 and welcome back to Teens on Topic. I'm your host, Senator Hughes, and today we'll be talking about the COVID-19 epidemic. So first to get us started off, we wanted to bring into discussion what this epidemic is like for us as teenagers of Davis and having our expertise and our viewpoint for teenagers around America and around the world. So with that, just putting the question what have your guys' experiences been so far with this pandemic? I would say so far my family's really lucky with dealing with this pandemic in the sense that they have not lost their jobs, were able to successfully go to the grocery store and get any supplies we need. We're not hoarders, I can promise that. But it's first things first, my family I definitely know is like very lucky, but of course we've all lost things during this pandemic. My cousin was actually affected, tested positive for COVID-19. Luckily he has recovered successfully, but I also have an uncle who's working as a doctor currently. So it's been pretty stressful. Yeah, it's been pretty stressful. We're all seniors here, so we've all had that affected. But other than that, we've been pulling through pretty okay. Yeah, Ben, what do you think? I think what's interesting from a kid's point of view is that by and large, it's not like a serious health risk to most kids, like barring some kind of other health problems. So it's mostly just an issue of how it affects our families health-wise and then kind of what those impacts are, things like prom being canceled or graduation being canceled or like there's issues that to us like seem like big deals, but then you just step back for a minute and think about it. It's like, wait, there are people who are like have lost everything and we've lost a few months of like high school stuff. I mean, it's really like it's bad, but I think we should also be grateful that to us it's really not as big of a deal as it is to a lot of people worldwide. So like I definitely think it has affected us, but we're fortunate that it hasn't by and large affected kids in a way where we see lots of kids dying. So I'm very much grateful for that. Zara, what do you think? I agree with that because I noticed like sometimes my friends are like, we should just, you know, break the law and we should just hang out. But I always see that as a concern, like because I don't have my grandparents living in the United States. So I don't really have interaction with them, but I have friends who have, you know, grandparents with chronic health problems. And I see it as kind of like, you know, I don't want to harm my friends family because my mother works, you know, in the hospital and she's still at work. And so it's kind of, you know, you don't know what's coming into the house. We don't know how things, you know, how it will affect other families. And so I see it as, you know, sure, my senior stuff is kind of cancel my, you know, college first year college will probably be, you know, fall will be online. But I think that's just, you know, something we're able to deal with. And there's, you know, you know, worse things out there for other people. And so it's kind of, I look at it as another perspective. And I just see it as just actually kind of a minor thing. So for sure. Adam, what's your perspective on this? I think it really just puts everything in our lives in perspective. Like, like Ben and Zara said, like, there's all these things that people are losing. And it really just like, makes me want to not take those things for granted, because there's things like school prom that I'm missing out on that I kind of expected to have those were like, certain in my life, things that are looking forward to. But now that they're gone, it's like, you know, you really need to like reflect on what you have before you lose it. And I think that's what this whole situation has taught me personally for sure. Yeah. And kind of building off of what Adam said, what I think is interesting is that we're seeing and kind of realizing that a lot of things which we took for granted as being like necessary institutions are actually really social constructs, like things like going to school five days a week, like it hadn't really occurred to me, like if something more important comes up, we can just not do that. We can have online school. And it's really the things that we think are like these necessary aspects of life really aren't even necessary when there's something like more important, like a pandemic that actually affects people's health and could potentially be fatal. When there are more important things than things that we view as being like the most important parts of our life, take a backseat. And I think that's kind of a cool thing to remember and just use that to keep this all in perspective. For sure. Well, you guys all have very, very positive and very self aware views on this. It's very nice. I saw a quote recently, it said that we're all in the same storm, but we don't all necessarily have the same boat. So there are those of us in society. And Zoe and Ben, you guys both talked about this, who are very fortunate in that we aren't losing that much. It sucks that we don't have prom, right? And it sucks that we aren't getting to finish out our senior year, but we also are fortunate enough to ourselves not be so impacted by the virus. And from what I've heard from many students in Davis is that, like what Zoe said, some of us do have friends and family who are affected by the virus. But by and large, there aren't that many people who are losing family members to this. But that's not the case for everyone. We see 16 million Americans who have filed for unemployment to date now. So across the country, people are losing not only their jobs, but their lives too. The death toll continues to climb every day. So same storm of COVID-19 being this pandemic, but somewhat different boats there. So going off of that, I saw the Wall Street Journal, they posted an article recently that was talking about the impact of COVID-19 on the jobs market. And moreover, on the graduating class of 2020 for college students. And so these students were supposed to be entering the hottest job market in 50 years. And all of that is now completely gone. Job opportunities