Items
Subject is exactly
Health & Wellness
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2023-05-15
Unique Patterns of Behaviors Observed from Endless Masking in Japan in this "Post-Pandemic"
Although the world is approaching the post-pandemic, many people are still wearing masks in Japan. It can be attributed to unique conformity to others who still wear a mask and the establishment of masking as a habit after 3 years of masking. -
2023-05-16
News Article Analysis: India Is What Happens When Rich People Do Nothing
I will analyze this article focusing on the devastating impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, including exploitation of marginalized groups like migrant workers, oxygen and other medical resource shortages, and the overall structural consequences of poor governance and health infrastructures in India. Not only does the writer Krishnan cater to the failures of the current Indian federal government during the pandemic, but he aims to point out the great moral failure of our whole generation, which has exposed the long-existing structural issues in providing for public healthcare and social security of Indian citizens. -
2021-09-30
Masking through the pandemic
I have submitted this picture to show what it was like just to be at school during the pandemic. This is a picture of my friend and I in band class. We had to wear masks, and even had special musician masks we had to wear while playing our instruments. This was a very hard time, especially with it being my senior year of high school. I just wanted things to be normal again. -
2023-05-15
What we need to learn from Covid
This is based off of what I have seen and heard throughout the pandemic. I have decided to post this because we need more awareness of the issues in education. -
2023-05-15
Analysis of "The School Where the Pandemic Never Ended"
Analyzing a New York Times article entitled, "The School Where the Pandemic Never Ended" through the lens of Daniel Defoe and Thomas Paine -
2023-05-14
Pandemics are Not "Great Equalizers" - Comparing COVID-19 to the Bubonic Plague Outbreak of 1870-1905
With the designation of COVID-19 as a "public health emergency" by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ending as of May 11, 2023, public healthcare facilities throughout the US are rolling back protections they once employed to try to keep people safer during this ongoing pandemic. So, as this unit asks of us students, are pandemics the “great equalizers” in terms of social inequalities, and is there more equality now that the "emergency" has been deemed to be over? I argue that this is not the case, as immune compromised and disabled people have been more or less left for dead. A huge swath of healthcare facilities have removed mask mandates for care providers and hospital visitors, which leaves vulnerable and immune compromised people at a much higher risk of getting COVID-19 while receiving the medical care that is necessary for them to manage their conditions. In response, people and organizations, such as the Massachusetts Coalition for Health Equity in the tweet above, have begun to mobilize in favor of maintaining COVID-19 protections in healthcare settings by organizing strikes, protests, petitions, and phone banks to public officials. The reasons for maintaining COVID precuations such as mask mandates, access to COVID tests, and enhanced filtration in healthcare settings are clear. As the Massachusetts Coalition for Health Equity describes in their petition titled "Patient Strike Authorization Vote," the CDC "advises immunocompromised people to avoid crowded indoor settings, which now includes all healthcare institutions without universal masking," essentially maintaining that COVID is dangerous to immune compromised people while giving them no option but to risk exposure if they want to receive their necessary healthcare (Patient Strike Authorization Vote). The petition text explains that "[n]ational leaders in hospital epidemiology argue that universal masking should become the new standard of care, as gloves became with HIV" in order to keep people with compromised immune systems such as young children and elders safe (Patient Strike Authorization Vote). Currently, disabled and immune compromised people "are being locked out of safe healthcare" and are facing discrimination that makes them unwelcome and unsafe in healthcare settings (Massachusetts Coalition for Health Equity). In order to relate this modern COVID-19 pandemic to our course materials and demonstrate that discriminatory treatment during times of disease is not new, I will compare the above post to points from the text "The Chinese as Medical Scapegoats In San Francisco, 1870-1905" by Joan B. Trauner. This text discusses the discrimination against Chinese and other East Asian people living in San Francisco's Chinatown during a bubonic plague outbreak in the late nineteenth century. Sinophobic and anti-Asian sentiments, similar to those that arose during the epidemic Trauner details, have also been evident throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, so much so that even US President Donald Trump referred to COVID-19 as the "China virus." Ableism has also been prevalent throughout the COVID pandemic, as many people no longer care about the effects of the virus, because it harms disabled and immune compromised people most, especially people who also face racial discrimination in healthcare. Trauner explains that, because white people in the US believed the plague primarily