UK Core Issue: How Do We Distribute Vaccines?

 

       

        The process of creating and implementing vaccines are quite long and extremely challenging. Many times if a vaccine is needed to combat a certain virus, it takes several years to be developed, tested, and given out in the community. However, the human population does not have this extensive time to waste for the publication of a vaccine for COVID-19, while thousands of people have been affected by and died from the virus all over the world. It has been recently reported that several countries, including the United States, have began the trial process for many COVID-19 vaccines. 

        In the case that one of these vaccines is promising, many. questions will arise about our country and populous cities. Who will receive the vaccine? How much will it cost? Is it trustworthy? These are all valid questions that many people of our country and even those in Lexington will think about when a vaccine is able to be administered to the public.

        If I was the one in charge of deciding the answers to these questions for the city of Lexington, KY, I would look at the city holistically and administrate them on a needs basis. This means that everyone who needs the vaccine will receive it first, as done in a command economy. The way I would classify who "needs" and receives the vaccine is based on their health. If a patient currently has COVID-19, and the vaccine will fight off the virus, then this patient would receive the vaccine first among the citizens of Lexington. Everyone who wants to receive the drug, will be tested first. Those who test positive, will receive the vaccine within 24 hours to ensure that their immune system does not fight off the virus first, Once all positive patients have received a vaccine, the next stage of people will be able to receive the drug. These people will be those who have compromised immune systems, due to an another health issue, such as cancer or asthma. These diseases greatly impact the immune system and make it much more difficult to fight off other viruses. Therefore, it is important that these people receive the drug rather quickly before they contract the virus. Next, people who have not yet had the virus and do not have the antibodies against it will recieve the vaccination. Lastly, if there is any vaccines left over after the prior groups, the vaccine would be available to those who had COVID-19 and the rest of the city's population. 

        Due to large invests from the United States government, the vaccine should cost people relatively nothing. At most, it will be around $25. This inexpensive price makes it available to anyone who needs it, even whose who do not have insurance. The vaccine would be a flat cost and would be the same to everyone. Although the process might have been rushed, the vaccine would be entirely safe, due to the immense testing and trials that it would have been put through. Therefore, the people of Lexington would not have to worry about fatal side effects from receiving the vaccine. 

Online Classes Around Campus

    The University of Kentucky opted for the majority of their classes be hosted online for the Fall 2020 semester. Because of this, I have basically been stuck in my room for the past month. Lately, I have been struggling with being in one place, as if the online classes weren't hard enough. Classes online make it a lot more difficult to actually retain the information that they are throwing at us. I am a very hands on learner and being online for classes has made that nearly impossible. Instead, I am forced to sit at a desk for almost seven hours a day and take notes based on un-interactive presentations. Due to these circumstances, I have had to get creative on ways to not get bored of doing the same thing everyday. I try to mix up where I take my classes throughout the day and try to get outside while the weather is still nice. The picture above is of me in the Jacob Science Building. I had just finished watching some classes and doing some work. I have really enjoyed finding new places on campus to study and even a few restaurants to try.  

Coronavirus in Pop Culture

       The current pandemic has not only been a spotlight for the medical field and the news, but has even made its way into pop culture. Effects of the virus can be found even in music and apps across the world. 

    Due to the quarantine rule that was implemented across the country, many artists found themselves stuck in the house and writing songs to pass the time away. Artists from all genres of music found themselves doing this and some even published a song about the virus itself. Luke Combs, a famous country singer, wrote a song called, "Six Feet Apart." The title is a play on words for the rule of social distancing that arose during the pandemic. In this song, Luke Combs talks about some of the sacrifices that everyone has given up during quarantine, such as seeing family, social gatherings and eating at restaurants. He also gives listeners hope by saying there is "light after dark," and this is only temporary and soon everyone will be able to return to back to their normal lives. This song is just one of many songs that artists producing during this trying time. 

    

    Another way that Covid-19 has impacted pop culture is through the widely popular app, TikTok. TikTok is an app where people can post comedic videos of themselves and friends. When coronavirus started to spread, people had many ways of making light of the situation by posting their hand sanitizer collections, showing off their fashionable masks, and even making viral tiktok dances. These videos allowed people to show how they felt about the virus and how they were dealing with it in their own way. 

