The effect of the pandemic has definitely played a strange impact on all of us. I also followed the same routine to protect my family members and other members of the community of other generations that I know. It’s been difficult to know and interact with different kinds of people from multiple generations. From the culture in my high school community, we’ve been able to keep a consistent and collaborative acknowledgement of keeping healthy cleaning habits in regards to helping with preventing the likelihood of this disease from spreading. Other communities across the country would of course have different approaches. There were people in my community who did not follow and proceeded to go out and have fun at parties and large gatherings; this started to play into an increased presence of the fear of missing out into my head. However, the past two years I’ve been able to shift my mindset of being more acceptable of what’s in my control and how to interact with people of different values, especially around the concept of public health and societal unity. It seems like this pandemic will never end, but continuing to cooperate will help with our well being and create a safer future for generations to come. It would hurt a big deal for all to finally jump on board when it is too late, so hopefully more members of the community realize how impactful and influential our actions as a whole can play a role in how this hardship will be resolved.
Prof L
Sonya, you really do acknowledge complexities in this response, especially in the ways you grapple with the language of culture and community–nice work!
For me, the trickiest thing you mention is the problem of weighing different values and thinking about how to handle lack of cultural consensus–I think now that I had not fully understood the extent to which “public health” was or was vulnerable to becoming a politicized value…..