Interview with Daniel Guo
Daniel Guo, Ana Chen
Daniel Guo, Ana Chen
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Ana: Okay, so this is Daniel Gao, one of my friends. Okay, we’re gonna get started. So hi Daniel, thank you for joining us. I was wondering if you could tell us a bit about yourself and what mental health means to you and how this pandemic has changed your perceptions about mental health or just like your everyday approaches to mental health.
Daniel: So Ana, thank you so much for having me here. I know that the magazine is doing a lot of great things and I’m really happy that I can be part of this. Uh yeah, so as you said, my name is Daniel Gao. I am from Bozeman, Montana. Um the interesting thing about Bozeman is that it is 94% white. The community is 94% white. And what that means for me, someone who is not white-um-I’m very conscious of my race and my appearance whenever I go out and about whether it’s in the classroom or on the streets or in the store. And I think, I think the way I feel about this can be best described by the artist Zora Neale Hurston who said that “I feel most colored when I stand against a stark white background.” Um... and it’s being on this constant awareness of my race that’s- you know- I’ve been thinking a lot about it, that’s- there have been times where I have definitely felt like, I have a target on my back even, just because I know I stand out that much more compared to the rest of our community. |
Daniel Guo, 2020
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(cont.) And you can see where this can go to when it comes to mental health. Um, I haven’t... I know that like when it comes to something like mental health it’s a very stigmatized issue here in America. I at least from my growing up in Bozeman *distorted audio* To a lot of people, mental health is this sign of weakness, this sign of like, vulnerability. This idea that like you’re, you’re just not making it. Um and, I think that’s reflective of the fact that like Montana is, it greatly values this idea of the self-made man, this individualism the idea that, that, um that if you work hard and you play it right and you put in all you got then, then, that’s…..you’re successful. And if you have something like mental health issues like anxiety or stress or something else taking up that space, then, you know it’s just like you’re giving into this weakness, essentially. And it’s definitely been a challenge to try to address that stigma here in this community, especially since the stigma against it is so strong. That being said I’ve seen a lot of good effort with a friend, my peers trying to make people realize that the health isn’t really just something that people just choose to have because they want to be like whiny and pathetic about it, it’s, there’s a lot of factors that play a great deal, a lot of outside factors that play a great deal in one, in anyone’s mental health wellbeing. So for me, the idea of mental health is like to be honest I feel like to an extent almost everybody is, in a way, broken. Not broken to the point that, you know, everybody’s just...you know there’s something distinctly flawed about everyone, but I’ve realized that everybody, as they’re dealing with things like looking forward with their concerns about various things everybody has a lot on the plate. And, um, with the case of the coronavirus, you get that much more added on. And, for, for some people who are under a lot of stress, who are taking up a lot, um, that is all this gets added on. And that’s very difficult. For instance, one of my close friends, their family operates a small business and while before the pandemic things had been going fine, has been smooth sailing, um their, their small business like the condition of their small business and success was such that if you had like anything large disrupt that business, things could fall apart very quickly. And pandemic was a highlight of that. And for a while, not only was he worried about his family’s financial status but I was also kind of concerned about that as well. And a large role that it has been playing in this is the uncertainty factor. And there’s not only been a lot of uncertainty, not only on just whether your small business can make it to the next day, or if you can put food on the table for your family the next day. But this uncertainty about when will this pandemic end, you know, when will we, you know, have social contact again, when can we do all these things that we have been doing before the pandemic. So, um I guess like when it comes to what mental health *distorted audio* I think we need to be more aware that, as this pandemic highlights, it's not something- that mental health isn’t something that we can necessarily have full control over. Uh, it’s certainly a lot of external things and I think that if anything that this pandemic needs to show it’s, it’s that this idea that things that like, things like mental health need to be talked about as if it’s not just something that people just have a choice to be a choice to have or that mental health means that a person would just be whining and complaining about their condition. When other people have had way different experiences.
Ana: Alright, thank you so much for sharing. I agree with what you said, and I was also wondering if you could talk about what has given you hope during this time and just basically if you have any tips or words for everyone affected by Covid-19?
