COVID After Two Years

lost on me. That of course I would get COVID when I never take a vacation and then decide to actually take one before midterm elections and the craziness of fall, and then I would get it literally hours before I was headed out for my trip. I will tell you, as I do in my interview coming up with our friend doctor Jonathan Metzel, that getting COVID wasn't for me, just about this symptom surrounding it, which thankfully mine have

been very mild. You'll probably hear me for the next, you know, a couple of days, maybe the next a week or so, seemingly a bit more nasally, maybe interrupted by a coff or so. But I've been lucky, right as we all know. I'm sure that there are many of you that have contracted COVID. Or know somebody and maybe you know, before we had the brilliance of science

and vaccines lost someone as I did to COVID. What I will tell you is that my first feeling upon knowing that I was positive was absolute, full fucking emotional breakdown, Like I burst into tears, because for so long it's like you are masking and dodging and washing hands and you know, eating outdoors and thinking that you're doing all of the quote unquote right things, and then poof, you know, you feel like a failure, or at least that is

how I felt. You know, Jonathan will tell me later that you know this is not like a moral failing. COVID is highly transmissible, and even if you are doing all of the right things, unless you're going to stay in your bunker and never leave, you are going to probably contract COVID because everyone else is not taking the same precautions, is not doing all of the things that

they can do, and may not even be testing. And so even if you are outdoors and you know, we know that the latest version of COVID is highly transmissible outdoors as well as indoors, and so it just sucks, right like it brought up it has been bringing up a lot of feelings for me around you know, isolation.

Thank God for technology is what I will say, because I couldn't imagine going through COVID and not having access to FaceTime and a computer and the television behind me, and you know, but still, even with all of those different tools, feeling really lonely. And it's not just the sense of like fomo, it's just like this just real

deep sense of kind of sadness. And you know, well, I'll get into this more in the conversation with Jonathan and talking about the emotional as well as mental toll that COVID has taken, you know, not just with my own issue that I'm working through now, but obviously with us as a country. And I realized that, like with most things in life, just ignoring the fact that this is happening, just ignoring how people are feeling, doesn't make

it go away. Earlier today I was watching a report, you know, about the severe decline in mental health in young people and little kids. I'm not just talking about high schoolers. I'm talking about middle schoolers and elementary school children and their complete decline in their mental health and how this is yet another crisis on top of a crisis,

on top of a crisis. And the idea is that, you know, particularly for young people, we want them to grow up in a world and in a place where they feel safe, because safety then allows us the ability to dream. It's the foundation from which we build on.

But when we can't actually tell our kids that you're going to be safe when you go to school, when they see headlines each and every day of mass shootings that are taking place in buildings that are just like theirs, right when you know one year they're masking, one year they're not. One minute it's remote learning for a little bit that ends up being you know, for a year. Another time school is being shut down for something else. So what I realize is that we have taken away anxiety,

has taken away this feeling of safety. Right And people will say, well, safety is an illusion, but it's an illusion that we wanted to protect for young people because what does it mean to have generations of children growing up into adolescence and then adulthood that have no sense of security? How will they learn to navigate? What will that mean for how we all engage with one another,

how we work, how we live? And I don't think that we think often or hard enough about all the ripple effects of what we've been living through and dealing with over the past two plus years going on three in a couple of months. So you know, I tell you, as somebody that has been spending the last well when by the time that you listen to this, it will be nine days and CDC says ten days, well, five days of isolation and a mask and then five more

days of masking. But being in the population, it fucks with your mind, it really does, and it messes with your emotions. And so you know, as I often say to people, and I need to remind myself to have grace, you know, to give myself grace if I tell you some of the things that I had been doing. You know, I had doubled down, tripled down in meditation when after the first day when I really had you know, just like really tired, you know, pretty much had kind of

slept all day. And again at that point, I didn't know that I had had COVID. I just had taken Benadryl the night before and I took it late. And you know, sometimes when I take over the counter sleep medication or medication that have sleep beside effects to them. I often feel weird the next day for a while, which is why I try my best not to really take those things and to use more so you know, home remedies or natural remedies. So I didn't put it

together until the following day. Then I would take the test and I would find out that I had COVID. But you know, I continue to say that we are going through and living in such absolutely extraordinary times that if you aren't giving yourself grace or providing yourself with grace and also for those around you, you know you

will lose it. You'll feel fucking crazy. And you know, on the days that you are feeling crazy and want to throw up your hands and want to scream, you know, do that right, like do whatever it is going to allow you to be able to move through without ignoring

the they're there, right. And I think that for me, it was recognizing that this is never going to end, that we could, we did have an opportunity to get rid of COVID, and we chose not to because of politics, because of hate, because of lies, and because of bullshit, and so you know, I am fearful for the long term effects of what all of this means for us, for our society, for how we live, for how we work, and how our children develop over time into adults. I

think it will be really really interesting to see. So coming up next my conversation with our friend and in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel. Hey, I'm David Plots of Slates Political Gabfest. As another election season accelerates, it can be tricky to sort through all the noise and the news. Each week on The Gapfest, John Dickerson, Emily Bathalona and I decipher the headlines, break down the races, and tell you what issues really matter. We do not always agree.