have all dried up, internships have been pulled. And these kids who were majors in biochemistry, engineering, aerospace, they've all been told by their college counselors to not hold out for their dream job or the job that they've been training for for so long, and that they should just take what they can now. So what do you guys think about that situation and the students who are in that position of having to enter this recession-style job market? And what do you guys think of our futures? Do you think that it will impact us to the point of maybe looking for jobs this summer or even into college? Who? Which person would you call? Anyone can talk? Ben, go ahead. Yeah. So I mean, this obviously isn't the first time we've seen something like this, right? Like there was like the 2008 recession, then further back, of course, you have like the Great Depression. And there were just lots of time periods where obviously it's been harder to find a job. So in that sense, it's not something that's unprecedented. And I think my guess as a person who knows basically nothing about economics, I would think probably that it'll be like a somewhat temporary thing, right? Like for now, somebody who studied engineering might end up having like a non-engineering job. But then once this, like once the economy kind of recovers to a large extent, which it probably will at some point, you would think, then at that point, I would speculate that it would be possible for those people to kind of move back towards getting jobs they had trained for or dreamed of having. So it's probably mostly a temporary issue. The whole economic like crisis here, it's not caused by like some underlying economic factor, right? It's just caused by a disease outbreak that's made people need to stop working. So in that sense, once the disease outbreak goes away, I think you, my guess would be that it would be reasonable to expect a quicker economic recovery, then you would see if it were, if the economic crisis were caused by some really deep underlying economic problem that had to be worked out. Once the disease is gone, it'll probably the economic impacts of that will probably be gone at some point too, making this a pretty temporary thing. Adam, do you have anything to add on? Yeah, just going off of that. I think the hardest part about this in regards to the economy is there's no timeline. It's a virus, you know, a vaccine could be one, two years out and there's no like certainty of it being cured then. So there's no guarantee that people can go back to work in the, you know, upcoming future. And this has affected me personally too, like my parents were considering a gap year for me, but just like going off of that, there's what would I do? Like I can't work, I can't travel. So it's just like everything is at like a frozen, like nothing is going like the economy has stopped it's just hard because employers don't know when they can start hiring people again. For sure. Yeah, Zoe? I feel like, yeah, I totally agree with Adam in the sense that this is so unpredictable. I've heard several different, like I've heard several different months and several different values of time as to where this is going to end, but no one really, really knows. Like people suspect, people suspect another six months of nothing will ever be normal again. People have said by the end of May, others have said that we won't or we'll start college, if we're going to college, we'll start that online, even if we intended to, even if we intended to go out of state for that. So I, in terms of jobs, I'm really nervous because I was intending to get a job during the summer, but now that doesn't look like it's going to happen. But I honestly, I really don't know what's going to happen. It's really unpredictable. And I don't think anyone knows, none of the politicians, none of the scientists have been the most consistent yet the politicians don't really seem to be listening to them on this, but yeah. Yeah, Zahra, what's your take? Well, I mean, I see like people saying, you know, like, oh, we'll expect, you know, summer, we may be able to get out, but then they're expecting a second wave also, just based on how things have been happening in China and they were just taking it on our side, because they're kind of like a few months ahead. So I mean, I'm also seeing people are kind of noticing how much, you know, with taking on to like a global warming perspective that people are saying, oh, look at our environment now, LA has like, you know, like smog has decreased, because everyone's working online or people have lost their jobs. But like, I kind of see that as, you know, part of me thinks that somehow we have been put on hold and people are realizing that some jobs that can be done online should be done online. And that when this is kind of over those things that need to be in person, like if you're a hairdresser, if you, you know, I don't know, like a lot of jobs that have to be kind of done in person, but are yet canceled and like told to be closed can resume. But I don't know, it's kind of confusing because everyone's pushing back the date further and further. And so we don't know when, you know, someone's going to come out of a vaccine. And plus these things can every year, like if it's going to be like the flu, it's going to change every year. It's not the same vaccine won't work always. So yeah, yeah, definitely. I think these are all really, really great takes on the matter. And Adam, you had talked about considering a gap year for going into college next year. And I think that's really interesting, because I was doing, you know, just the exact same thing. The college that I'm planning on attending next fall, just today put out a notice that they think that classes for the fall quarter might be online. So, so yeah, I mean, I spent a lot of time too thinking about would a gap year be best, but then also, you know, exactly like you mentioned, what are you going to be doing during that time? So Ben, Zoe and Zara, have you guys given any thought to schooling in the fall of 2020 and, you know, college decisions and what you're going to be doing for that? Yeah, I mean, part of the issue is we don't know what'll happen. I don't think anybody knows