Young people’s views on the response to Covid have often gone unheard. In this podcast episode, a recent university graduate interviews three other young people, asking why concerns about their education, their health, and the vaccines have gone ignored.
University closures, remote studies, and isolating during a time of life that should be spent building connections. The pandemic has been uniquely hard for young people, but their voices have been largely missing from the debate.
In this third and final episode of A Shot In The Dark, a podcast asking questions about Covid-19 and vaccine inequality, young people take centre stage, explaining how the pandemic has felt from their perspective.
Christina Amofa, a graduate law student from the University of Warwick, interviews Nicole, Otiti and Cassina, asking how they’ve coped and how their plans for the future have changed.
Through this podcast, the students explore how Black people and People of Colour have been marginalised in the pandemic, why concerns about vaccines have been silenced, and whether they believe the prioritisation of vaccines has been fair. Nicole, a recent psychology graduate from the University of Leicester, says:
“Coronavirus has taken centre stage of, all health issues. When I think of the mental health issues that it’s caused, I don’t think that there’s really been enough support for that.”
She, like many others, has had a hard time getting assistance as clinics and doctors have prioritised more ‘urgent’ appointments. Young people were one of the last groups to get vaccinated. What’s more, medical students fell into a grey area when it came to vaccination prioritisation.
Otiti says: “The government released the groups and categories of who was receiving the vaccine first. And medical students were nowhere to be found on the list.”
As a medical student at the University of Exeter, she had clinical placements during the pandemic, exposing her to the same risks as any other frontline health worker.
Cassina, a business management and Spanish student at the University of Surrey, discusses the idea of vaccine passports, the impact of the pandemic on rights to privacy, and whether a person’s vaccine status should define their freedoms.
Find out more here and listen on SoundCloud here.
Main Image shows students attending a vigil during the pandemic – © Risingthermals.
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