We definitely do not always agree, but we always deliver thoughtful debate and we always have a good time. So subscribe to Slates Political Gapfest, new episodes every Thursday. Hey there, I want to tell you about another podcast I think you'll love. The Brown Girls Guide to Politics, hosted by a Shanty Goal, the president of Emerge BGG, is the one stop shop for women of color who want to

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And there's nobody to return better with than our friend, doctor Jonathan Metzel. I have bad news. I guess good news and bad news. I guess to tell people, because folks, you've all been wonderful why I have been away. And guess what your friend got while she was on vacation. Jonathan covid for the very first time, after two years of dodging this like a fucking whack a mole and seemingly doing all of the right things, I will tell you that I contracted COVID at an outdoor family party.

And you know, have had fairly mild symptoms. You know, some days tired, you know, you know I have the awful cough and all of those things. But I will tell you that one of the first feelings that I had, Jonathan, was of feeling like a failure, like a moral failing. Is is exactly how I felt, And you know, I'll tell you that. Andrew was kind enough to tell me, He's like, it's not a moral failing, Like it's it's wildly transmittable right now. But that's how I felt. Is

that normal? Like do people tell you that when they finally do get COVID that they feel like they're the ones that have clearly done something wrong? Well, first, let me just absolve you. Nobody knows how they got it. Very often, and very often it's because other people are nowhere near as careful as you. So you'd be the most careful person in the world. And if you're going to come out and socialize, you're dependent on other people.

And also the COVID now is so much more contagious than you know, your grandfather's COVID, and so um and so I would say that the choices like stay in your basement forever, but if you're going to go out, it's it's really you know, I wish I wish more people. There was a great study that just came out on masks a couple of days ago in a big infectious disease journal. If everybody masks, we wouldn't have a pandemic. It would be over period. So you know, that's not

the world we're living in. And so I just think you've been so responsible, You've been so great, and so number one, I'll say you did not do anything wrong except for do everything right and then rejoin the world. And so number one, please don't feel guilty. If you feel guilty, call me. I won't charge you. You know, it would be totally free. That's number one. Number two is COVID messes with your brain, right, and so people actually have emotional responses to getting COVID because it actually

crosses the blood brain barrier. And so people do have emotional effects to COVID. And then number three is this kind of anticipatory thing because like people like me and you, we've been so careful, as you know, I got it this summer, yep, and like I felt like I kept thinking of like twenty eight days later the zombie movie or something like that, and I felt like, oh, I'm just one of those zombies. I feel like I would love,

you know. So it does create a lot of emotions, especially if you've been worried and concerned about it, especially if it's something you've been careful about. So I just want to absolve you of any kind of bay. Thank you really you really did not Yeah, that was my agnostic um, my agnostic x um. But I would just say you didn't do anything wrong. But but it's an emotional time, especially because it's something we've been worried about for years here. Yeah, I think that that what like

was it? It was so like I was in tears, you know, I I how often am I taking these at home tests. I'm taking the at home tests and I know the drill and fifteen minutes later and boom, it's negative. And I go about the rest of my day. And it was like this time I took the test.

I looked down and I'm like, you have got to be fucking kidding me, right, you know, I had a I was I was literally leaving in five hours to head to a trip with my friends, um, you know, to go away, and I wanted to be extra careful, right. I was feeling got it in New York. I got it in New York. I was feeling, you know, I had UM. I'd had a scratchy throat and I said, you know, but allergies are going around, you know, allergies. It's allergy season, and it's been really dry you know,

we're in a drought. It's been horribly dry in New York. But I said, I want to be extra careful. I'm about to get on public transportation. I'm about to travel to go see my friends that have kids. And so that's you know, I was taking the test. Nobody asked me to take, you know, to take a test. That was my personal responsibility. And so when it came back and it said that it was positive, I like lost my shit and was you know, and was hysterical. Um and and so it is like there there is this

