COVID, psychoanalysis, psychology, resurgence, post pandemic, endemic
I thought perhaps I had written the last of these COVID
Chronicles, but the virus itself had a thing or two to say about that. If I
wrote a piece, I thought it would be a wrap up and I imagined writing about the
palpable excitement in the classroom this fall, as the students seem to have
returned with a new level of enthusiasm – perhaps even a notch or two above
pre-pandemic levels. A fellow faculty
member, talking with his students about AI, was told by the students that they
had heard that some of us were afraid we were going to be replaced by AI bots,
and they reassured him that they had experienced remote learning, and they were
really glad to be in the classroom with living breathing professors.
At my annual physical this summer, I asked my PCP whether it
made sense to get a third dose of the last inoculation or to wait until the new
dose came out this fall, which would include active defenses against more
recent variants. He counselled to wait,
which I agreed with as a strategy until fellow faculty started reporting on the
number of students that were showing up sick with COVID in their classes.
I started feeling a bit sick on Tuesday night of last week,
and wore a mask to class and with my patients on Wednesday, just to be on the
safe side. I tested negative on
Wednesday and thought I just had a head cold, until I got into bed that night
feeling bone tired and then was us up frequently through the night to cough
before falling fitfully back to sleep.
By morning I was too congested and weary to think about seeing patients
or teaching. This was the first time in
our seventeen years together that my wife had seen me cancel a class.
Cancelling classes and patients took about all of my energy
and I was not surprised to test positive in the middle of the morning. Though I did remotely teach a couple of
classes at the institute on Friday (it was the first day of class for the
school year and for some students, their first class – and it was too late to
find a substitute), I cancelled the rest of my day on Friday and spent the
better part of four days sleeping or watching a little mindless TV between
naps. I barely had the energy to do much
else.
By Monday, I was well enough to teach class remotely – the rest
of the class was in the classroom, and I resumed some of my clinical duties
remotely. People were very interested in
the quality of my experience and I gave them essentially the details that I
have reported here. I think, though am
not certain, that we have all kind of come to think of the endemic stage of the
pandemic as the period when COVID is no longer a thing – or if it is a thing,
it is not a dangerous our threatening thing.
While I don’t think I was in danger of death – not even
close – it was a much more powerful hit than I had imagined would be the
case. The Reluctant Wife, who was also
infected, also experienced tremendous fatigue and flu like symptoms, including
muscle aches. We both registered low
grade fevers at various points that we treated with analgesics.
One interesting thing about the state of being in an endemic
stage is the reporting. We had been
exhorted by our chair to report our COVID status to the powers that be at the
university throughout the year last year.
When I sent an email to the designated place, they responded that they
were only interested in hearing about students and that I should contact HR. I reached out
to our HR department and they reported that they were not accepting information
about faculty and referred me to our website which, in turn, referred me to the
CDC page for how to handle quarantining.
At this point, as both the CDC website and my physician
pointed out, there is a recommendation to isolate for five days and then to wear
a mask in public for the next five days.
I have let my students know of my diagnostic status, and some have
chosen to be masked in class or to zoom into the classroom, which I have set up
for them as, for instance, they are caring for immunocompromised family
members.
It is interesting that the very close oversight that the
university offered, including telling me exactly what kind of alternate classes
to offer if I was unable to teach, has simply evaporated and we are in the situation
that was in place pre-pandemic, though with guidelines and various technical
opportunities that are available in the classroom that weren’t there before the
pandemic. We now use the zoom screens
and cameras for a variety of purposes and have become as reliant on them as any
other classroom technology – so I assume we will be maintaining that technology
as we move forward.
What we seem to have lost is the oversight. I won’t know which of my students have been
diagnosed and whether they are following the isolation and masking protocols or
not. I hope that we have not lost CDC
interest and following of the bug – we need to keep coming up with new vaccines
and also to know if there are long term effects in various systems – cardiovascular
and neuro systems seem to be the most likely candidates.
I am hoping that my illness and the disruption in meeting has
not dampened the enthusiasm of the students.
Attendance continues to be excellent and the students are doing the
assignments at a rate that perhaps I have never seen. I’m not sure that we ever quite value something
as much as we might until we have lost it, and having regained the experience
in the classroom, I am hopeful that we can hang onto some of the enthusiasm as
we navigate changing health patterns and the normal disheartenment of the
semester turning into a bit of a slog.
There has been a kind of dark cloud hanging around the edges
of my classroom, my consciousness, and my experiences with various people in my
life. I am hopeful that, while I don’t
think we can banish it, we can, on more days than not, appreciate the largely
blue skies that are encouraging us to recommit to addressing the various ills
and joys that are part and parcel of the lives we are currently living.
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