A year ago, I was getting ready to attend New Student Orientation over Zoom. Then, I was hopeful that the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States was nearly over.

That summer, the average number of new cases each day had declined to its lowest point since March 2020. Although they remained in short supply in much of the rest of the world, vaccines were widely available in the U.S. On the Fourth of July in 2021, President Joe Biden stated, “Today, we’re closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus.”

But as firework displays lit up America’s skies, only about 49% of its population was fully vaccinated. Since then, the delta variant and then the omicron variant have ravaged the U.S., reaching more than a million cases a day by January. Experts have recently expressed growing concerns about the BA.5 and BA.4 subvariants, which have become the dominant strains in the U.S.

UCLA has not been spared from this onslaught. Thousands of students and hundreds of faculty and staff members were infected in large outbreaks in the winter and spring. At the same time, UCLA switched to in-person classes and relaxed the indoor mask mandate. The outbreaks on campus, however, put a wrench in those plans. For the first half of winter quarter, UCLA mandated virtual learning. The spring outbreak led UCLA to reinstate the mask mandate only weeks before the end of the school year.

UCLA’s wishy-washy approach to the pandemic has been justly criticized by the Disabled Student Union and others. But the unpredictability of the pandemic will continue to shape your UCLA experience this year.

At an individual level, we all have to make difficult choices about how best to protect our health and the health of the broader community. Whether to attend crowded events, when to wear a mask and how frequently to get tested — these decisions have often been left up to you, but they may have dramatic consequences that affect everyone.

This spring, I thought I was making the right decisions about my health and safety. That was until I started feeling symptoms and had to leave my dorm room for isolation housing in the middle of the night.

Sometimes we make the wrong decisions. But we must learn from our mistakes and strive to protect ourselves and others as much as possible.

Get tested regularly. Be careful in crowded settings. Be especially cautious if you feel sick. Email your professors and teaching assistants if you can’t attend classes or are otherwise impaired. In my experience, they are very kind and accommodating in helping students deal with COVID-19. Although, admittedly, your mileage may vary.

Compared to a year ago, the world now seems in a similar place. Cases have dropped since the earlier peaks this year but are beginning to climb again

I don’t know what the start of fall quarter will bring. But I do know that we have to remain vigilant while COVID-19 continues to mutate and spread.

As much as we’d like it to be, the pandemic isn’t over.