affected Chinese and other Asian people, and because plagues were bad for business,"[t]he governor of California, Henry T. Gage, and executives of big business and of the large railroads, in conjunction with the San Francisco Board of Trade, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, and the Merchants Association, were all determined to prove that the plague did not exist in San Francisco" (78). The author of the Patient Strike Authorization Vote argues that today, we see a similar pro-business sentiment that comes at the expense of immune compromised people who are more likely to get sick with and die from COVID-19, writing: "Hospitals that remove masks and surveillance testing are making a value judgement about our lives, because they want to preserve their profit margins" (Patient Strike Authorization Vote). The CDC's ending of the COVID-19 public health emergency designation and the resulting halt of COVID mitigation procedures indicate that people are ignoring the needs of immune compromised people so that everyone can feel more comfortable going "back to normal" and maintaining consumption habits that are desired by businesses. Additionally, in both the past plague outbreak and the current pandemic, public health officials have shown hesitancy to give people vital information, which has led to harm. As Trauner explains, during the bubonic plague epidemic, "San Francisco Mayor Eugene Schmitz refused to approve the printing of health reports and vital statistics and even attempted to remove from office four members of the Board of Health who persisted in stating that plague existed in San Francisco" (79). Today, because the public health emergency designation ended on May 11th, 2023, the CDC is "no longer reporting aggregate cases and deaths, COVID-19 Community Levels, COVID-19 Community Transmission Levels, or COVID-19 Electronic Laboratory Reporting (CELR) data," all of which have been used to determine the severity of the situation throughout the pandemic (COVID Data Tracker). Meanwhile, over one thousand people are dying of COVID every single week, but COVID transmission levels are not being tracked, so people cannot know how many COVID positive cases there are in their county and how likely they are to contract the virus by going out in public (COVID Data Tracker). Another similarity between the COVID-19 pandemic and the bubonic plague outbreak of the late nineteenth century lies in the responses of the people facing discriminatory treatment in public health settings during these respective disease outbreaks. Trauner writes that before, during, and after the bubonic plague outbreak, Chinese businesses and health practitioners constructed and operated their own hospitals that would treat the people of Chinatown, because they were not welcome at other hospitals due to racial discrimination (81). Trauner explains that "[e]arly Chinese immigrants realized the necessity of banding together and providing for their own health care needs," in light of the government abandoning their health needs (81). Activists and organizations like the Massachusetts Coalition for Health Equity are currently banding together and fighting to get better and safer care for immune compromised people during the COVID-19 outbreak, as they are also facing discrimination at hospitals rolling back COVID precautions, because these spaces are not safe for them. The organizing they are doing to try to make healthcare settings safer for immune compromised people looks different, as no one is proposing the creation of immunocompromised-specific hospitals. They are fighting for better treatment, still, using slogans like "We Do Not Consent to Get COVID at the Doctor," and urging people that "[w]e must take collective action to prevent this mass violation of our human rights and federal rights to safe care," as stipulated under the Americans with Disabilities Act (Massachusetts Coalition for Health Equity). In both disease outbreaks, it has been the duty of those being discriminated against to take care of and advocate for themselves. So, in fact, pandemics are not "great equalizers"; in reality, they not only make pre-existing inequities even more visible, but exacerbate them even further. As Trauner argues, "Health policy [...] manifests not only the state of the medical sciences, but the expectations and the value system of society-at-large," and as such, if society-at-large is racist and ableist, then the health policies put into place will reflect these discriminatory values (70). These governmental measures come at a cost to everyone, and especially those facing racist and ableist discrimination. Had the nineteenth-century bubonic plague outbreak been determined an emergency and treated as a serious threat in spite of sinophobic and anti-Asian sentiments, perhaps more research could have been carried out sooner, and more lives could have been saved. If people in the US continue to take the COVID-19 pandemic seriously and not dismiss the pleas of immune compromised and disabled people to continue precautions, perhaps loss of life and further disablement from COVID infection can be mitigated. -
2020-03-14
My Sedentary Lifestyle Prepared me for What Came