Not to mention the fact that the app took off, while everyone was in quarantine. The majority of people were forced to stay home from school or work, which gave them more free time and TikTok was a way to take people's minds off of everything that was going on and give them some entertainment. Although I only listed two examples, pop culture was greatly influenced by the coronavirus all over the world. 

Chinese: The "Jews" of the Coronavirus

       Anytime there is a major event occurring in the world, there is always a single group of people that are blamed. For example, in the Holocaust the jews were blamed for the events happening in Germany, when in reality we know it was not truly their fault but the result of brainwashing. The same thing is happening in the world right now with Covid-19. From the beginning of the pandemic, China has been the scapegoat as the source of the coronavirus. But is this the result of our government brainwashing us to believe a single country is to blame for the world wide epidemic or is China really to blame?

    As it has been said, the coronavirus originated in a wet market in Wuhan, China. According to multiple sources, the virus began when virus carrying bats were sold at the market and the virus made its jump into the bodies of humans. The virus spread very rapidly, affecting everyone in its path. Travelers from China were said to have spread the virus to several countries, including the United States. From there, the virus obstructed the lives of millions and became a global pandemic. But what if the coronavirus was already in the US before it hit Wuhan, China?

    Several people that I have talked to, including my sister, have said that last November they had the exact same symptoms as the coronavirus and tested negative to the flu and strep throat. These negative results show that they did not have the virus that are more common and might have had coronavirus but did not know it because there was not a test for it at the time. These people were sick long before the outbreak in China that made headlines in late March of 2020. Another finding that is suspicious is the number of cases in China compared to that in the United States. It has been reported that China has had a total of 85,255 total cases and 4,634 total deaths. Whereas the US has had over 6.7 million cases and 198,259 total deaths. This is a huge difference in cases and does not make much sense. China has more people in their country than the US, and the majority of the Chinese live in a much closer proximity to each other than Americans. Based on this, wouldn't China be more likely to have more cases than the US? This raises several suspicions about how China was able to control the virus better than another country if they were the ones that caused the pandemic. As Americans, have we been brainwashed to believe that China is to blame and we are the real case of the global pandemic?

    

Scrounging at the Grocery Store

    Coming from a southern family, food is a big deal in our household. My Dad is a self-proclaimed "food enthusiast," and is always thinking about the next meal, as is most of my family. Every Sunday, my Mom likes to plan out the meals for the next week and is always making new recipes and trying new things. All these things, as well as having a fifteen year old brother who is constantly eating, are reasons that our pantry and fridge is always stocked full. However, the pandemic made us consider a new kind of normal, where we got used to opening the cabinets and finding half empty. 

    When Covid-19 was just starting to make its way across the country, shutting down everything in its path, my parents ran the our local grocery store to stock up on lots of food and drinks. Because the amount of time that the stores would be closed was not announced yet, they grabbed everything they thought we would need for the next few months. They had loaded up our biggest car and headed home. Once they got home was when the "fun" of putting everything away began and my brother hid in another room. While putting the food up, we quickly realized that we did not have enough room in the cabinet and pantry for everything that they had bought and thought that we would be eating on everything for a long time to come. Little did we know that what we thought was "too much" would only last two months before it was all gone. 

    As the piles of nonperishable food became smaller and smaller, my Mom tried to go to the grocery store and pick up a few things, but the selves were almost completely empty. This made it hard to my Mom to meal prep and make simple recipes like spaghetti because the ground beef was more expensive than ever. The fruits and vegetables were sold out and I won't even mention the toilet paper situation. The only things my Mom could find was unhealthy foods, like cereals and chips, so that is what we ate. Obviously, because of this our diet became much worse but with more free time, my sister and I tried to workout as much as possible to counteract all the bad things we were putting in our body. Once people started to calm down, including my parents, the grocery stores filled back up and everything got back to normal for our diets and meals. 

                        

How Does News Influence Coronavirus?

    Especially in these times, it is extremely important to know where you are getting your information. Many times people will turn on the news channel early in the morning before going to work. While it might be playing in the background, the news that someone hears can still influence their way of thinking. Many news channels, like CNN and Fox, have a way to insert political stances into anything they say.

    CNN has been known to be severely bias to the Democrat party. Lately with the current pandemic, CNN has been keeping a close eye on President Trump to see how he is handling the pandemic. Recently, Trump held a rally, in which few people were practicing social distancing and wearing masks. The CNN grilled him for this obviously and focused on this headline because it shows that he is not taking the pandemic seriously and only wants to gain supporters. 

