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Thursday, September 14, 2023

COVID Chronicles XXX. It’s not dead yet!

 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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