In the year of the pandemic I was not aware of everything that was occurring all around me, I did not watch the news; however, I did get news updates on my phone and people would tell me what was going on. I was working as a personal attendant at an elementary school when covid began, and I did not feel the effects that covid 19 has been changing society, the community that I lived in, and in my life until the lockdown began where everyone had to stay inside their houses. Before the lockdown began I was living a sedentary lifestyle where I would spend the whole day inside the house on my phone or watching TV, so staying in my house was an everyday thing for me and many of my family members and friends did not live near me, so I would always call them; however, I have heard about a couple of family members who I have grown up with mention to me that they had covid and before I returned to work after the lockdown was over my mother tested positive for covid, so this is when covid 19 was hitting hard to me because many people that I was close to were getting sick, when my mother was sick I began to worry whether I had covid 19, because I fell ill before her, however, I tested negative for covid 19 which I admit was a huge relief for me, but I was worried about my mothers well being, until she felt better. In news updates I heard about a lot of people who lost their jobs, and places that were shut down, because of the pandemic, so I felt fortunate to still have employment at the elementary school even if my hours were shorter than before because of the changed school hours, but I still felt fortunate that I still had employment and that none of my friends or family lost their lives to covid 19. When I first heard about the lockdown it was when I realized how truly serious the situation was, many people had trouble staying inside their houses during the lockdown; however, I always stayed inside on my phone, playing video games, and watching TV so remaining in my house was never such an issue for me since this was part of my everyday life so my sedentary lifestyle is what prepared me and got me through the lockdown during covid 19. -
2020-08-22
Finding peace during the pandemic
During the pandemic, like most people, I experienced high amounts of stress and feeling kind of hopeless. I would spend the majority of my day playing video games in my house which doesn't really seem like a bad thing to be doing, but over time I could feel myself being lost and not the same person anymore. This was because before the pandemic, I was constantly on the move and interacting with people, so when this was taken from me I was unable to resume the things that I had always done. I began school at a local university and found myself unable to make friends as I had easily done in the past, because my social skills had taken a huge fall due to the pandemic. I found myself being a really quiet person and would only talk when I was talked to, and also found that I did not have the drive to complete tasks that should have been easy to complete. The way I began to overcome this was when I joined a local dance group. They were practicing at a park following social distance regulations. I did not instantly feel comfortable because I was unsure of myself and was not very confident when I first joined. However, the group was very welcoming and friendly towards me and they gave me all of the time and space I needed at the time to begin coming out of the shell that the pandemic had formed around me. Within about a year, these members have become some of my closest friends and we hang out daily. My confidence has reached an all time high that honestly I think might have caused me to become bored whenever I know something is a waste of time but is something that I have to do. This isn't necessarily a bad thing because it is definitely an improvement from before where I would not attempt to do things because I did not feel the confidence to complete them. Had I not joined the group, I would've stayed in my shell and would not have made the friends I have today. They gave me a chance to become active again and become socially active as well. -
2021-12-01
Taylor Schneider Oral History, 2021/12/01
Taylor Schneider lives in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, and currently works in sales and marketing. She discusses that she did not think that the virus was a big deal initially until everything started to shut down. She talks about her job opportunity and how it was rescinded because of the virus and how job searching was difficult because no one was hiring. She discusses how her communication with her friends and family was changing since the beginning of the pandemic with the use of FaceTime and Zoom. She goes on about how the mental toll of being on lockdown and staying at home affects her and the ways in which she passes time during the time. -
12/14/2021
Anonymous Oral History, 2021/12/14
Anonymous is a person who, in his senior year of university, was hit by covid. Anonymous goes into detail on what went wrong with the pandemic, how new sources are at the biggest fault, and how it affected his personal life when looking for a job, and interacting with family and friends who both do, and do not want to be vaccinated, and self-isolating with many precautions despite Wisconsin having very few mandates. -
12/03/2021
Brad Peterson Oral History, 2021/12/03
Brad Peterson is currently a pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church in Boyceville, Wisconsin. In this interview, Brad discusses COVID-19 and its impact on his career as a pastor, the community’s response to the pandemic, and his personal life. He talks about the challenges he has faced, specifically, living within a community that has shown resistance to COVID-19 regulations. COVID-19 has created many implications but Brad tries to focus on the positive outcomes of COVID-19. For example, Trinity Church now offers online worship and will continue to offer online services as it has proven to be a popular and comfortable way to worship. -
