{"id":44602,"date":"2024-03-25T07:12:31","date_gmt":"2024-03-25T14:12:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newmexicopbs.org\/productions\/newmexicoinfocus\/?p=44602"},"modified":"2024-03-25T07:15:10","modified_gmt":"2024-03-25T14:15:10","slug":"four-years-of-covid-and-counting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newmexicopbs.org\/productions\/newmexicoinfocus\/four-years-of-covid-and-counting\/","title":{"rendered":"Four Years of COVID \u2014 and Counting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
Subscribe to NMiF Enews<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

March 11 snuck up on me a bit this year. The date has been seared into my brain since 2020, when what we used to call the novel coronavirus swept into New Mexico with the first confirmed case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the next couple of years, as COVID-19 ravaged New Mexico and the rest of the nation, I frequently recalled the date in conversations with friends and family, in news stories I wrote and edited and in marking the kaleidoscopic fashion in which days, weeks and months seem to pass in these, the aftertimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In late February, March 11 snapped back into my mind as I was planning show topics with New Mexico in Focus Senior Producer Lou DiVizio. \u201cWe need to do something on COVID,\u201d came the obvious conclusion. \u201cIt\u2019s been four years.\u201d
\u00a0
Among the planning conversations we had\u00a0was one with my old friend Heath Haussamen, a longtime Las Cruces-based journalist who has struggled hard and publicly with Long COVID for years now<\/a>. Heath was gracious and thoughtful in helping me sort through the points we needed to hit on the show. And when it came time talk about potential guests, he reminded me that Santa Fe-based public defender Jennifer Burrill has stayed at the front of the conversation about the pandemic\u00a0\u2014 as so many others have tried to forget \u2014 and that she, too, has suffered with Long COVID.
\u00a0
I recalled that Jenn was one of, if not the first person to raise her hand in New Mexico and say she\u2019d tested positive for the virus back in March of 2020. I was working at the Santa Fe Reporter<\/em> then, and she did so in an interview with me<\/a>. Some of Jenn\u2019s concerns about our health systems\u2019 weaknesses and vulnerabilities \u2014 and her predictions about what would happen to incarcerated people as the pandemic worsened \u2014 turned out to be spot-on.\u00a0

Jenn was a perfect guest to help take stock of the last four years on this week\u2019s show, and we are grateful for her perspective. And we could not have imagined having this conversation on air without Michael Bird, former president of the American Public Health Association and a frequent contributor of wisdom and grace on New Mexico in Focus. \u00a0

\u201cThe pandemic is not over\u201d has become a hashtag and another wedge in America\u2019s maddening, endless debate over what color the sky is. It is blue, and the pandemic is not over. People are still getting sick, going to the hospital and dying; we\u2019ve just chosen, as a society, to live with<\/em> the virus. There are many reasons for this, some of which Jenn, Michael and I explored on the show<\/a>. \u00a0

We also talked about Long COVID and dug into a question that has troubled me for two years or more<\/a>: What are we doing, if anything, to reckon with the deep, collective scar we all now bear having lived through all that\u2019s come since the beforetimes?\u00a0

Reckoning is one thing; healing another. There\u2019s work to do, and I hope New Mexico in Focus can be a place to at least continue<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-Jeff Proctor Executive Producer\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n