Daniel: Oh boy. Uh that’s, that’s a lot. Uh yeah. What gives me hope in this pandemic. Um, I mean it’s something that I feel like a lot of our leaders have tried to express during this time and before. And it was weird because I spent a lot of time actually listening to, like, political speeches given by leaders in light of a recent crisis. And certainly like this situation is so different. I think one thing that like one of these interviews that stood out was Obama’s message to Boston after the Boston marathon. And he was obviously trying to *distorted audio* the Boston marathon was a very tragic event and the president at the time acknowledged that. But he gave a lot of very inspiring words, very uplifting words and I think that the words that he said were carefully chosen and carefully reflective of how America operates under these dire circumstances. Uh the idea is like, the idea is that in the darkest of times we see the brightest of humanity. Like for, for instance one, one thing I read, Andrew, the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo published a statement in which he said that he received a letter from a farmer in Kansas who wrote to him and said like “Governor Cuomo I know you’re very busy so I won’t *distorted audio* but I want to let you know that I, that my wife and I are concerned about the situation in New York and obviously it’s not much, but we want to help out if we can.” And he sent the governor one N-95 mask for him to pass on to a healthcare worker. There’s then doctors from university, UC San Francisco, who volunteered a flight to New York to help ease the shortage of workers that are trying to treat so many people in New York’s overwhelmed hospitals. You know, there’s this, there’s this thing about America specifically about America and about people all over the world when we have these kind of situations when there’s this urgency, this need to help one another that we actually answer the call. And it’s definitely more um, definitely enlightening to see how many people are rallying to that call and not just doctors and workers but people who we people who’ve honestly taken for granted. These essential workers such as grocery cashiers, grocery clerks, the sanitation workers, mailmen, you know, they are.... Their jobs have been essential, not just in the pandemic but throughout history, throughout our time here. And I think they’re essential not just because, like, they’re just part of... they’re just like this piece inside the bigger machine that they just that they keep the cogs turning. I think they’re essential because they are actual people that care about how others are doing, how to make sure, you know, that other people’s lives are better. And it’s just that realization of that humanity with what these workers do when they go out in light of the current crisis that definitely is very inspirational to me. Uh, I forgot what the second question was, after that.
Ana: Oh! It was about the tips or any suggestions or words you have for everyone affected by Covid-19. But I wanted to take, um, the questioning to a different route because I remember you said you were Pre-med and I was wondering if you could discuss how, um, you said the pandemic changed your views on the medical field and whether it’s changed your career aspirations or affected your views on like mental health or just like Pre-med in general.
Daniel:Yeah, now that’s a good question. Alright yeah so as someone who works in the lab of an immunology center and is fascinated by immunology I’ve definitely learned a lot from my lab about how our immune system may or may not respond to new viruses and I think that’s really interesting. I’m really, it’s really, inspiring to see like people in my lab take initiative to say “Oh we need to divest-not divest-realign our resources so we can put some effort into doing this research that may be lifesaving, not just for the current pandemic, but for all pandemics in the future. I think that, I think that’s really cool. And, and obviously like this, I think when it comes to something like public health it’s something that I’ve kind of got...have been interested in but I certainly think that understanding like, current policies such as like quarantine, staying at home, social distancing, all that kind of stuff, that definitely really got me interested in with how like public health policy tools are being used in situations like these. And that makes me think about the whole purpose of like, why we’re doing this, you know, like people, cause like the overarching argument is, you know, is coronavirus deadly or not? And is it, is it dangerous enough such that like in our society as we open up and have people carrying on with their normal lives or should it be something that we take zero chances and zero risks with? And one thing that I found in discussing with a lot of other people about this issue is the whole idea is to prevent people from dying as much- as little people as possible from dying. And one of the big arguments for opening up the country and for opening up our economy is the idea that like oh maybe we would get more people infected we might then develop a stronger herd immunity because the more people there are infected, the more people might be immune to the virus afterwards. The problem is that more people are gonna die, of course, from Covid or Covid related causes such as not being able to get medical treatment at a hospital because the hospital’s overwhelmed with Covid patients or because you’re under quarantine you’re not able to help someone in need, like feeding them or probably taking care of them, that might also be a considerable cause of death. But, but that’s the whole point. The whole point is to prevent as little people as possible from dying from the virus and that’s, that’s been the guiding principle for the current U.S. policy on stay at home. That’s what a lot of the medical experts such as Dr. Fauci or Dr. *distorted audio* have advocated for. And overall, the big idea is these human lives that, that we prevent from dying matter more than the amount of money we’re gonna lose over a certain period of time. And it’s something that I strongly believe in and as someone who’s strongly interested in medicine and wants to be, to do a lot in medicine, that’s something I deeply care about. And I think that should be the …...mentality for how we approach this crisis until we get a vaccine. And once we get the vaccine, we’re able to get a bit of feedback that people are advocating for.
Ana: Alright, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts. I was wondering if you had any last words for, uh, this interview, whether they’d be like tips for the Asian American community or any last thoughts on mental health?
