My name is Gay Lynn Olsen and I wear a few hats on campus. I teach global public health and I'm the associate director of the Public Health Certificate Program on campus. I'm also a pediatric registered nurse. I get lit up about global health although to be honest, like the rest of you, I could do without this pandemic. Let me get my slide forwarded here. I think the dogs in this photo agree that we could all do without this pandemic but here we are. I teach a large global public health course. I also teach a seminar course that looks at public health in Colorado. I've developed summer courses to be held in Nicaragua and Costa Rica to give CU students an opportunity to learn directly from local residents about their initiatives to improve health and I hope to reinstate those programs as conditions allow. I thought it would be more interesting for you to hear about public health and COVID in the words of some of your peers rather than hearing me lecture. I've gathered some peers who are current students and one recent CU student to talk about these three topics here. You'll hear in the field of public health, how do we know that masks or social distancing actually works? What motivates other CU students to wear masks or practice distancing? Well, we all know it's a challenge. It's more than just a hassle, it's a challenge. What challenges do other CU students experience in implementing these preventive measures and what do they think that they'll do about it? We'll start with some introductions from our student panel here. Let me get them so that you can see them all. Here we go. We'll start with introductions so if you all could unmute yourselves. We'll start with Clara. Hi, my name is Clara. I am an upcoming sophomore at CU and I study psychology with a trek in pre-health. Just a fun fact about me, I'm half Taiwanese and most of my family are living in Taiwan right now. Okay. Julia. Hi, I'm Julia. I'm a neuroscience and psychology major. I will be a junior at this year and a fun fact is that I'm also part of the Horbat on the Hill, which is a Jewish organization on campus. Garima. Hi everybody. My name is Garima and I am the recent CU grad. I graduated from CU in 2016 and now I'm currently a medical student at Rocky Vista University, currently my second year. Aubrey. I'm Aubrey. I'm also an upcoming junior like Julia and I'm studying psychology and a fun fact about me is that I'm training for a marathon right now. Training for a marathon. Cool. Kenzie. Hi, I'm Kenzie. I am a neuroscience and psychology major and I'll be a senior this year. I'm also Panhellenic president so I help lead all of sorority life and work closely with the CU fraternities as well. Brandon. Hello, my name is Brandon. I'm going into my fourth year here at Boulder. I'm an IFI anthropology student. I'm born and raised from the Bay in California and I'm also involved with Asian Unity on campus. Asian Unity. Great. Matthew. Hi. I'm Matthew. I am an upcoming junior at the University of Colorado studying geography. I am working part-time as a pair educator in the [inaudible] public school system and also trying to deal with how to work with elementary school students with current pandemic. Maddie. Hi, I'm Maddie. I graduated in May with a degree in integrated physiology and I am now living in [inaudible]. Jenna. Hello all. I'm Jenna. I will be going into my senior year and finishing up in spring of 2021 and I'm studying political science and Jewish studies and I'm also a group fitness instructor at the [inaudible] center so you may see me there in the fall. What are you doing in Montana this summer? I am in Montana working with the public health department helping run a drive-through contact free self swab, payment free COVID test site. Great. Well thanks everyone for being here. The first question is, how do we know that these recommendations about physical distancing, and mask wearing, and not gathering in large groups actually works in terms of preventing the spread of virus? So I'm going to ask just a few of you for your thoughts. We'll start with you, Matthew. Briefly, tell us your perspective there. Yeah. There's different perspective to take on this, but for me, part of it is the documentary evidence provided by national institutions such as the CDC, the WHO. I believe there's a deficit of trust there's a lot of times in dealing with these large institutions, but if I trust my doctor to provide me sound. It's like we lost you for a minute there, Matthew. We'll come back to you if your video comes back. He was starting to say was he trusts his doctor to provide sound medical advice, and he had told me previously that he then would trust other medical experts to advise him appropriately. Aubrey, we'll move on to you. Well, something that I've seen people concerned about is that people think that there is this possibility that wearing a mask lowers your oxygen levels. There's actually a lot of evidence provided by the CDC, and the American Lung Association that refutes that idea. I've seen a lot of demonstrations of people wearing masks with an O2 monitor on. Even wearing like 10 masks piled on each other and you're levels never dropped, so it's actually a misconception. Okay. The oxygen levels don't drop when people are wearing masks, based on this evidence that you've seen. Clara, what about you? As I said before, I have relatives in Taiwan and they have told me that there have only been seven deaths in Taiwan, this entire pandemic, and that they are going back to school in the fall completely