Author: ctnight

On June 12th, a group of students and I went to St. Andrews for the day. We took a bus there and began the day by walking through the botanic garden. Later, we walked through town to get to the coast to see the St. Andrews castle. As we traveled from Dundee to St. Andrews and then through the town, I noticed that very few people were wearing masks despite the rising number of COVID-19 cases. We discussed why we thought that people were eager to no longer wear masks when the threat of COVID-19 is still present. Throughout the pandemic, safety policies, such as mask mandates, have been heavily politicized. Since the removal of most mask mandates, we noticed that people have stopped wearing them at all, which places themselves and others at risk of contracting COVID-19. Especially in the United States, I think we need to be more conscious of the overlap between healthcare and politics and try to keep them as separate as possible. The people making decisions for the future of the healthcare system should be healthcare professionals. Also, we need to be more conscious of the way we are designing healthcare initiatives to express the longevity of certain actions. Information about the short-term use of masks was spread when this is not the case. The threat of COVID-19 is still present today and will continue to be present for a long time. 

In the evening, we met up with another group of students who went to St. Andrews that day and ate dinner together. We went to a restaurant called Tailend and saw our new friend, Emma, who is a biomedical engineering student at the University of Dundee that we met earlier in the week. After dinner, we continued to walk around, through the University of St. Andrews campus, and past the golf course. Then, we took the bus back to Dundee which ended our fun trip to St. Andrews!