Daniel: Um, okay, Asian American community. That’s a-I’m actually writing an article with my friend about why when it comes to politics why the Trump administration should not go on and scapegoat China right now. And there’s a lot of reasons why I argue that should not be the case. The first and foremost reason is that Trump is basically offering a bunch of assumptions that no one has verified to be true. For instance, he and his administration have argued that China has a lab that may have mismanaged the spread of the virus that somehow China has, that somehow the Chinese government has some agency in not responding properly to the virus and therefore causing this pandemic. The fact of the matter is, there’s no evidence if that’s the case. The only evidence that we’re sure of is the fact that China covered up the initial outcries by doctors such as Li Wenliang and others. So, that’s the only thing we can be certain of as after that, it’s unclear whether or not China had any motives or not when it came, when it comes to the rest of the effects of the virus. So, so basically Trump is operating under a lot of assumptions that we can’t prove are true yet. And I was saying that, now is not the time to prove whether or not that’s true. After the whole pandemic issue is over, then we can look into that. But the idea is that now, the U.S. and China should cooperate on fighting the pandemic and not only is China focused on that, on the U.S. and China that more than ever is important, but the fact that the U.S. by attacking China now, also may have some downstream effects on the Asian American community here. And we’ve seen over multiple times that Trump and his administration have referred to this virus as like the Wuhan virus, the Chinese virus, the Kung-flu, so and so forth. And that obviously has negative ramifications for some of us Asian Americans. Amd for someone like me, fortunately when the worst of it was happening in America when this anti-Asian xenophobia was really gripping the country I was fortunate enough to be in a place like Stanford where people just knew that like okay, you’re Asian but obviously that is by no means proof that you have the coronavirus. That can’t be true for the rest of my friends, for the rest of my Asian friends and family back here in Bozeman, where it’s again 94% white. And, it’s it’s frustrating for them, it’s frustrating for me to hear that they have to deal with that but again it’s part of that’s a result of what with our leadership in this country the fact that they that they tried to characterize us as like a Chinese kind of problem or that there’s something inherently wrong with Chinese people or Asians. And then the fact that they would try to argue that it’s not I think that, I think that shows that Asian Americans are-I don’t know where I was gonna go with this. That Asian Americans need to, not need to-shoot. I literally was just losing track of where I was gonna go with this.
Ana: No, there’s no pressure. We can always edit too, if you’re like, feeling lost.
Daniel: Ok. Yeah, I mean it’s something that, you know, it I think that this is, this is something that we definitely should hammer a lot on and like as activists, as this news reporting is this interview is about that we should make clear that this country is still facing many issues for various communities today whether it’s mental wellness or your Asian American identity. Another thing too is that Joe Biden released an ad in response of Trump’s attack on him and in that ad Biden tries to paint this image that he’s the one that has stuff on China while Trump is sucking up to his leaders and they show, the ad shows clips of Biden calling out China while Trump is complimenting Xi Jinping. The big issue that people have with that ad is that Biden kept referring to like, as a politician trying to refer to like, the Chinese government as “the Chinese” and the idea that like he’s not clear if he’s referring to the government or to the people. And I find that very disturbing, because again it seems that it could easily come across to many individuals that Biden was being xenophobic, that’s he’s pandering to the angry populace of America by serving their innate, their internal xenophobia. And this is where Asian Americans definitely need to stand up and call out on him like that, on these kinds of things. Even if it’s not like a huge institutional issue, it’s something that we need to, that we as Americans have the privilege of having, which is holding our politicians accountable for what they say. I think using that tool is more important than ever now as Asian Americans because it’s something that-it’s, it’s not right. It’s not right to just sit, to just let people say these things and just to let that happen. So with that being said, I think the mission of this magazine is more important than ever now. I think getting, conveying thoughts of what Asian Americans think and feel about these situations is definitely more important than ever and yeah so thank you for doing that job, Ana.
Ana: Yeah, thank you so much for sharing all your ideas and thoughts about mental health and Covid-19 and I like, really appreciate your time and your like, being vulnerable. So like, thank you so much and please stay safe. Love you!
Daniel: Yeah you as well Ana, love you too Ana. Take care!
Ana: Bye!
Daniel: Thank you so much again. Bye!
Ana: Alright, thank you so much for sharing. I agree with what you said, and I was also wondering if you could talk about what has given you hope during this time and just basically if you have any tips or words for everyone affected by Covid-19?