normally. When their government mandated masks, everyone complied, and along with other safety measures. I believe that their fast response to the requirement of masks contributed greatly to them only having around about 470 cases, and about 460 something recovered cases. I think that greatly contributed to that and how that they can go back to normal in the fall. Okay. Brandon, you saw something interesting on online that I'll have you go ahead and do your screen share. Yes. This particular evidence I saw, I really enjoy. It's this video using laser light scanning equipment to basically visualized droplets as they're being spewed out from someone talking, and it was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which is a pretty reputable source. I'll go ahead and share that video with you guys. Now, I'm recording. Stay healthy. Great. Stay healthy. Great. Last round. Stay healthy. This is with no mask. Are you recording? Yeah. Stay healthy. Louder. Stay healthy. Louder. Stay healthy. Stop it. This is done with the cloth mask. As you can see, visually the line represents the droplets as someone talks, and the mask pretty much covers it all up. Let me get back to the view where we can see everybody. Thanks, Brandon. So you were convinced by that visual that the masks really do make a difference in the spread of droplets? Yes. I'll add a couple of quick studies just to drive those home. There was a meta-analysis of 172 studies that looked at what really works to prevent the spread of viruses, and it was absolutely conclusive that masks, and physical distancing are effective in reducing the spread of viruses. I'll give you the link to that information later. There was another study that looked specifically at COVID. It was a study in China, and that found that in homes where everyone was wearing a mask in the home, if one person had developed COVID, it reduced the risk of transmission to family members by 79 percent. So there's lots of science that supports what the recommendations are about limiting the sizes of gatherings and distancing ourselves socially and wearing masks as well. But in the field of public health, we've done a lot related to behavior change. We've dealt with seatbelt use, with curbing drinking, with campaigns to decrease vaping. So we've studied behavior change quite a bit and we know that having solid information is a really important first step. Another step is important to have policies that are clear that people can follow, like the mask-wearing currently, for example. But it also matters what would motivate people to actually do things that they might find challenging or inconvenient. So I wanted to get some information from our student participants here about what motivates you when you think about doing something like following those guidelines. So we'll start with Garima. So Garima, would you talk a little bit about what motivates you in this regard. So I just would like to start by telling you guys that I am originally from Nepal; born and bred. So this pandemic, what happened was as it all started getting really, the numbers started getting high, our school shut down completely. For the time being, I had to go back home and stay with my parents. Just a little bit of a background, my mom is diabetic and I have an 80 year old grandma who lives with us. So given that, I had to live with my family where two of the members out of the five are immunocompromised and they are at a higher risk of not just catching the virus, but also developing complications from the virus. I had to be super careful about, you know, making sure that I'm wearing a mask, making sure that I wash my hands after I go to the grocery store and I come back, the first thing I would do it, wash my hands. Make sure that I am not in contact with anybody who is not a part of my household. Making sure that, you know, when school was going online, I'm not joining any friends for studying together or even for hiking, nothing like that. The thing that motivated me the most was my family because I have two members who are at a higher risk of just catching the virus and being very sick from the virus. I had to do everything I could to make sure that I don't bring the virus home. So, you know, it was not just about me and my safety, it was for the safety of my family. That is what motivated me to make sure to wear a mask and follow these precautions pretty diligently. So yeah. Thank you. You may know more than many people that even for newly arrived immigrants, they may be living in, a lot of people in close quarters. They may not be able to socially distance very well in their small apartments if there is lots of people. So, you know. Yes, absolutely. When my family first moved here, it was about 10 years ago and we lived in a two-bedroom apartment. It was my parents, and my brother and I. We shared a two-bedroom apartment and it was a pretty tiny apartment. I can't imagine if somebody is living in that condition and there's a pandemic going on outside. It's impossible to socially distance. For that reason as well, it becomes exponentially more important that I am following these precautions whenever I step outside the house. It's not just from me, but everybody in my family was super diligent about making sure to wear a mask and washing their hands when they come back, and making sure to not be in close contact with people who are not a part of my household. It's even harder like now that my family has a house and we have separate rooms, every one of us do. But if this had happened 10 