11/29/2021
Don Knutson Oral HIstory, 11/29/2021
Don Knutson is the Rescue Squad Director for the Village of Colfax Wisconsin. In the interview, he goes into detail about his job and how it changed because of Covid. As he has taken care of patients that go by ambulance but as a director and how he has seen things change in the profession. He also is the health advisor for the Village of Colfax which was the main source for the community. While he also shares how his work life has also affected his personal life because of the added reasonability from Covid. Finally, he comments on how the political atmosphere has affected the pandemic. -
12/08/2021
Shelby Kolar Oral History, 2021/12/08
Shelby Kolar is a lifelong Eau Claire resident and Director of Nursing at a large long-term care facility in Eau Claire. In this interview, Shelby discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted her work and discusses how it has affected her family and friends. Shelby responded to my interview request because she felt it was important to share the high impact of COVID-19 on long-term care facilities and the geriatric population she cares for. Shelby highlights the emotional and mental toll of caring for the elderly during the pandemic and provides a deeper look into senior care as a whole. Shelby touches upon how her kids and husband managed the pandemic and the highs and lows of spending so much time together. -
12/29/2021
Scott Koran Oral History, 2021/12/29
Scott Koran was born and raised in Marshfield, Wisconsin, and works at Rogers Cinema as its CEO. Over the course of this interview, Scott Koran details the difficulties of running his family business during the pandemic including its effect on his life, his family, and on the overall local community. He discusses the difficulties of closing down his theaters and moving perishable food items from all his locals to a central location. Scott explains his attempt to pay the bills by running the popular curbside popcorn sales at his Marshfield theater location. He shares what the situation in his local community is like and allows people are reacting to Covid-19 safety measures created by local businesses. At the end of this interview, he discusses the uncertainty of the future and how the media and health organizations have been sending out conflicting and confusing messages regarding the disease. -
11/28/2021
Brogan Daniel Maxwell Oral History, 2021/11/28
Brogan Maxwell was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota but raised in Rochester. He currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland as a graduate student at John Hopkins University. Brogan discusses the impact Covid-19 has had on his education, work, and social life. He brings a different perspective on communal efforts to flatten the curve and what his school has done to ensure safety. Touched on the government handling in his area and how he feels they are doing, and discussed the importance of being vaccinated and staying up to date on the pandemic. -
12/01/2021
Cathy Mitchell Oral History, 2021/12/01
Cathy Mitchell was born and raised in Champaign, IL, and currently works as a paid caregiver for a 91-year-old lady. In this interview, Cathy Mitchell discusses how COVID-19 has affected her life, including her work, family life, and mental health. She shares what it has been like to adjust to life as a newly widowed woman and caregiver during the pandemic, and how the pandemic has affected her in terms of her mental health. She discusses her thoughts and experiences, as developed from the initial crisis until recently in this interview, consisting of 3 parts. -
11/29/2021
Dan Olson Oral History, 2021/11/29
Dan Olson was born and raised in Eau Claire, WI, and has been in the family theatre business since the early 2000s. Micon Cinemas, started by his parents, has multiple locations in the Chippewa Valley of Northwestern Wisconsin and has endured numerous closings since the beginning of 2020. During this interview, Dan discusses those closures and the effects they had, financially and otherwise, on the business. In addition to the company aspect, Dan also speaks to the challenges he has in raising two kids in a pandemic era, where he gets (or doesn’t get) his news from, and the struggles of staying neutral in such polarizing, partisan times. -
12/07/2021
Heather Perrault Oral History, 2021/12/07
Heather Perrault is an Eau Claire, WI resident and currently works for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections as a parole officer. In this interview, Heather talks about her experience with COVID and how it affected her life as a stay-at-home mom/ pseudo-teacher for her kids as well as her job that she rejoined about halfway through COVID. She also talks about how COVID has affected her family and friends in terms of their physical and mental health and how the people she oversees as a parole officer may be affected by COVID as well. Heather also gives future generations advice on how she thinks they should look at information about the pandemic in the future. -
12/05/2021
Crystalina Peterson Oral History, 2021/12/05