    The information that CNN has put out about coronavirus has been completely bias and saying that everyone who contracts the virus is at fault for it spreading, but have mentioned little to none on how to combat the disease. CNN also had Dr. Fauci talk about how a quarantine dorm at college universities is the key to success. Many people took that he was another "money-seeking republican" who cared more about reopening universities for financial stability instead of the health of the students.

    On the other side of the spectrum, Fox News is usually seen as a "Republican news station." On the same topic about Trump's recent rally, a Fox News reporter focused on what Trump said about children being unsusceptible to the virus. The reporter focuses on how this was a slight lie but mentions nothing about how people were wearing masks and following guidelines.

    As stated prior, people should be more careful about which new channel they chose to watch. This is why I have neglected to watch any mainstream news channel for information about Covid-19.  Instead, I went straight to the CDC because they are the ones that actually understand the most about the virus and are setting the guidelines. Even on the CDC website, you must be careful about facing biases, so it is best to read articles that strictly give accurate information, such as https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/if-you-are-sick/quarantine.html. 

    Many of the news channels politicalized the pandemic and inflated the numbers of deaths. These channels knew that an enticing headline would get them more viewers, even if the headline was false and inflated. My parents and grandparents would watch these new channels and based everything they about the virus off of what the news was telling them. This would confuse me because it would contradict what I had read about on CDC. 

Covid in the Dorms

 

        I am a peer mentor in the Interprofessional Healthcare Residential College Living Learning Program on campus at UK. There is a total of fourteen of us this year and we have all became very close. One of the worst parts about last semester to me was that I was completely separated from all of my friends because we all lived in different states. I believe all of the other peer mentors can agree that being away from friends and campus made academics that much harder. Especially with the pandemic, we were all willing to take the risk of getting the coronavirus just to be back on campus.

    But recently, a few of us are figuring out that that might not have been the best decision. We are only two weeks into the school year and one of the peer mentors has already tested positive. When the university initially tested us upon arrival, we all tested negative for the virus. But more recently, all students in greek life had to be re-tested. This is when a peer mentor found out that he had the coronavirus and had to be quarantined. They were put in the Ingles Residence Hall which is one of the older dorms on campus and far less nice as the one we all live in. They are not allowed to leave their room and only receive their meals from campus dining services. They are completely isolated from campus and the outside world, which is extremely scary for me. Because they tested positive, their roommate also had to quarantine. Because we are all so closed and have been around each other a lot, some of us are worried that we too might have the virus. So far, none of us have shown symptoms, but only time will tell. 

The University of Kentucky In The Time Of Covid

 

        As mentioned earlier, I am a sophomore at the University of Kentucky. As soon as students arrived on campus, UK required that all students must be tested for COVID-19. If any student tested positive, they went either sent home or quarantined in a specific dorm. Classes resumed on the 17th of August, but they look a little different this semester. Based on the course, a student could have their classes online, in-person, or hybrid. A "hybrid" class just means that half of the meetings will be in a standard classroom, while the other half will meet online. The university decided to offer classes this way to make social distancing possible in some of the larger classes. The classes that are meeting in-person require the students to wear a mask the whole time and practice social distancing baby spacing out the students six feet apart. Also, the dinning halls on campus have reduced seating to prohibit groups of people from gathering. These few examples show that the university is doing everything they can to combat the current pandemic and keep the campus as open as possible. However, the number of positive cases have been on the rise on campus.

    Since coming to campus, students in greek life have tested three times as high as the rest of the student body living on campus. Because of these high numbers, UK has decided to retest all students in greek life. Many students involved in greek life live in their specific houses with hundreds of others students. These close communal spaces make it hard for the students to physically distance themselves more than students living in a dorm. Personally, the majority of people that I know who have tested positive have been involved in greek life, so I think what the university is making the right move by retesting these students. However, I also think that retesting all of the students within the next month would be smart just to be sure that numbers have not risen. 

    I believe that the steps that the University of Kentucky have taken so far are completely necessary and will allow the campus to stay open for the remainder of the semester. From walking around on campus, I can tell that the majority of students are wearing masks and trying to socially distance as much as possible.  So even though the numbers of positive cases may be growing, I think that classes will continue to be available in-person due to the protective measures that have been put in place.