years ago, that would have been impossible. Even just having like a simple sniffle or a cough, it would cause a lot of anxiety and paranoia amongst my family members. Yeah, so I'm just grateful that that is not my condition right now. But that's not to say that a lot of families don't have that. A lot of families still live in that condition. My family only has three generations, but there are a lot of families with multiple generations, with way more than five family members living in the same apartment and they just have to make it work. It's not just for the sake of your own health, it's for the sake of your family's health, that you have to be diligent about it. Thanks Garima. As a med student, we're going to let you excuse yourself now if you'd like and get back to studying about kidney function. Yes. Thank you so much. Bye bye. Bye bye. We'll go into Maddie. Briefly Maddie, what motivates you to follow the guidelines? Yeah. I mean, I think it's simple. It's easy to wear a mask. It's not asking a lot of people. I don't feel like it bothers me in day-to-day life. If I can wear my mask and protect myself and protect friends and family, and protect those people who are immuno-compromised and may not be able to wear a mask, or can get sick really easy. I think that's like my duty to wear a mask and so it's easy for me and I do that every chance I get. We'll hear more about your work later. Brandon, go ahead. What motivates me really to wear a mask is not only the safety of my grandma, or my grandpa, or my little cousins, but it's also people like my aunt who's going through radiation therapy right now because of cancer. Because even in this corona virus time, we're still seeing people with cancer, and people with other diseases that put them at high risk, and that's what really motivates me. Thanks. How about you, Aubrey? Like Garima and Brandon, I have an immediate family member that's immuno-compromised and it's really just given me a lot of perspective during this time. The mentality that I have right now is the, my mask protects you, your mask protects me and other people who might be at risk. As I mentioned before, since your O2 levels aren't affected by the mask use, there's no immediate threat to your personal health. The only inconvenience of wearing a mask is just wearing it. Why wouldn't you do so to protect other people around you? All right. Kenzie. As a leader and sorority and fraternity life, I have to think about not only my health and well being, but all members of the Greek community. I'm having to think about planning a semester where students feel safe, that also get to have the full college experience, which is really important. I think being a leader means leading by example. I wear a mask and social distance so that everyone can go back to living their full life as soon as possible. We'd all like that sooner than later. Yeah. Julia. For me if I get sick just because I choose not to wear a mask or if someone around me doesn't, I can't work. My job is really important to me because I have to pay for some of my college expenses. Secondly, I think the biggest motivation I have is that the director of the CDC has actually come out and said that if we were to all wear masks, we could probably get the cases under control in about 4-6 weeks. The thought of just this whole pandemic being able to go away is just, it's really keeping me motivated to keep wearing a mask. Thanks. I would say that for me one of the things that motivates me is I'd like to slow this thing down so that we can give the researchers time to develop better treatments and effective vaccines. For me, social distancing and wearing a mask and avoiding large gatherings. I'm motivated because I know that eventually there will be more science that supports people getting through this or avoiding it, and I'd like to buy some time for those researchers to do their work. Let's see. Looks like we've unfortunately lost one of our members, Matthew, to technical problems, but we'll just go ahead. The third question is really about situations. Now we have some information that we know what works, the distancing, the masks, the avoiding large gatherings, the hand-washing. We have some motivations that those of you watching might share the motivations that these students have shared, or you might have your own reasons why you want to help to do your part to decrease the spread of this virus. But we're realistic and we know that there are situations that come up where we might feel conflicted, like we want to do the right thing and yet we also want something else. I'd like to hear from each of these students here about situations where you might realistically feel conflicted even though you want to do the right thing. We'll start with Clara. About a month ago, I was invited to a work retreat where they were only supposed to be about eight people as far as I knew. All of whom I am pretty close with and I know because I trust them that they have been following CDC guidelines like wearing a mask, social distancing, et cetera. But when I got to the retreat we had rented out on Airbnb, they were about 12 to 13 people. Throughout the entire three-day retreat, they were coming in and out and I didn't know a lot of the people that were coming in and out. It just worried me and I feel like in the future if I were to be invited to something like that, just like a small social gathering, I would want to confirm with the original group of friends or a close amount of people, how many people exactly were coming and if