Student Concert/Talent Show on Campus

 Today, I had a 7-hour shift at work (Visionworks), and when I was walking back to Boyd Hall going through the Holmes Hall courtyard, I saw a few people carrying what looked to me like instrument cases (I would only know that because I was in band and orchestra during high school) but I hadn't put any thought into it. About an hour later, I heard jazz music from my room and my roommate came into my room after coming back from a day with one of her friends, and she said she had seen a band playing in the Holmes courtyard. We were curious about it but didn't put any extra thought into it. About 30 minutes later, we were going to go to Target to get ingredients to make dinner, and when we went outside of the dorm, the band was still playing and we heard cheering, so we went over to check it out. It turns out that there was almost like a concert or a student talent show going on. We decided to sit for a few performances, and it was a really fun thing to experience. While most people wore masks, they weren't exactly all socially distancing. However, I believe there were individual groups that were socially distanced from the other groups there.

I never got a confirmation on what exactly was going on, but I assume that it was a student talent show and a concert from students in the Creative Arts LLP, who reside in Holmes Hall. I took a few recordings of some of the performances we sat through, which I'll include in this post. So, if you've made it this far, sit back, relax, and enjoy some talent from students on campus. 

I knew 2/3 songs that were performed. The first song is "Never Enough" from the movie The Greatest Showman and the second song is "I See the Light" from the Disney movie Tangled.

UK Core Issue: How Do We Distribute COVID Vaccines?

 With the pandemic, there have been talks of a vaccine coming, almost like how there is a flu vaccine every year that is created in response to the new strains of influenza that might possibly mutate in each new flu season. While there isn't a vaccine just yet, we still need to be prepared for how it will be distributed when it does come, and how we can vaccinate everyone efficiently. The question has been posed: how would you distribute a Covid vaccine to all the residents of Fayette County, Kentucky (the county the University of Kentucky is in)? If there were only vaccinations available for 1/3 of the county population, who gets vaccinated first? How do you ensure the vaccine gets to who needs it most? 

To start, the population of Fayette County, Kentucky is 323,152. A third of that is 107,717. I believe that the first people who need to receive the vaccine are college students/faculty. I think this because a good majority of college students live on campus in college dorms. These dorms are usually either a 2 or 4 person dorm room, where there is shared living space. If one person were to get Covid in the dorm/dorm room, it is very likely that whoever else lives in the room or in the dorm itself will also contract the virus. Not only that but if the people with Covid have in-person classes, or goes to different places on campus, it is likely that the virus can spread easily. To ensure everyone on campus gets vaccinated, I would do what the Unversity of Kentucky plans to do with the flu vaccine: give a certain time frame on when to get the vaccine, and provide documentation for receiving the vaccine, as well as making it mandatory for everyone on the campus to receive the vaccine. The number of students that came to campus for the fall semester of 2020 is 25,339. Taking that number from 1/3 of the Fayette county population leaves us with 82,378 people still receiving the vaccine. 

Taking this into account, I believe the vaccines should then go to either the vulnerable population (such as those with pre-existing conditions that may be more likely to contract the virus and/or the older population in the county) or essential workers. To ensure the vulnerable population gets vaccinated, I would suggest there be certain places in the county that would be easily accessible (such as a local Kroger parking lot) where the vulnerable people can go to receive their vaccine. If it were given to the essential workers, I would suggest people be administered the vaccine whenever they go into work for their next shift in the span of 2 weeks. 

Kingdom University

 Just a little more about my summer job at Kentucky Kingdom. Kentucky Kingdom is an amusement park located in Louisville, Kentucky. It consists of many roller coasters, rides, and attractions, as well as a large waterpark. I have worked at Kentucky Kingdom for 4 years now. I work in the park services department, which means I'm responsible for keeping the park looking clean. The park services department takes care of many things that other departments can't, such as keeping bathrooms clean, sweeping up eating areas, trash runs, or taking care of any animals that may end up around the guests (yes, this has happened, we had to try to get a raccoon off the roof and we take care of wasp and hornet nests as well as any baby birds that are unsafe around any guests). We are responsible for the cleanliness of the park, so we do just about anything you could think of around the park aside from operating rides, lifeguarding, and serving food.

This summer season was very different from previous seasons. In a regular operating season, the employees fill out the paperwork needed to start the job in about February and then training starts in March so that the employees would be able to work by April. However, this season, paperwork had to be filled out by May. The projected opening day for Kentucky Kingdom was June 29, which would normally be the middle of a regular operating season. Training sessions consisted of 10 people or less, so there were a lot more training sessions we had to do for the team members. I was a supervisor. The supervisors had a month to get the park clean and ready for opening day. We worked 5-6 days a week setting up the park for about 7 hours a day and we still weren't completely done by the time the park opened, but we did the best we could. 

This season also had some rules and regulations we needed to follow in order to keep the park operating. First, every employee was required to wear a mask whenever they were out in the park during operating hours. If there were guests in the park, a mask had to be on (unless you were a lifeguard and your specified area for the day was not within 6 feet of other people). The park services department had to tell many lifeguards to put on their masks this summer. We also had to require that if a guest was to go to an indoor restaurant or shop, they had to have a mask on. Another thing that we had to do was put ground markers in the queue lines 6 feet away from each other to ensure that the guests were socially distancing. We also had hand sanitizer stands about 20 feet apart from one another throughout the entire park. Not only that, but the park services department adopted many new cleaning procedures for every operating day, including sanitizing tables once a guest gets up from it.