Daniel: Oh boy. Uh that’s, that’s a lot. Uh yeah. What gives me hope in this pandemic. Um, I mean it’s something that I feel like a lot of our leaders have tried to express during this time and before. And it was weird because I spent a lot of time actually listening to, like, political speeches given by leaders in light of a recent crisis. And certainly like this situation is so different. I think one thing that like one of these interviews that stood out was Obama’s message to Boston after the Boston marathon. And he was obviously trying to *distorted audio* the Boston marathon was a very tragic event and the president at the time acknowledged that. But he gave a lot of very inspiring words, very uplifting words and I think that the words that he said were carefully chosen and carefully reflective of how America operates under these dire circumstances. Uh the idea is like, the idea is that in the darkest of times we see the brightest of humanity. Like for, for instance one, one thing I read, Andrew, the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo published a statement in which he said that he received a letter from a farmer in Kansas who wrote to him and said like “Governor Cuomo I know you’re very busy so I won’t *distorted audio* but I want to let you know that I, that my wife and I are concerned about the situation in New York and obviously it’s not much, but we want to help out if we can.” And he sent the governor one N-95 mask for him to pass on to a healthcare worker. There’s then doctors from university, UC San Francisco, who volunteered a flight to New York to help ease the shortage of workers that are trying to treat so many people in New York’s overwhelmed hospitals. You know, there’s this, there’s this thing about America specifically about America and about people all over the world when we have these kind of situations when there’s this urgency, this need to help one another that we actually answer the call. And it’s definitely more um, definitely enlightening to see how many people are rallying to that call and not just doctors and workers but people who we people who’ve honestly taken for granted. These essential workers such as grocery cashiers, grocery clerks, the sanitation workers, mailmen, you know, they are.... Their jobs have been essential, not just in the pandemic but throughout history, throughout our time here. And I think they’re essential not just because, like, they’re just part of... they’re just like this piece inside the bigger machine that they just that they keep the cogs turning. I think they’re essential because they are actual people that care about how others are doing, how to make sure, you know, that other people’s lives are better. And it’s just that realization of that humanity with what these workers do when they go out in light of the current crisis that definitely is very inspirational to me. Uh, I forgot what the second question was, after that.
Ana: Oh! It was about the tips or any suggestions or words you have for everyone affected by Covid-19. But I wanted to take, um, the questioning to a different route because I remember you said you were Pre-med and I was wondering if you could discuss how, um, you said the pandemic changed your views on the medical field and whether it’s changed your career aspirations or affected your views on like mental health or just like Pre-med in general.
Daniel:Yeah, now that’s a good question. Alright yeah so as someone who works in the lab of an immunology center and is fascinated by immunology I’ve definitely learned a lot from my lab about how our immune system may or may not respond to new viruses and I think that’s really interesting. I’m really, it’s really, inspiring to see like people in my lab take initiative to say “Oh we need to divest-not divest-realign our resources so we can put some effort into doing this research that may be lifesaving, not just for the current pandemic, but for all pandemics in the future. I think that, I think that’s really cool. And, and obviously like this, I think when it comes to something like public health it’s something that I’ve kind of got...have been interested in but I certainly think that understanding like, current policies such as like quarantine, staying at home, social distancing, all that kind of stuff, that definitely really got me interested in with how like public health policy tools are being used in situations like these. And that makes me think about the whole purpose of like, why we’re doing this, you know, like people, cause like the overarching argument is, you know, is coronavirus deadly or not? And is it, is it dangerous enough such that like in our society as we open up and have people carrying on with their normal lives or should it be something that we take zero chances and zero risks with? And one thing that I found in discussing with a lot of other people about this issue is the whole idea is to prevent people from dying as much- as little people as possible from dying. And one of the big arguments for opening up the country and for opening up our economy is the idea that like oh maybe we would get more people infected we might then develop a stronger herd immunity because the more people there are infected, the more people might be immune to the virus afterwards. The problem is that more people are gonna die, of course, from Covid or Covid related causes such as not being able to get medical treatment at a hospital because the hospital’s overwhelmed with Covid patients or because you’re under quarantine you’re not able to help someone in need, like feeding them or probably taking care of them, that might also be a considerable cause of death. But, but that’s the whole point. The whole point is to prevent as little people as possible from dying from the virus and that’s, that’s been the guiding principle for the current U.S. policy on stay at home. That’s what a lot of the medical experts such as Dr. Fauci or Dr. *distorted audio* have advocated for. And overall, the big idea is these human lives that, that we prevent from dying matter more than the amount of money we’re gonna lose over a certain period of time. And it’s something that I strongly believe in and as someone who’s strongly interested in medicine and wants to be, to do a lot in medicine, that’s something I deeply care about. And I think that should be the …...mentality for how we approach this crisis until we get a vaccine. And once we get the vaccine, we’re able to get a bit of feedback that people are advocating for.