everyone had been following the CDC guidelines and if we were going to implement those guidelines into our get-together. I know we're going to talk about this later, but parties, we all want to go to them, but we have to think about how we're going to go about that in a safe way. Okay. Let's see. Maddie? Yeah. I find it's hard when you're with close friends and family, you fall back into that routine you have with them. My own strategy is to text people ahead of time before I see them like, "Hey, I'm social distancing, don't forget your mask. " Then reminding people when you're with them because sometimes it's not even conscious. Then a trick that we have here at work is if someone's too close, we have a code word. We have, "Octopus" and we wiggle our arms around. It takes the edge off of calling people out. Maybe when you're with your friend group, come up with a fun code word and just to keep each other accountable, but to keep it lighthearted too. Thanks for that Suzen. Can you let everybody know what kind of work you're doing where this came up because that seems like an important part. Yeah. I work at the Adaptive Sport Center here in Crested Butte. We work with people with disabilities and their families in outdoor recreation and adventure activities. People with disabilities have compromised immune systems and so we have to follow all these rules so that we can keep ourselves safe, but keep this population safe who can get sick really easy. Yeah, some people with disabilities certainly do have immune issues. That sounds like a cool job too. Okay. Let's see. Julia, how about an example from you about it? Something where you might feel conflicted about trying to do the right thing and yet wanting to have some fun too. Yeah. There is a situation where I had a birthday dinner for a friend recently and I didn't really know if anyone there had really been practicing social distancing but I really wanted to go to celebrate my friend. We all just decided as a collective group that we were going to have something outside so it could be distance and we could have some social distancing rather than something inside. Say like a restaurant where there's not that much social distancing within the party. Then we also decided that it was going to be a smaller group of people. I know there can be a challenge when you're a new student, that you want to go to big events and get to know people. But sometimes, especially these times, maybe getting to know a smaller group better is another way to approach having some social life but lowering the risk. Let's see. Brandon. We were going to skip you this time, weren't we? I can talk if you'd like. Yeah, go ahead. A situation where I'd be conflicted to wear a mask would really just be casual hangouts with friends. Some recreational fun, video games or just going out to study. Because you really don't know, even if they don't show any signs, they still might be sick and they still might pass on the virus. Even if you don't show any signs, you still might be sick and pass on the virus. Really, it's important to keep in mind in this day and age other ways to try to meet up with friends. Either going outside, going to a park or something like that, where you can maintain six feet apart or always wear a mask, or you can do like we're doing and do a virtual meeting. Okay. Thanks. How about you, Kenzie? Yeah. I'm a senior this year, so I'm worried about missing out on some last memories with all my friends before we graduate, like how incoming students are worried about making those first memories. I know one thing me and my friends are really working on is making a point to hang out in small groups so we can still make those memories but stay safe while doing it. Okay. Let's see, Jenna did I miss you last time? Yes. I'm going to go around, we're going to back up. Sorry here. I realized when I looked at you, I was like, "Wait, oops, I forgot Jenna". So Jenna, can you just go back one question and talk about what is it that motivates you to follow some guidelines? There's three things that motivate me. First and foremost, masks are totally in style this season, so I have to keep up with the trends. But [inaudible] what's most important to me is I don't want to get sick, as selfish as that sounds and as different of a response from everyone else's, I have no desire to stop my life more than it's been stopped the past few months, to take more time off and to really recover in quarantine to a new extent than we experienced in March. I don't want to get sick, I don't want to get sniffles, I don't want to cough. I'm a baby when to come to it. I don't even want a common cold, but I certainly don't want Covid. But also, the people that are risking their lives who are at higher risk, our janitors, our professors, our faculty, our administration, those who work in the dining halls. I don't want to infect them or their families as well. I may be asymptomatic because I'm younger, but I don't want to get anyone else sick, what alone get myself. sick So I'm going to wear my mask, they're in style, and I'm going to keep rocking whatever my dad sews for me to wear. That would be it with me. Right to the point Jenna. Okay, now, we were talking before we started recording about this question about big parties as being something that a lot of students think of as part of college life. That's certainly understandable and that's a real concern this year. In May, there were some parties on the hill and we had had a decrease in cases in Boulder County. There was an increase