what'll happen. I think anybody who tells you that they know exactly what's going to happen is probably lying to you. So it's really tough to make plans when you have no idea what you're planning for. So I mean, I've kind of thought about it like hypothetically, like, oh, maybe if school ends up being online in the fall, I might do a gap year. I might yeah, do something else. But then it's really tough to actually like start making concrete definitive plans for doing that when there's just as high of a chance that classes won't be online. So yeah, it's just tough to prepare when you don't know what you're preparing for. Sure. Yeah, I already committed to college and I'm also taking a summer course through that will be online. And so I kind of been, I feel like I was, you know, thinking that if it's going to be online, I should just still take it because I'll anyways, still kind of be on the track to graduating, you know, at the time, you know, 2024. So I kind of it, I think, honestly, for me, that it's, I think I would rather do it online. In my opinion, I know it would be different kind of environment. I won't be needing new people. I won't be able to kind of have those same ways that you would be having office hours with your professor. And so I think I haven't actually even considered, you know, thinking about a gap year I just, and it with the problem was also for me picking to decide to commit to a college because the college I committed to actually hadn't even visited because I was expecting the visit in spring when I heard back from all of for spring break when I heard back from all of them, I'd go out on a road trip and see them. And my top college, which I got accepted to didn't even, I can't even go, I can get see them. So it's kind of even hard because I was like, do I even feel like I can be on this campus? So it'll be also a jump to even if, you know, freshmen second semester to jump in on campus will be kind of weird because you already know your professors yet in a different way. For sure. Yeah, yeah, that's a really interesting point. Zoe, what do you think? Well, it's like for for 12 years, we've been told what's going to happen to us. Like we've been told what comes after this. And then we've also been kind of we've kind of had it branded into our minds that like, here's college treated as a necessity priced as a luxury. Here's how you get there. And then it's you go to point a point B point C point D, maybe point a point five. But at the end of the day, it's like I've always been pressed to go into college. Here's what you do, then you leave home, then you go to college and you make friends. And after that, you get a job. Now that's that's all been put to a halt this fragile like stoic system that we've had has been put to a halt. So I feel like I've not been and we've kind of been told what to do for that. So it feels like for once in our life, even the administrative don't know what to tell us what to do. So that's um, yeah, it's kind of everyone just kind of rolling with the punches. No one's really in full control of the situation. I haven't really um, sometimes I feel like I not able to afford to consider um, alternative options because I've never been told what if I what if I don't want to. Yeah, what if I don't want to go down the mainstream path now that now that everything's been thrown into chaos. So, um, yeah. No, no, I mean, I think that's a really good point there about, you know, we have been told that this is what we're going to be doing for the past 12 years, right? And and now it's kind of all changed in a matter of just a couple of months. So so yeah. And and of course given that none of us are infectious disease experts or, you know, virus experts or up there in the echelons of power, the governors or the national politicians who are trying to figure this out. Are you guys optimists or pessimists? When do you guys think the country might reopen? Zoe? I'm actually kind of leaning more towards optimism. I was I had in mind in March, I was like, oh, this will be done by mid May is not going to be done by mid May. But I still feel like during the summer, things are going to clear up. And I also think that I also think that this is where it's finally like the last straw where we're calling out the horribleness of our health care system, the fragility of our school system. I'm not saying that this virus is a good thing, like not in the slightest. It's just it's just it forces us to reflect on the systems that we've built up for so long that we've said that is the only way that things can happen like with jobs. Like, that's the only way you can do your job going into office of going into an office nine to five o'clock out. Maybe that's maybe that's not all there is and this and this whole quarantine situation is really forcing that into the light. For sure. Yeah, Ben, what do you think? I think it's really important to determine what we mean by like when this whole thing's over because I feel like there's going to be a point at which there is still coronavirus spreading among the population at which people decide that we're no longer willing to quarantine ourselves because the costs of being locked down the economic costs of having 20 million Americans not working are all of a sudden outweighing the health harms caused by coronavirus. Yeah, we saw that this weekend with the protests in Milwaukee. Yeah, right. Yeah. So I really think that at some point people are just going to decide like basically make a decision that we're going to start prioritizing the economy over people's health. And I mean whether that's right or wrong, I think the question is not when will the coronavirus stop infecting people, but it's when are we going to think that that's no longer as bad as the economic harm is being caused by it? So I think that's really just like a value judgment that's probably going to end up being made by yeah people in power or yeah politicians. So it's really yeah whenever they decide to pull the trigger and say that one of those two things is no longer as bad as the other. That's when this whole thing will end. Yeah, Zara what do you think? I think that at some point this might become maybe like I'm optimistic at some point we will