In late February, PRIME writer Ashani Sharma spoke to the student behind the popular Instagram account @westwoodcovidstats. The account, which has now amassed more than 4,000 followers, has been a consistent source of information about COVID cases in Westwood. The student, who requested anonymity because of fear of online backlash, posted daily updates on new cases, total case numbers and total deaths from the virus in Westwood, in addition to general public health information.
The following is a Q&A between @westwoodcovidstats and Sharma with edits for length and clarity.
I started Westwood COVID Stats because, during the summer second wave of the pandemic, I noticed that many people my age were either actively flaunting the rules or they weren’t really grasping the severity of the virus. And I think part of that was, at the time, there was some fatigue from being locked down during ... the whole spring quarter, and it was summer so people naturally wanted to go out and enjoy the school break.
But I also think there was a larger problem, especially among young people in particular, who were growing desensitized to the data coming out of the county and the country as a whole. Because when you hear these countywide or statewide data that’s in the thousands and millions month after month, it can be very far fetched, especially when you’re also hearing that young people are the least vulnerable to the virus.
I wanted to publish daily cases on a smaller scale, in a way that people could easily identify with, and inform UCLA students living in Westwood on how the coronavirus was impacting our neighborhood. These aren’t some obscurely large numbers you read in headlines or hear on the news; every case registered is a potential friend, classmate, neighbor or a worker you interact with at Ralphs. ...
As a rising senior at the time, there was also a sense of urgency to the matter because I was still clinging on to what now would be considered a kind of naive belief that there would be some hybrid or in-person instruction or even like graduation, and I knew the only way that would happen is if students got it together and helped curb the pandemic.
We live in an age where information is very instantaneous in nature, and people also want information that’s easily shareable. ... Few people our age willingly read press releases or listen to press conferences, so by distilling those lengthy health orders and public health advice into easily read, shareable graphics, I am conveying what the experts have been saying all along but in a way that is more communicable to young people.
The day-to-day motions of posting the data starts with going to the LA County Department of Public Health website, going to the COVID-19 dashboard, and then heading to the locations and demographics tab. LA County actually publishes neighborhood-specific data every day, but it doesn’t track daily changes – so if I visited the site today and it said that Westwood had 3,000 cases, tomorrow it would just say 3,014, so had I not checked the day before, I would not know how many new cases there were. I think that’s also one of the great things about the account because it kind of fills the gap of what the county site doesn’t have space to include.
There are times when the account has also received backlash, especially in the beginning. ... Initially there were more instances where sometimes I would see comments like, “Well, isn’t this just the flu?” (or) “Oh, these cases don’t mean anything,” just all sorts of denying the severity of the pandemic.
But the great thing was that by continuing the project, the data would speak for itself. ...
There were a lot more mixed responses in the beginning just because the following base was more diverse – and now, time has passed and people know what the account does.
And that’s the sad thing too, about social media, people who don't want to see this stuff just unfollow. ... That’s the challenge that everybody’s facing now – sometimes it’s hard to get people to listen to what you have to say because they just don't agree with the fundamentals of it. There's not much more I can do about that. There's a mixed response to it.
Sometimes there are people who also DM and say slightly more hateful and inflammatory things, and in the beginning it’s a little bit hard to deal with that because you're just starting out. This is your initiative, of course you want to protect it. And that’s also why anonymity is important to me, just because I’m starting an initiative, not a war. I want to protect myself to some extent. What I told myself at the time was that as this goes on, things will change and the account’s merits will speak for themselves.
I think there are a number of things UCLA has done in terms of informing the student body that have been effective – maybe a little bit slow towards the beginning. They did have a COVID dashboard, but in the beginning it was infrequently updated and also there wasn’t much detail to show. That was actually the main reason why I used the county data because the county data was a lot more comprehensively represented than the UCLA data.
Sometimes I do get questions about this, “Why don't you just focus on UCLA students?” … Westwood is also not just students. There are elderly (people) living there, (and) there are workers. These people are our neighbors. They may not be students, but they are still our neighbors. If they get COVID, every case still matters. There are cases where people have died in this neighborhood, and that’s your neighbor dying, not some remote number or remote figure. ...
In terms of handling (social distancing) violations, I definitely think that’s one major thing the school has fallen short of because they have not been holding students who have been violating COVID rules as accountable as I think most students would like.
While they seem to have put a structure in place – there’s a whistleblower hotline, the two-tier offense system – there have been just so many incidents where the evidence is overwhelming. There are time-stamped videos of people having parties, oftentimes posted by the violators themselves, so you can see the name of this person who’s making the infraction. Students see this and they think, “OK, if I report this, surely something’s going to happen,” ... but still nothing happens.
The lack of action on UCLA’s part is really disappointing, especially when other universities like NYU or Northwestern have taken way more decisive action. Because it’s not really about punishment. There is no amount of suspension that would absolve someone of spreading the virus that (could) potentially cause someone’s death. ... People can die. People are dying because of your actions.
There have been moments of self-doubt because I felt like, I’m not an American, so what kind of credibility do I have or what position am I in to tell Americans how to fight the pandemic? And the first thing I quickly realized was just because I am an international (student) or an immigrant, doesn’t mean I care any less about Westwood or the place I live in.
In many ways, immigrants and foreigners often don’t get a voice in America. We don’t get to vote. We don’t get to shape how things are, so I am grateful that I’ve founded this thing where my voice can make a contribution to my community. ...
I am originally from Hong Kong, which had a SARS coronavirus outbreak in 2003, so I’ve lived through this even though I was very small. The city of Hong Kong tackled this very quickly, and life returned to normal within a year. ... When I see that and I think back on my experience and I look at what we’re facing now and the experience I have now, it’s a much starker picture to me.
It was that kind of perspective that gave me the drive and the urgency to really let people know that the pandemic is happening at an alarming rate. Even now as cases are going down, America should never have been in this position. We absolutely cannot afford to normalize this at all. So I think also having that perspective keeps me going sometimes because I see the way that my family (is) living back home. That’s the other side, and I want us, I want Westwood, to get to the other side too.
I know people who are mask deniers. I know people don’t take this seriously. I have my own family members who think this way. Seeing that as well, with all the information I have, I definitely take it a lot more seriously than they do. But also it’s really cool because when I try to convince them or argue with them, I have this huge bank of information that I can point-by-point list out. Usually by halfway, they're like, “OK, we’ll wear the mask probably” or “OK, we won’t go have dinner with those people,” so I think that’s also a good thing.
I do get a lot of DMs on Instagram as well, where people are just asking for neighborhood advice. I try to help them as much as I can, like sometimes I do extra research on whatever concerns these people who are DMing me have, but there are times when there are just answers that I cannot give.
Some people will be like, “Do you know why deaths are increasing?” ... Or there are people who will maybe sometimes go into some very personal roommate situations and I do feel like I’m kind of a Grandmother Willow, struggling to really be helpful in those scenarios because I know some things are not mine to say.
@westwoodcovidstats will be here until somebody from the (World Health Organization) says that the pandemic is over. ... Even though I’m graduating, I do have plans to have UCLA students take this over and continue these efforts. I’m actually still going to be living in Westwood next year, so this will still be very, very personal for me. I have no doubt that this will continue to give necessary information and let whoever needs to see it, see it.