after those parties and some of the increased cases were on investigation, they came from the parties. We wanted to just ask the hard question about, what if one of you is interested in going to a big party and you're trying to think it through, what are your options? How do you think about it? I thought I'd ask to Kenzie with her experience with Greek life to talk a little bit about that, and Julia as well. Right, Julia it was you? Okay, so Kenzie, you want to give us a start? So suppose you're interested in going to a big party, what are the options and what's happening with Greek life? Yeah, first and foremost, I want to say I see the alert and I understand like how fun they might be. So I get your pain, but sororities and fraternities are under really strict guidelines this semester. We are trying our best to not let that happen because we want to keep our community safe. I would encourage everyone to also be a part of that solution and start making memories with your close friends rather than a ton of people at a party. Because I promise that the close memories with your friends that you made freshman year are way better. Kenzie, thanks. Can you tell me also, you said that there were some rules about who can go into the sorority buildings and fraternity buildings this fall? Yeah, a lot of the sorority houses, their headquarters have very strict guidelines for them to follow. We're following the same rules that CU-Boulder is following. At least for my chapter that I'm in, people who don't live in the house are not allowed to come in the house. We're trying to prevent this cross-spread and really keep the women who are living in the house safe. Yeah. All right. To your knowledge, is that a similar rule for fraternities this year, or similar practices or you're not sure about that? Yeah. The IFC on the Hill has announced that they are not having any social gatherings for the foreseeable future, and from what I know based on conversations with their leadership is they are really cracking down and being like, "We want to stop the spread as well." General question, you hear there's a big party and you really want to go, but you feel conflicted. Personally right now, I wouldn't go. I'd get a smaller group together and then hang out with them. I think stopping the spread right now is super important and there's also the possibility of some punishment right now. There's been instances where police CPD have had they come in and stop the parties. I don't know what exactly the punishment was for that, but I know the thought of having the police show up at some place and get caught by them isn't fun to begin with. Additionally, I'd rather have a good group of friends to hang out with who has the same ideals as me. I just want to keep myself and everyone else safe. Okay. Did I miss anybody that was going to talk about something that we didn't get to here? I make sure I didn't forget anything. Looking okay? Thank you so much for all of your thoughts on this. I think hearing it from you guys is a lot more interesting and you guys have lived the experience of being first-year college students. You know what some of the challenges are and you also have some interests in commitment to doing the right thing and keeping yourselves safe. I'm going to finish up with a couple of slides of pointers here. I'm going to go share my screen here. Let's see if I can get to the next slides. Just a few closing thoughts. I mentioned a couple of studies earlier. If you're interested in those two studies, you're welcome to look these up. This is the first one is that meta-analysis of the 172 studies that talked about how to prevent viruses and mask wearing significantly reduced the risk, and the study that I mentioned in China as well. For those of you who are visual learners, let me see if this ping-pong analogy will work. It's something that I saw and I thought, well this really says it in a way that the picture is worth 1000 words. It might take me a minute to get this connected. This was from the Ohio Department of Public Health. Let me get back to my screen here. Sometimes we have good motivations and we know the right things, and sometimes a 20 second video like that can help drive it home, at least for me. Finally, I'd like to mention that if you'd like more information about COVID or preventive steps, make sure it's a reputable site. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, the World Health Organizations. Through Norlin Library you can look at peer reviewed journal articles like the American Journal of Public Health or the Lancet Global Health. You'll find free access if you go through Norlin. Sometimes you can't get the full articles if you Google search those. You can also look at credible news outlets like the New York Times has a COVID-19 series, or the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health has a number of series as well. If you're interested in this CU Public Health Certificate in terms of learning more academically about public health, there is a link here and my contact information as well on that. Let me get back to our panel here. I wanted to say to our incoming new students best wishes to all of you as you navigate university life in these unusual times. If you see one of the students here featured in our fine interview, feel free to say hi and that you saw their debut film performance. With that, a thank you to each of you who participated in this filming, and best wishes to all of you who are starting school this term. With that, I will sign off.