Crystalina Peterson is a non-traditional University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire (UWEC) student. Currently, in her fifth and final year of undergraduate work, she will graduate from UWEC at the end of December 2021 with her degree in Public History before going on to graduate school with the hope of becoming a professor. Originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, she moved to Barron, Wisconsin, near Eau Claire, for school. In this interview, Crystalina talks extensively about the challenges of motherhood during the pandemic especially when you have children in different households as well as mental health and how the pandemic had an impact on her and helped her better prioritize her health. She also talks about her experiences and involvement with the university, how the Covid-19 pandemic impacted that involvement, and how what she’s learned in college helped her better research and understand the pandemic. She also tackles the political climate that has heated up around the pandemic and how to handle those with differing opinions than your own. -
12/04/2021
Karen Porter Oral History, 2021/12/04
Karen Porter was born and raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and still resides there, where she works as a custodian in the Bridgeman dorm at the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire. In this interview, Karen gives critical information on what it’s like working as a custodian during the pandemic, being the person the community relies on to keep things clean and safe. Karen also reflects on how COVID-19 has affected her life, including her job, family and friends, personal life, hobbies, and mental health. Karen shares additional insight on hot topics of the pandemic, like vaccines, government response, the healthcare system, and collective memory. -
11/30/2021
Melinda Ruzich Oral History, 2021/11/30
Melinda Ruzich is a 20-year veteran kindergarten teacher from Hibbing, Minnesota, a rural town 229 miles (about 4 hours) north of Eau Claire. Melinda is also undergoing treatments for breast cancer, and she has been immunocompromised for the entirety of the pandemic. In her interview, Melinda discusses how her cancer treatments impacted her ability to teach during the early stages of the pandemic in 2020 as well as how her job has changed over the past 20 months. Melinda shares how childhood development has evolved at the early childhood and kindergarten levels and how her role as a teacher has shifted. Melinda also discusses how parents and the public have interfered with her (and other teachers in her district) abilities to teach in schools safely. She discusses her school district’s mask mandate and the public’s response and pushback to vaccinations and masking in the small, rural community in Northern Minnesota. -
12/01/2021
David Scamehorn Oral History, 2021/12/01
David Scamehorn had lived in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota for most of his life; he grew up in eastern Wisconsin, attended Macalester and the University of Minnesota, worked his entire professional career there, and had raised his family in St. Anthony, a northeastern suburb of Minneapolis. In this interview, David describes the difficult and arduous process of finding a new job in New York, and having the entire country shut down a week later as the first wave of COVID-19 swept the nation. He details his move across the country, dealing with adjusting to a new workplace virtually, and navigating the ever-changing regulations and restrictions of inter-state travel as he went back and forth from Minnesota to New York. -
12/01/2021
Jillian Schemenauer Oral History, 2021/12/01
Jillian Schemenauer was born and raised in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. From there she went on the receive her bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from the University of Minnesota-Mankato. She is now working on her Doctorate degree at UW-Milwaukee. In her interview, she discusses moving to Milwaukee in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. She also discusses the increase in mental illnesses in her students and colleagues and the reasons behind the increase. -
12/01/2021
Taylor Schneider Oral History, 2021/12/01
Taylor Schneider lives in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, and currently works in sales and marketing. She discusses that she did not think that the virus was a big deal initially until everything started to shut down. She talks about her job opportunity and how it was rescinded because of the virus and how job searching was difficult because no one was hiring. She discusses how her communication with her friends and family was changing since the beginning of the pandemic with the use of FaceTime and Zoom. She goes on about how the mental toll of being on lockdown and staying at home affects her and the ways in which she passes time during the time. -
11/26/2021
Betsy Stangel Oral History, 2021/11/26
Betsy Stangel continuously faces difficult challenges in her everyday job as a math teacher at Wausau East Highschool. But since the COVID-19 pandemic Betsy, in her later years of teaching, has had to adapt and mold not only her styles of teaching but many of her teaching standards to reach many of her students and their struggles with the virus. Betsy constantly must find new methods of interacting and engaging her class along with dealing with pressure from other school district staff. In addition, the new lazy “COVID lifestyle” that fellow teachers have been encompassing within students and their assignments could be in correlation to parents, guardians, and a vast majority of the American population’s tone towards returning back to work. This could explain why education has been such a rough adjustment back to the original five-day-a-week class schedule. -
