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College of Arts and Sciences Newsroom

UD students, professor research 1918 influenza, COVID-19 pandemic experiences

By Kassidy Lammers ’24

A century after they were written, personal letters from the 1918 influenza pandemic are helping University of Dayton biology students better understand the development and human experience of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Students are comparing the 1918 letters with personal recollections of COVID-19 submitted by volunteer participants in the “Pandemic Prose” study. Their research, led by UD Department of Biology lecturer Lis Regula, aims to recognize how biology, sociology and psychology are interconnected in the development of pandemics.

“Unfortunately within my discipline, we have often ignored the psychological and sociological experience of humans, and tend to only look at how bodies function,” Regula said. “The reality is, the way our bodies function is highly variable across time and across individuals, and it’s impacted by things like traumatic events.”

Three biology and pre-medicine majors are grouping letters into different phases of pandemic development to analyze similarities and differences between the 1918 and 2020 outbreaks. Regula said the project is an important intersection between the social and hard sciences that helps create a more complete picture of the pandemic experience.

“Biology is not done in a vacuum,” Regula said. “Human biology is intimately woven with the environment, with other people and with our experiences. It’s an important aspect, but it’s only one aspect of a person.”

Venolia Adjei, a sophomore pre-med major from Columbus, Ohio, said engaging with the historical sources and contemporary recollections has been an eye-opening experience.

“When events have a major impact on a person, seeing how they work through it is very interesting,” she said. “So it’s really fascinating to see how they dealt with a pandemic in 1918 versus how we dealt with it in the modern age.”

Despite a century’s worth of development between the 1918 influenza virus and COVID-19, the human response to a pandemic was consistent in many ways, Regula said. For example, students found themes of economic stress and a mistrust of the government present in recollections from both pandemics.

A host of differences also have been uncovered in their research, including a much less diverse population sharing their experiences in 1918. A lack of technology and different social standards made sharing stories in 1918 much more challenging. Today, recollections from COVID-19 have been submitted from India, Ghana and across the United States.

“Sharing these letters helps other people realize that they aren't alone,” said Tanmay Gogate, a senior biology major from Mumbai, India. “Our main goal is to highlight the shared humanity between people then and now. It’s really nice that we’re able to give people this community and a place to share their feelings.”

The project’s research differs from what is common in the hard sciences. Rather than working in a lab to study specific organisms, viruses or ecosystems, students are sorting through thousands of letters, reading cursive and interacting with individuals from all over the world.

Michaela Dharte, a junior pre-med major from Detroit, said the different type of research is what originally drew her to Regula’s project.

“With other research, bench work is a lot of it,” she said. “That is not necessarily my area of interest. What we’re doing is looking at the past and bringing it to the present. It’s a history-based approach, and that’s what I was interested in.”

Adjei, who worked in a hospital during COVID-19, said her work on this project has given her a new perspective on her own pandemic experience.

“I experienced COVID-19 as a student, a regular person and from inside the hospital,” she said. “Reading the letters definitely helps me categorize everything that I’ve seen and has shown me how the world deals with a pandemic.”

Regula said interdisciplinary projects like this are extremely valuable in students’ educational experiences. He hopes students will gain skills to help them view issues from different perspectives and set them apart from their peers when they pursue post-graduate plans.

“The reality is, if we are only educating one portion of ourselves, we are losing out on a lot,” he said. “We’re losing out on the content that those disciplines provide, but also the experiences and perspectives of people in those disciplines as well.”

For more information, visit the UD Department of Biology website. To submit your own COVID-19 reflection, use the Pandemic Prose project submission form.

Photo (left to right): Michaela Dharte, Venolia Adjei, Lis Regula and Tanmay Gogate.

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