this extraordinary emotional build up. But can you just talk a little bit more about the blood brain barrier and like, you know, have have we have we disc just enough not just the physical symptoms of COVID, but the actual you know, emotional mental ones. Particularly when folks were talking about brain fog. I have not experienced that, but again that being something that is that is very real. Well, I think we're learning a lot more now than we

used to. I mean, certainly that was Remember initially people thought this was just a respiratory infection, and it was serious, right because it was getting in people's lungs. And then when the big oh, came, everybody thought, oh, well, it's good because it's just an upper respiratory CHAC infection. But the thing is, when viruses can cross the blood brain barrier, it's kind of a membrane kind of deal that separates, like all the fluid that surrounds your brain and your

spinal cord from the rest of your body. And so a lot of viruses can't do that, right, you think about the flu you think about the cold. So the viruses that do a cross that barrier, it can be you know, it can be potentially serious if you think about like herpes can cause encephalitis. There are different other kinds of brain brain brain viruses and some quite quite

really serious. And so I think the minute we started seeing COVID show hoping people's brains was a time where people thought, you know, this thing is a little more complicated of a molecule than we were expecting. And there's been steady research since then. I will say that there's a lot of research now on long COVID, and thankfully it's not just all about medication. There's a lot of stuff about diet and different kinds of brain exercises and

activity things. There's a whole kind of holistic approach. And so I guess I would say that for people who have long COVID, which sucks, there are a lot of long COVID clinics now which there didn't used to be before, where people are looking in a much more serious way. And conversely, I do kind of worry because people got depressed after getting COVID, or confused or confused and frustrated

and depressed. And I think there was a wrong move to just give anti depressense in the beginning because nobody knew what was happening. So now the fact that this is a bit more, um, this is a bit more Um, you know, we just know a bit more about it than than we did before. Um, So we'll see. But I mean, I think if anybody's suffering long COVID, go to a long COVID clinic, I guess is the message and think about it holistically. But I guess the main

point is for something that does involve your brain. Um. You know, it's not surprising that people have emotional effects or cognitive effects. So Jonathan, you are in a tie, which means that you are back on campus and at school. Um, and no you don't and you are teaching a class on pandemic and society. Tell us a bit about that, and also, you know how how it's been being back on campus. We have another virus that we haven't been able to wrap our arms around him. Dare I say,

probably shouldn't monkey pocks. So how how are things going? Well, I'm at Vanderbilt. I'll just put it out there, and I would just say, first, the experience of COVID has been that, like pretty much all other schools, many other schools are many schools have just kind of given up. The good thing about Vanderbilt is that you can They're still doing testing. There's still a lot of awareness among the students. But there's no mask requirement whatsoever. It's it's

um mask or not. Some students mask, many don't, and it's hard to mask in college if a lot of people aren't doing it. I'm just back. My class has two hundreds toudents in it, and I'm teaching in a big lecture hall and there's no airflow really in the room. I opened up the backdoors today because there was no airflow. I kind of freaked out, and then some other professor came in and yelled at me. For making too much noise, and then I had my students do the wave to

get back at him. But I would just say that there, whereas last year, people were really you know, testing distancing, and now, like many schools, they're just kind of letting it go. Now. I'm I'm a little nervous about that, to be honest again, because number one, long COVID's a crapshoot. Number two, we don't know. We haven't opened college in this way quite yet, and so it'll be interesting to see.

And there certainly are I'll just say, in a very general sense, quite a high number of COVID cases at the school. Faculty are getting it, a lot of students are getting it. So a lot of people are getting sick here. And I guess that it's the trade off that a lot of places are making is we can't

stay shut down forever. It's weird. What I was lecturing about today was the profound irony of like, like if you went to a red state and said we're going to go back to zoom education for middle school, people would like light your tires on fire right away. But college is still like there are all these like online college degrees and stuff, like that now, so the same as a technology that a lot of colleges are using.

So it'll it'll be interesting. I mean the class I teach is called COVID and Society, and it's it's really processing with two hundred students every Tuesday and Thursday, let's let's imagine how the world is changing around us. So we're doing a lot of thinking and talking about the pandemic and it's it's great. The students really like having an analysis of something that's happening right now. But I said, like in the beginning, I don't know the answer. I

don't know where this is going. I wish I did. It changes the dynamic of the class and so it's a very meaningful class and it still feels that way. But you know, we have no idea how where is going to end up? You know, a question for you what are some of the things you know, again, like I'm not in my twenties right, so what are some of the things that the students are bringing up that for them has profoundly changed versus you know, how you may have thought or how we may think that things

have changed for us. Well, today I did a class on COVID and college, and the theme of the lecturer was how has the pandemic changed how we think about college? And I started the class talking about the GI Bill, and in the GI Bill at the end of World War two, like it was like in exchange for you risking your life and then doing the ultimate patriotic sacrifice, going to defend the country, We're going to give you the pathway to middle class, which is a college education.