12/10/2021
Jason Trzebiatowski Oral History, 2021/12/10
In this interview, Jason Trzebiatowski, an EMT and Resident Assistant at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, discusses some of the challenges and concerns facing first responders and other care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. He highlights the changes within the medical industry as it pertains to first responders, challenges he has faced as an RA with concerns from his residents, and the impact that the media has played in altering people’s perception of this virus and the institutions erected to fight it, including how much people’s perceptions of institutions like the CDC and the government, in general, have shifted over the past few years. -
12/03/2021
Wendy Vorpahl Oral History, 2021/12/03
Wendy Vorpahl is from Gillett, Wisconsin which is a small town near Green Bay. She has four boys: Matthew, Mark, Aaron, and Adam who all fall on the Autism Spectrum with Mark and Aaron having classic/severe Autism. In this interview, Wendy talks about the impact the pandemic had on her small business and the small business around her, her family’s experience with all getting Covid at the end of 2020, as well as her thoughts and feelings about the vaccine and the handling of the pandemic. Matthew and Aaron also come into the conversation at a few points as Matthew answers some questions and Aaron can be seen and heard in the background. -
11/30/2021
Erin Voss Oral History, 2021/11/30
Erin Voss was born and raised in Colby, Wisconsin, and is currently a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In this interview, Erin discusses how COVID-19 has affected her life as a senior in high school at the beginning of the pandemic and as a college student currently. She discusses COVID-19’s effects on her mental health, family, and schooling. She shares differences she has seen in small town Colby compared to a large city like Madison and their responses to Covid. She touches on what her advice would be for people in the future to respond to a pandemic while keeping in mind mental health, students’ ability to learn, and cautions to take. -
12/06/2021
Peter Waselk Oral History, 2021/12/06
Peter Waselk is a sales and account manager of Komatsu, a company that manages iron ore mines and sales of mining equipment based out of Virginia, MN that services Northern Minnesota, Northern Wisconsin, Southern Wisconsin, and Northern Michigan. Virginia, MN is located about 30 minutes west of the Wisconsin/Minnesota border. Still, Peter often works with iron ore industries in Northern Wisconsin (Superior, WI) as well as Milwaukee, WI, and Detroit, MI. In this interview, Peter discusses how the pandemic has impacted the iron mining industry, as well as how the pandemic has slowed infrastructure progress, including the automobile industry, appliances and cellphone production, and international shipping costs that have driven up the cost of so many products in the Midwest and the United States as a whole. Peter also discusses how the mining industry will most likely change over the next five years due to labor shortages and technological shifts to mining and industry as a whole. -
12/11/2021
Tim Yasick Oral History, 2021/12/11
Tim Yasick is a truck driver from La Crosse, Wisconsin. He lives with his wife, a puppy, and three cats. Tim spends most of his time on the road, only interacting with people at gas stations and truck stops, and this has allowed him to get through the pandemic without getting sick. In this interview, Tim discusses his experiences on the road, with mask mandates differing from state to state, and at home, where he just got married this June. He feels that accurate information and understanding each other are going to go much further in ending this pandemic than politics or vaccine mandates. He feels a change of heart is the only way. -
12/08/2021
Lissa Ziehr Oral History, 2021/12/08
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12/13/2021
Angela Nelson Oral History, 2021/12/13
Angela Nelson, a wife and mother of two, lives in Illinois on the Wisconsin border where she works from home as a Configuration management engineer. We discuss how COVID had affected her life, both work and personal, and her community, both local and statewide. She discusses what problems have occurred over the pandemic and what could have been solutions to help ease the problem. -
12/13/2021
Teresa Kirchner Oral History, 2021/12/13
Teresa Kirchner currently lives in Southeastern Alaska with her husband and three children. She is a nurse practitioner working in an outpatient clinic setting, providing primary care needs to rural Alaskan communities. She discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected her job, in both positive and negative ways. She shares many changes she has seen in her community during the pandemic, and how those changes affect the everyday lives of those who live there. She shares advice she would give to those in the future from what she has experienced during the pandemic and goes deeper into how Alaska in general has handled issues regarding the pandemic. -
12/06/2021
Jodi King Oral History, 2021/12/06
