In the past two years, monkeypox (Mpox) has had a little over 100,000 reported cases across 121 countries. Though the number of cases is steadily increasing, the spread of the zoonotic disease is under control at the moment. However, since Mpox has been declared an international public health concern by the World Health Organization, many are wondering if this could mean a return to an age of isolation, quarantine, and Zoom calls seen in the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’m somebody who deals with quite a bit of anxiety with a little bit of hypochondria mixed in there,” Mitch Perdrix, a WHHS history teacher, said. “[During the pandemic] I thought everything was going to get me sick. I saw that happen to people around too, whether it was the paranoia about the mask mandate or ‘Here’s my sniffle’ and you just freak out. It took the fun out of everything: going to movies, going to ball games, getting together with family.”
Like many school districts across the country, in March of 2020, CPS instructed faculty and students to continue with learning remotely due to numerous reported cases of COVID-19.
“For the rest of that 2019-2020 school year, there was so much confusion,” Francesca Bownas-Rayburn, a WHHS English teacher, said. “Nobody knew what the expectations were. A lot of kids did not have devices. There was no schedule for when we were supposed to be doing online learning. It was very chaotic. I think the hardest part was that it hit us so unexpectedly. We didn’t have measures in place to help everyone be successful.”
What was originally planned as a two-week hiatus turned into a nearly year-and-a-half-long period, where students would attend class via their computers for the entirety of the school day. However, many would often leave their cameras off and do whatever they pleased.
“The time that I had to spend during the school day, and especially after the school day, since I never had to leave my room to go to school, I could just kind of do whatever I wanted,” Grace Oyediran, ‘25, said.
“I took a lot of nature walks; I went with my best friend every time, and we just explored our neighborhood.”
Just like the previous pandemic, there are concerns about how the isolation due to Mpox will affect people, especially younger children who are just beginning to develop socially, academically and mentally. Even schools that remained in person limited social interaction to prevent the spread of disease.
“During COVID, I couldn’t talk to my friends that I would normally talk to at my old school because they wouldn’t allow us to talk; we just kind of sat there quietly, just trying to do our work and listen to the teacher.” Sophia Biesiada, ‘29, said. “Some advice I would give my pre-pandemic self would be to try to keep talking to [my] friends and try not to get out of touch with them, so that [I] can still be friends with them.”
Whether or not Mpox truly is the harbinger of another pandemic, it remains uncertain whether past pandemics might help prepare the public for future ones.
“We don’t know what we don’t know,” Bownas-Rayburn said. “It turned out that it was research that was done to treat the AIDS virus that wound up being really important to treating the COVID virus. So in that every pandemic kind of prepares us for the next pandemic.”
With every situation comes uncertainty and chaos that is often the result of misinformation. Paired with this also comes the distress and impatience of waiting for a solution and an end to the current problem.
“[The pandemic] got in the way of everything you did socially,” Perdrix said. “You had to constantly worry about your family’s health. And frankly, one day here and there is nice, but being in your house all day, every day, kind of drove me nuts. It was nice for your morning cup of coffee, and then once work kicked in, it was kind of panicky.”