The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic – a personal perspective
This March marks one year from when the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the UK. The pandemic has resulted in significant global challenges in population health and additional social and economic disruptions. Many universities and colleges suspended classroom teaching due to the novel coronavirus lockdown and switched to online delivery and assessments. This has created a major shift and increased demand for everyone.
I remember the panic and stress associated with my first weeks of lockdown when everything was about sorting out personal and professional emergencies. One of the top priorities was to ensure that all my students were well and safe, that they could adjust to working from home and return safely from conference travels abroad. Several lab and experimental projects had to be modified since we were planning face to face testing of vulnerable individuals at the Department of Behavioural Science and Health, University College London. We found alternative projects that did no longer require in-person testing and had to ensure that these new projects would be viable within the months before the end of the academic year completion. It was, of course, very disappointing for everyone, considering the energy invested in the preparation of the original projects, materials purchased, as well as the completion of ethics for in-person data collection. Still, we had to prioritise everyone’s safety within the current climate and regulatory guidance of social distancing. I spent a lot of time ensuring that I provide my full support in overcoming these inevitable disappointments, including my adjustment and associated logistics, after cancelling my planned travel to Japan for an international project on dementia.
On a personal level, there was also unfortunate news of family, colleagues and friends being infected with COVID-19 and the melting sound of the internal petrifying fear when there was no news of their personal recovery. Many people have battled with individual losses, including illness and death, due to this novel coronavirus. Although grief is difficult, it helps us to recognise that it’s natural and sometimes illuminating. Grief and losses are also transient, even when we are in the midst of despair. They push us to make or impose closures. The feelings will fluctuate and transit between sadness and mourning, acceptance or even relief from ongoing pain. People who cope well with loss usually move in and out of those states, and such movements should be accepted. But there are also ambiguous losses, those lacking the clarity and definition of a single point like a death.
As we move on through this unstable and unpredictable world, it seems that we should perhaps get more and more prepared for losses. The current pandemic forces us to confront the frailty of various attachments we have made to places, possessions, projects, professions, or employment due to economic upheaval.
We recently heard the news of the UK Government plans to cut funds designated for global health research. Last week, the UKRI announced that UK aid-funded programmes (such as GCRF) could be potentially cut by more than 50%. If you oppose these cuts, please consider signing this petition asking the Government to revoke the proposed cuts. I hope we will not be losing the scientific battle and the progress made on so many vital health outcomes in our understandable focus and preparation for this pandemic. Cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke and dementia are also silent killers stealing away our loved ones, and we should continue to understand their aetiology and prevention.
Contemporary guidelines and approaches to managing pandemics have focused primarily on limiting the spread of infection but not at all on the psychological impact and managing loss in any form. Managing emotional distress and maladaptive disruptive behaviours is now more important than ever, considering the interlink between lifestyle behaviours, inflammatory markers and risk of getting the infection or other chronic conditions mentioned above.
I entered the second year of lockdown with a strange sense of adjustment to the constant routine of isolation and confinement to working from home. I think it’s important to focus on the positives, however small they are (a message from a family member, an online meeting with colleagues and friends, finalising or reviewing a manuscript, completing few more things on my never-ending to-do list, a sunny day in which we were able to walk outside and chose to focus on what grows and survives).
Dorina Cadar
SSM Comms Officer
Senior Research Fellow
University College London