Jodi King is an eighth-grade math teacher and district mentor coach in the Kimberly area school district. Jodi was born and raised in the Kimberly area and discusses how the pandemic has affected her, her family, her students, and her coworkers. She shares her experiences throughout the pandemic, from the transition to online learning to adjusting to teaching in person during the age of the COVID-19 pandemic. Jodi also touches on some of the politics that were brought into educational discussions, such as mask mandates and vaccination status, as well as social justice issues that affect the way she teaches in her classroom today. -
12/05/2021
Deborah Jorgenson Oral History, 2021/12/05
Deborah Jorgenson lives in Frederic, Wisconsin, and currently owns a salon in Hudson, Wisconsin. In this interview, Deborah discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected her life, business, and family. She shares the struggles of owning a business in an affluent area during the lockdown and is concerned that if another lockdown comes in the winter she will have to shut down in Hudson for good. She also talks about how she’s grown closer to her family during this time and is able to see them more often. She also touches on how it’s frustrating that her business had to shut down while bigger businesses were able to remain open and had fewer restrictions. -
12/10/2021
Shae Havner Oral History, 2021/12/10
In this interview, Shae Havner discusses her experiences as a mental health therapist during the pandemic and the changes in her career and her clients. She talks about how the pandemic affects mental health, both positively and negatively, and the rise in domestic abuse cases. She also gives insight into how COVID-19 affected her home life as a mother and how the pandemic has affected her sons as well as what her family and friends did to have fun during the shutdown. She lives in Fall Creek, Wisconsin, and works in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and compares how the two cities responded to the pandemic. She also brings up vaccinations, the booster shot, and getting her children vaccinated. -
12/07/2021
Wyatt Goetz and Sloana Goetz Oral History, 2021/12/07
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11/27/2021
Rebecca Ferber Oral HIstory, 2021/11/27
Rebecca Lynn Ferber is a resident of Oronoco, MN, and currently works for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester as a CRNA (Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist). In this interview, Rebecca talks about how COVID has affected her job as a CRNA and Mayo Clinic as a whole as well as a mom and wife. She also talks about how it has affected her family and friends and how some of her relationships have been strained because of different views on COVID. She touches on how it not only affects people's physical health but mental health as well and gives some advice for future generations. -
12/10/2021
Courtney Erickson Oral History, 2021/12/10
Courtney Erickson is a single mother who lives in Chippewa Falls, WI with her four children, as young as kindergarten through 16 years old. In this interview, Courtney Erickson discusses her experience being a caregiver during COVID-19 while also balancing school and work and the difficulties that go along with those responsibilities such as overseeing her children’s Zoom meetings and working from home. She shares the ways the pandemic affected her family life, the health of those around her, as well as her struggles with recovering from addiction amidst the pandemic. -
11/27/2021
Terry Ehle Oral History, 2021/11/27
Terry Ehle lives in Two Rivers, Wisconsin with her husband, three daughters, and two foster boys. She works as a librarian at the local public library. In this interview, Terry discusses the struggles she faces during the COVID pandemic trying to juggle such a large family and their many extra-curricular activities. Her daughters are involved in musical theater, sports, and international travel- all of which have been impacted by COVID. She struggles to manage all of these different activities together, all while trying to be a good mother and a good employee. Because of her situation, she has had to take a lot of time off of work and has found herself working many nights and weekends to make up for the lost time. -
12/31/2021
Dan Davies Oral History, 12/31/2021
Dan Davies was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, raised in Waupaca, Wisconsin, and works in Appleton as a writer, actor, producer, and director. In this interview, Dan Davies discusses the impact Covid-19 has had on his work, life, and mental health. He explains how Covid-19 shut down the movie industry and effectively ended most types of jobs within films. He continues by explaining the struggles of making films during the pandemic, keeping the safety of his crew members and actors his top priority, and the loss of film projects. He discusses how the pandemic motivated him to write and publish a book with another on its way. He touches on the politicization of Covid-19 and the media's conflicting messages. -
12/12/2021
Cheryl Oral History, 2021/12/12
Cheryl is just one of my many Eau Claire County residents who have been experiencing the many issues of COVID in the nursing home environment. But what makes Cheryl’s story unique is that throughout this pandemic she has seen three different outbreaks within her facility and just recently experienced Covid for the first time earlier this month. However, Cheryl claims that thanks to COVID nursing homes, especially her current facility, will never resort back to normal. Much like her potential to engage in therapy, COVID has halted many aspects of Health care’s motivational tone and instead turned into an isolation facility. Through her limited experiences with staff and her few conversations with family and her roommates, Cheryl has hit rock bottom a few times. Yet through her love of the holidays and association with such a supportive family, Cheryl continues through, what she predicts, to be the next major virus that will never leave. -