you know the quarantine will have to be lifted, but I think this might become kind of like a new normal like maybe this kind of reemerges every year just kind of like the flu. And I think that at some point people will kind of have to realize that we can't just continue you know being holed up in your house all the time like you will have to go back to going you know to what we used to do before. So I'm optimistic that you know it will be lifted you know whenever I don't know when, but it will happen. Sure Adam what do you think? I think like Ben said it's really going to come down to a cost benefit analysis that is going to have to be made by our society as a whole. It's tough to predict anything substantial at this point, but I mean I'm hopeful for the summer and you know having the opportunity to go to college in the fall and just continue life is normal. Sure yeah and Ben and Adam I think those are really excellent points that you guys make about the cost benefit analysis and you know that in my mind at least this doesn't end until we have a vaccine you know it's just we do not live in a world where people are going to be comfortable going to a crowded movie theater or a stadium or a college where you know people are going to be standing or sitting shoulder to shoulder with people unless there's a vaccine. So until that point which you know vaccines take 12 to 18 months and sometimes with some diseases we never get them. So you know it's going to be a long wait for that and until then we need to keep weighing that you know that cost benefit is it you know worth reopening and we've seen that in countries around the world developing countries that don't necessarily have the luxury that America has of getting to choose to shut down. So we saw that in Mexico and we saw that in Brazil for instance the Brazilian president released a statement saying that people die of you know people have to die right and it that has to come at some point so it might as well because be because of coronavirus and you know as as kind of boorish and unfeeling as that might seem um you know when you look at the situations for countries around the world um and what could very well become the situation in America the life cost of not reopening actually dwarfs the cost of the virus itself you know there becomes a point where in the quarantines and in the shutdowns we can't keep food on the shelves right where society isn't functioning to a level where people are losing their lives not because of the virus but because of the breakdown of society and so that's why countries like brazil and mexico have chosen to keep open but on the other hand we see um countries like korea china um territories like hong kong where they reopen and they see spikes in cases so i think from that you know my take on the whole thing would be to reopen at any point before we have a vaccine would be to see a spike in cases and with that a spike in deaths but um ben and adam like you guys said it's going to come down to you know what we as a society value so you like the protesters in milwaukee over the past couple of days who have kind of made the call that we have to reopen and it's worth the lives lives lost versus um you know the opinions on the other side of the aisle so until that day you know happy quarantine everyone and i hope you guys have been been finding uh good activities to fill your guys's days and before we sign off here is there anything else that anyone wants to bring up talk about uh put on the table for discussion i think one last thing is like i don't think it's up to the the individual to make that call at like at what point should we stop quarantining like if we have some people saying yes let's keep quarantining and some people saying no i'm sick of this i'm gonna walk out outside now like the problem is is that then you have the economic harms of half of society not working and you still have people being sick so i i would say that until our society collectively reaches a point where we're comfortable saying let's end this quarantine then even if people personally feel like we shouldn't be doing it then i think they should still be complying with it and still be understanding that this is a collective decision we have to make not an individual choice sure yeah does anyone else want to add anything i will to end on a light note um how have you guys been uh spending your quarantine filling the days zahra uh well i've been kind of just doing arts and crafts i mean i've been doing a lot of also video games found some new video games to play because i finally found the time i didn't have the right essays over the weekend so now kind of had free time so that's what i've been doing very nice zoe um i've been trying to yeah i've been doing a lot of art as well and then um like going through cd cabinets like places in the house where i can like relive feelings of nostalgia um i went through like all my barbie movies um miyazaki films um and my next stop is star wars so i'm just kind of um going through like every part of the house where i was intending to say goodbye in september but then i'd be a little longer but yeah adam uh recently me and my mom planted a small garden so we got some like habaneros tomatoes and now cucumbers to my grandma uh we're working on that and then i've also just been trying to exercise as much as i can keep my mental health strong nice then i've just been reading hanging out with the family yeah just taking the time to like enjoy the things that we don't usually have time to do like like just lying outside enjoying the warm sun it's like when i have like 10 complet essays i have to worry about that's not something that i have time to do so just taking the time to enjoy those smaller things in life very nice yeah yeah i've been uh been spending a lot of time with um with the family uh going on really long walks and and i've been trying to trying to cook something something fun every day so so yeah yeah that's that's been that's been my quarantine well thank you ben zara zoey and adam for joining us here today and thank you everyone who's tuning in and i hope you've enjoyed our social distancing version of teens on topic i've been your host cedric use and we'll see you next time