it. What do we know and what we don’t know and why we are make a decision based on the current information in place.