Local Model UN students have addressed mock pandemics. This is what they’re thinking
The times 17-year-old Charlotte Gunn has been called upon to address a pandemic were in the middle of the night.
They were simulated midnight crises at Model United Nations conferences the Bellarmine Preparatory School student attended.
“Everyone gets out of bed and comes in and then we have a crisis that no one has planned for,” she said. “And I’ve had a pandemic a couple times for that.”
Students in the school’s Model United Nations program attend conferences where they serve on simulated United Nations committees to address global issues, and sometimes crises. The News Tribune asked Gunn and other students in the Bellarmine program how they would handle a pandemic as a conference topic, and how they’re thinking about the one they’re living through as teenagers.
“When we talked about it, there was just a lot of discussion around border closing and resources within countries, and the ability to just shut everything down,” Gunn said about her mock pandemic. “So kind of what we’re going through now, but none of us had experienced it yet.”
She brought up the long-term effects of the real pandemic on countries that lack resources and are already unstable. In five years, she said, that’s what she thinks the world will be dealing with.
“I think right now we’re all really concerned because it’s bad here and it’s hard for us, and we’re sacrificing a lot, but it’s going to die down here and we’re going to be able to deal with it, and we’re going to have a vaccine or we’re going to get out of quarantine,” she said. “There’s going to be a semblance of normalcy. And then it’s going to get bad in these countries that don’t have the infrastructure that we have. And I have a feeling that that is going to be overlooked.”
Luke Jouflas, another 17-year-old in the program, said the simulated pandemics usually end one of two ways.
“Just complete global collapse, where the pandemic just takes over and your committee fails, or such extreme measures of government shutdowns ... that it ends in violent political and religious protests that also just shutdown your government and disrupt your country,” he said. “So it’s kind of a lose-lose situation. Either you contain the virus or you contain the people.”
He also raised the issue of nations, such as in rural Africa, that he said don’t have the infrastructure or economic stability to combat the virus.
“They also don’t have really good ways to spread true information about the virus,” he said. “... I mean, you think the misinformation about the virus in the U.S. is bad, if you go to Africa it’s going to be considerably, considerably worse. I think honestly that’s the most important thing is combating misinformation.”
Natalie Doelman, 17, said she’s been thinking about the economic impact of the pandemic, especially on agriculture.
She brought up the more than 1 million pounds of potatoes in Washington: “that is not going to restaurants and is not going overseas. ... that’s a lot of farmers that are going bankrupt because of this,” she said.
Doelman also brought up dairy farmers, who she said have been earning less for their milk.
“We can’t ship powdered milk overseas, and China was a huge partner in that,” she said.
Benita Samson, 16, said she had a pandemic as a crisis when she was on the International Bioethics Committee at a conference.
“Both times our biggest issue was vaccinations and then also economic recessions,” she said. “We had to deal with how we would fund finding a vaccine and treating the people who were sick, while also dealing with an economic recession.”
Solutions weren’t always serious.
“There was a country that put a bubble over their borders,” she said. “They lived inside of a plastic bubble so that they wouldn’t get the disease.”
Conferences the Bellarmine Model United Nations students had planned for this year have been canceled because of the pandemic. For now, they’ve been keeping in touch with weekly communications.
They have one rule: No coronavirus talk.
This story was originally published May 22, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