Ana: Alright, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts. I was wondering if you had any last words for, uh, this interview, whether they’d be like tips for the Asian American community or any last thoughts on mental health?
Daniel: Um, okay, Asian American community. That’s a-I’m actually writing an article with my friend about why when it comes to politics why the Trump administration should not go on and scapegoat China right now. And there’s a lot of reasons why I argue that should not be the case. The first and foremost reason is that Trump is basically offering a bunch of assumptions that no one has verified to be true. For instance, he and his administration have argued that China has a lab that may have mismanaged the spread of the virus that somehow China has, that somehow the Chinese government has some agency in not responding properly to the virus and therefore causing this pandemic. The fact of the matter is, there’s no evidence if that’s the case. The only evidence that we’re sure of is the fact that China covered up the initial outcries by doctors such as Li Wenliang and others. So, that’s the only thing we can be certain of as after that, it’s unclear whether or not China had any motives or not when it came, when it comes to the rest of the effects of the virus. So, so basically Trump is operating under a lot of assumptions that we can’t prove are true yet. And I was saying that, now is not the time to prove whether or not that’s true. After the whole pandemic issue is over, then we can look into that. But the idea is that now, the U.S. and China should cooperate on fighting the pandemic and not only is China focused on that, on the U.S. and China that more than ever is important, but the fact that the U.S. by attacking China now, also may have some downstream effects on the Asian American community here. And we’ve seen over multiple times that Trump and his administration have referred to this virus as like the Wuhan virus, the Chinese virus, the Kung-flu, so and so forth. And that obviously has negative ramifications for some of us Asian Americans. Amd for someone like me, fortunately when the worst of it was happening in America when this anti-Asian xenophobia was really gripping the country I was fortunate enough to be in a place like Stanford where people just knew that like okay, you’re Asian but obviously that is by no means proof that you have the coronavirus. That can’t be true for the rest of my friends, for the rest of my Asian friends and family back here in Bozeman, where it’s again 94% white. And, it’s it’s frustrating for them, it’s frustrating for me to hear that they have to deal with that but again it’s part of that’s a result of what with our leadership in this country the fact that they that they tried to characterize us as like a Chinese kind of problem or that there’s something inherently wrong with Chinese people or Asians. And then the fact that they would try to argue that it’s not I think that, I think that shows that Asian Americans are-I don’t know where I was gonna go with this. That Asian Americans need to, not need to-shoot. I literally was just losing track of where I was gonna go with this.
Ana: No, there’s no pressure. We can always edit too, if you’re like, feeling lost.
Daniel: Ok. Yeah, I mean it’s something that, you know, it I think that this is, this is something that we definitely should hammer a lot on and like as activists, as this news reporting is this interview is about that we should make clear that this country is still facing many issues for various communities today whether it’s mental wellness or your Asian American identity. Another thing too is that Joe Biden released an ad in response of Trump’s attack on him and in that ad Biden tries to paint this image that he’s the one that has stuff on China while Trump is sucking up to his leaders and they show, the ad shows clips of Biden calling out China while Trump is complimenting Xi Jinping. The big issue that people have with that ad is that Biden kept referring to like, as a politician trying to refer to like, the Chinese government as “the Chinese” and the idea that like he’s not clear if he’s referring to the government or to the people. And I find that very disturbing, because again it seems that it could easily come across to many individuals that Biden was being xenophobic, that’s he’s pandering to the angry populace of America by serving their innate, their internal xenophobia. And this is where Asian Americans definitely need to stand up and call out on him like that, on these kinds of things. Even if it’s not like a huge institutional issue, it’s something that we need to, that we as Americans have the privilege of having, which is holding our politicians accountable for what they say. I think using that tool is more important than ever now as Asian Americans because it’s something that-it’s, it’s not right. It’s not right to just sit, to just let people say these things and just to let that happen. So with that being said, I think the mission of this magazine is more important than ever now. I think getting, conveying thoughts of what Asian Americans think and feel about these situations is definitely more important than ever and yeah so thank you for doing that job, Ana.
Ana: Yeah, thank you so much for sharing all your ideas and thoughts about mental health and Covid-19 and I like, really appreciate your time and your like, being vulnerable. So like, thank you so much and please stay safe. Love you!
Daniel: Yeah you as well Ana, love you too Ana. Take care!
Ana: Bye!
Daniel: Thank you so much again. Bye!
On behalf of It’s Real, we would like to thank Daniel Guo for his time, thoughts, and experiences!