So the g I Bill, you know, signaled that college was a form of patriotism really, and the sixties had debates about politics and action on campus. And then I and then I talked about a twenty fourteen study that showed that college graduates, on average, ninety eight percent of college graduates would make more hourly than non college graduates. So college was seen as the great equalizer from a socioeconomic and racial and gender perspective in terms of salary.

And then I said, how does this feel now? And to a person, the students were like, I don't know, college is really expensive now. There are other ways to make money. There are other ways to they are better ways to Like we know this guy who started to start up or he's an influencer and he's making just as much money. So I think there's been a real

conversation about what the value of colleges right now. And so it's not the theme of the class isn't just direct information about COVID, it's also like, how did it change our perceptions about a bunch of other things? And college is certainly one of them. And it's interesting that a lot of the students were like, yeah, what what does college mean? And I think the theme of the lecture was college college is going to have to reinvent

itself right now to adopt to this new economy. You know, it's funny because a couple of things are coming up for me as you as you're saying that, which is one. I think that for a lot of people, particularly you know, working adults, professionals that we're working in offices, you know, we have all been in a state of reimagining what

does work actually mean? Right I was actually having this conversation with another friend of mine who works for a big, you know, media company, and was saying that now they're getting ready to bring people back two and three days a week in person, because the corporation feels like, you know, we're a big family and you know, we should all be together and be in these meetings together and you know, having camaraderie. And her response to that was, I actually

have a family and have friends. I don't need work to be the environment for which I am building community in. And I think that for a lot of people who were able to actually delve more into their actual families and then let work just be what it is. I have these tasks to do that I then receive payment for doing these tasks. Well, I think that for them, you know, for for Corporate America and even some nonprofits, work was like this hub that we were all you know,

utilizing as the formation of our lives. And what COVID told us is that like, um, you were sold a bill of goods through capitalism that made you think that that was where your life was. It's where you get your livelihood from. But it's not where your life is.

And so people again with the you know, the quiet quitting that you're hearing about, which isn't people quitting, it's people deciding that like you're not, I'm not a mule, right that, like I'm coming in, I'm doing this job, and then I am I'm closing my computer or I'm

leaving the office and I'm done. So I think that that, to me, is really interesting in the ways in which I think that work, much like college needs to reinvent itself because so many people you see that Biden, you know, just wiped away debt for millions of millions of Americans, or at least you know, wiped away a significant amount of debt for millions of Americans, and people are looking at college and they're saying, what am I getting out

of this? If I can be an influencer or a content creator and I can make six figures right doing that, why am I going to incur six figures worth of debt in order to go get a job that only my head above water. So I think, like, that's a really interesting place that folks find themselves in. Now. Well,

it's funny because we talked about this a lot. I mean, on one hand, the reason corporations can bring people back right now is because they can right In other words, the power was all with the labors because there was

a labor shortage before. But if all of these interest rate hikes end up changing the economy back in an anti inflationary way, it puts the power back in with the corporations, and so in a way, labor just won't have I mean part of the stories that labor won't have like they'll just be fewer jobs, right, So there's more competition for jobs in effect, and so part of the reason people are they might say it's a big family, but it's also because there are other going to be

other unemployed workers out there. They can get to fill people's jobs if they say forget it. And so part of this return to work is in part showing what happens when you correct for inflation, which is that you cut await jobs. Basically, now the economy isn't cooperating totally because there was a very strong job report last time yep. But but I think that's the general idea is now

corporations feel like they might be doing this now. The other thing we talked about today, which is really interesting is so we were talking about education in general and how the pandemic has changed the politics of education. And I use the example of these untrained military people who can now teach in public school in Florida, and I said, like what I was asking the students, like, what's the effect of this going to be? And no, knock on soldiers.