With the limited capacity rule that was going on for the end of the lockdown, we were allowed to operate at half capacity, which made no difference from a normal day. The maximum capacity of Kentucky Kingdom (I believe) is around 60,000 guests, but the maximum capacity for this season was about 16,800 guests. This had no effect on the number of people who come to the park because in the 4 year span of working at Kentucky Kingdom, the highest capacity we've reached was about 18,000. That only happened twice. A normal week day during the pandemic got anywhere from 1,000-4,000 guests, with weekends reaching about 5,000 to 8,000 guests.

I've also decided to put in a few pictures of me with some of my best friends at work (I've worked with these people all 4 years and one of them is currently my roommate, which I think is really cool).

Pop Culture and the Pandemic

 As the world-wide lockdowns began, people needed to find ways to humor themselves to avoid boredom. This boredom found its way to the internet in the form of videos and memes; not only in the US but in countries around the world as well. 

Tiktok has been a major social media platform and outlet during this pandemic, which has lead to people to create videos in quarantine or in response to the pandemic. Humorous videos, such as the one linked here (posted on March 25, 2020, by the creator) was created to give the audience a sense of comedic relief. The sound in the video is based on a compilation of snippets from the show Keeping up with the Kardashians, which was popular to use during the beginning of the pandemic. The video consists of many aspects of the pandemic in response to the beginning of the pandemic in the US, including hand sanitizer being used to combat the virus, college students being sent home for Spring Break and two weeks after, which then turned into college classes being converted onto an online platform, and the toilet paper shortage, which happened during the beginning of the pandemic and lasted for almost a month.

In countries outside the US, incorporating popular culture into daily life was a way to get through the lockdowns, such as in Barcelona. The link to the video I'm referring to is found here. In this video (and in places like Italy), people went out onto their balconies and played or sang music to entertain each other when they weren't able to leave their residences. In the video linked above, a pianist in Barcelona is playing the song "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion, which is commonly known to be the feature song in the movie Titanic, and a neighbor, who happened to play the saxophone, joined in to add to the entertainment.

Campus Awareness

 After my long weekend at home with my family and friends, I returned to campus and passed a few of the same signs on my way back to my dorm (pictured below).

I've seen a few different signs on campus already informing students and faculty of the social distance rule and reminding everyone to stay 6 feet at all times, but I liked seeing about 4 of these signs on the short walk from the Cornerstone Parking Garage to my dorm (Boyd Hall). 

I've seen a few people not wearing masks while they were walking on campus, so I'm glad to see that the University is aware of the issue and is trying to address it in a way that anyone and everyone can see in real-time. These signs had not been on campus before I had left for the weekend, but there was a multitude of them all over campus when I returned.

411 on the Pandemic

 Something I've had trouble with is finding correct information on the virus. Up until this point, I've tried to rely on COVID trackers and any medical institute numbers on positive/recovered cases. I tend to not trust many places on giving the latest and most accurate information because I feel like any number given is just an estimate of what's really going on. There's no possible way that every place that tests for coronavirus submits the data correctly for every test they administer. There is also no true way to keep every case at bay and tracked, because some people may be asymptomatic, there could be false negative tests, and not everyone who has it gets tested. I feel like there are a greater number of cases in the world than what's actually reported, so I try to steer away from any news about it unless it were talking about the virus itself and not data on the number of cases. 

In some way, I believe the lack of accurate information has caused some conflict in my life because I'm very cautious about what I'm doing and where I'm going. I'm never sure of anything, and I've been hesitant to go around some family members in case I were to give it to them (even after testing negative). I believe in the long run, the way the pandemic has become politicized is more dangerous because there could be a LOT of miscommunication in the world. Some people may twist the story or put out false information to get publicized. In my own experience, it seemed odd to me that in March, when there weren't as many cases, everyone was very scared of everything, there was a lockdown, everyone had to wear a mask outside, and there was just all-around chaos for what was coming. Now, in September, it seems as though not as many people are taking it nearly as seriously as they were a few months ago because of how the virus has been politicized. The lockdown was lifted in June, and there was a spike of cases, even with the mask mandate in Kentucky and the nation and even worldwide idea of social distancing. 

It was particularly scary for me working at an amusement park, because almost none of the guests followed the social distancing guidelines, especially in our large wave pool. I was scared of going to work and possibly getting the virus because it had been downplayed by the news and it had been seen as not much of a danger as it had been when the virus first made its appearance in March.

COVID Scare

 This past weekend, I received a text message from one of my roommates stating that she may have come in contact with someone who has COVID. This was particularly scary for me, just because I had been planning on going home to Lousiville the following weekend. I had not been in close contact with my roommate, but I was still wary of the possibility of having it and therefore giving it to my family and friends while I was at home. I received the following text on Saturday, August 29:

Shortly after receiving this text, I scheduled a second COVID test, in hopes I could get a negative test before I went home for the weekend. I scheduled the test for yesterday: Tuesday, September 1. I proceeded to go to the test, where they swabbed my throat, almost like someone would if they were getting tested for strep (I liked the nose swab WAY better than the throat swab). 

I got my test results back within 24 hours, and it had come back negative thank goodness! Within the time of getting the text message and taking the second test, my roommates and I decided it would be best if we wore a mask in our common area and sanitized the dorm daily, just to rule out any possibility that it would be on any surfaces in the dorm.

My other 2 roommates also got a second test done, and everyone in the dorm came back negative, right in time for us to go back home and visit our families safely! :)