12/14/2021
Anna Buss Oral History, 12/14/2023
In this interview, Anna Buss, who is a student at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire, discusses her experiences being a student with a chronic illness during the COVID-19 pandemic. Anna transferred to Eau Claire in her third year of college and shares her experience adjusting to the new school. She also talks about how the pandemic made her change her major, which was originally nursing, to graphic design. -
12/02/2021
Lindsey Jo Boehm Oral History, 2021/12/02
Lindsey Jo Boehm is a former UWEC student and graduate in Nursing, now a full-time nurse in a local hospital. This is Lindsey’s second interview a year since her first interview. In this interview, she discusses how things have changed from the last interview including moving, a new job, family changes, and how she takes care of herself and stays positive (or tries to). She discusses how the attitude in the medical field and doctors and nurses has changed in the last year; they were seen as heroes and now there is very little community support. She also discusses vaccines and variants and how they impact the community and her frustration and empathy for people during this pandemic. -
12/14/2021
Jake Black Oral History, 2021/12/14
Jake Black was born in Waco Texas, with a father in the Air Force he moved around the country until graduating High School in Kansas, and College in Texas. Jake now owns a restaurant in Valley Mills, Texas. In this interview, Jake discusses how Covid has affected his life, through work, the community around him, and his own family. He talks about how Covid-19 has affected his restaurant and the struggles he’s gone through to help not only the restaurant but his employees as well. Jake shares his thoughts about how Covid has affected the country and the people that he knows as well as the problems that have sprung up because of the government too. -
12/03/2021
Sarah Benthein Oral History, 2021/12/03
Sarah Benthein was born and raised in Appleton, Wisconsin, and currently resides in San Diego, California working as a travel nurse. Being that she has been working as a nurse, Sarah has been able to see firsthand how the health system has been affected, and changed by the pandemic, and her perspective will give individuals a first-hand account of many of these changes. Throughout much of this interview, Sarah discusses many of the different ways in which Covid 19, including such things as travel, working, and recreational activities. She shares how restrictions in San Diego have been taken much more seriously than in Wisconsin, and because of that, her life has changed dramatically from what it was prior to Covid 19 occurring. Sarah also reflects on how drastically travel changed in regards to Covid, especially owing to how far from home she lives. -
12/12/2021
Anonymous Oral History, 2021/12/12
Anonymous is a student at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and is partially studying political science. In this interview, she discusses her own personal experiences with Covid and her thoughts on how leaders have dealt with it. She also discusses mental health and her mother’s experience in the medical field. -
12/15/2021
Benny Anderson Oral History, 2021/12/15
While Benny Anderson did grow up in New Richmond, Wisconsin, he went to the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire and currently resides in Eau Claire working as the director of Visit Eau Claire. Working in the tourism and entertainment industry, Benny discusses many of the ways in which the tourism industry has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically in Eau Claire. He discusses that while there was a time at the beginning of the pandemic in which the industry did struggle, with much cooperation between Visit Eau Claire, the city, and other local health agencies, they were able to make a plan to reinvigorate the city with new options for tourists to attend, especially in outdoor settings. Overall, Benny really brings into clear focus an example of just how much COVID-19 changed our lives, and how businesses had to make significant adjustments in how they ran things in order to survive the pandemic. -
2020-04-01
Coronavirus Journal: April 2020
The essay is composed of entries from my daily journal during the month of April 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic quarantine. It shares the perspective of my partner and me, retired senior citizens in Up North Michigan. -
2023-03-15
Kit Heintzman Oral History, 2023/03/15
Kit Heintzman is a recovering academic currently residing in Lenapehoking, who was trained in the medical humanities with a special interest in queer theory, animals, and the history of nationalism. Kit has developed a singular collection of oral histories of the pandemic for A Journal of the Plague Year, collected from a range of individuals with widely diverse experiences. That collection addresses significant silences surrounding the pandemic broadly and within JOTPY more narrowly. In this item Kit is interviewed by Angelica and Erin, both with Arizona State University, about Kits collection process.