I mean, you know, but I feel like I don't need to defend soldiers to like I like, it's a bullshit it's a bullshit thing that is doing right. Like yeah, But what I told them is on on one hand, I would be I would much rather give soldiers free college like we did in the in the after World War two. But so having people who have who have just been in the military and and just have I don't have a college degree and no teacher training. What I said is it's going to it's going to create

a bunch of under educated working class students, right. And so the whole idea is, it's another way of dealing with the COVID economy is to create like an untrained underclass of people who then will fill menial jobs, especially if you're blocking immigration. And so you know, there's that book The Viral Underclass by Stephen Thatcher that we're that that we're going to read part of um but um

but um. But the whole idea is basically education is changing and it's adopting to create more economic inequity by by by that that's an example, a bunch of other examples, and also all that anti CRT stuff. It was a front to be able to just destroy public education in

a way. And so in a way, the leveling out factor of education is, unfortunately, I worry, going to create a divide between people who between third grade and eighth grade were taught by someone who never took college calculus and people who went to private school who are getting you know, advanced concepts and skills. And so in a way, it feels like this is a really nefarious way to reproduce and expand economic divides after the pandemic. Yeah, and

I think that, you know, it's obvious, right. I don't know any parent in their right mind who thinks to themselves, yeah, I'm going to send my child to school and they're going to be taught by you know, Commander so and so, which great, I'm you know, I'm happy for them that they decided to go into the military. But you know what I would love is that the person that is teaching my child right actually has an education background, actually has expertise in a skill set in what they're doing.

And so what we know is going to happen is that white people who can afford to pull their kids out of schools are either going to put their children in private schools or they're going to put their children in religious institutions. Right. Religious institutions were just now allowed to now get federal money after a Supreme Court decision

was overturned. And so you're right, there is a completely leveling and divesting from public education in order to create a permanent underclass in the United States, because the only way that capitalism works is if somebody is on the bottom, and historically in the United States, we want to make sure that that is black and brown people who are under the bottom, right, because the whole pretense of desegregating schools was about giving black and brown people opportunities that

white people wanted to hold for themselves. Right. And so this is the way that sciantists and other Republican governors around the country will decide, like, oh, this is what we're going to do, because if this isn't going to affect our kids or their kids, right, it's only going to affect these people that we never want to succeed anyway.

Funny enough, in the long run, it's going to fuck us all because when you have an under educated class and you have stark economic divides, and you have fascism that comes in. There's only one direction that this all heads in. Well, also, you're much worse at creativity or complex problem solving. I mean, don't even get me started on the list. So it's a horrible strategy in so

many ways. And the other part of it is it goes hand in hand with blocking immigration, right, so all of a sudden you're going to have like an internal supply of people that we're doing jobs that immigrants did too. So it's it's horrible. But people I don't know, like somehow people aren't seeing the connection between A and B and C. Well, how can you see the connection when you don't have a teacher telling you what the connection?

Your teachers teach your teachers teaching how to field strip or rabbit, you know, or start a wonderful They'll never make it to Vanderbilt. Oh yeah ahead, No please, I was gonna say last thing for you, Jonathan. I just I do want to get a fifty thousand foot view on where you are seeing or what conversations are being had on campus about monkey pox and what projections are

for the fall. Now that um we're officially all back to school, UM, people are nervous about it, but there's not a ton of like top down I mean, there's so much uncertainty about monkeypox right now. So people are here living in dorms, and we're also like, I don't know, going to the gym. Everybody uses the same gym and stuff like that. So I do think that there's attention to cleanliness and people are worried about monkeypox, but it's

not like there's a top down dictum. And to create even more uncertainty, like, to be honest, nobody knows if the vaccine works in humans quite yet, Like the vaccine is not the vaccine was fast tracked and so there's not a lot of data. We're still figuring out the vaccine. So I still I don't know people know the strategy quite yet. Um. But but I think it's in the it's in the there's so much covid right now that people are freaking about covid. Um. So we'll just see.

I'll pay attention to that bit more and I'll ask my classmend Oh, just another day in America, Jonathan. So happy that you are my first guest back. Welcome back, well, first time, welcome, you know, welcome to the world, like now we can go around biting other people and you know and stuff. So no, but anyway, no, I'm glad you're okay. It's it's really scary. M I would also say, next week when we talk, it's not like we haven't

ever said anything about judges on this show. I think people are kind of waking up to what it means to have a Trump judge right now. Okay, you know that kind of thing. So I feel like next week we're gonna be revisiting that topical. So I would love too, because it's nothing like you know, being locked into fifty years of oppression to wake people up to the fact that, you know, we should have been paying attention to the courts for the last forty years, because now they're fun

for the next fifty. Doctor Jonathan Matzel As always thank you so much for making the time to join us on Woke. We appreciate you, Thank you and hanging there. I'm glad you're okay. That is it for me, dear friends today on Woke. F As always power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay focus. Fuck