Dr. Lorky Libaridian Speaks on Covid at CYSCA’s Annual Meeting

Armenia was influenced in approaches to treatment by various countries throughout the world such as the US, France, China, Georgia, WHO, etc., so the variety of guidelines was overwhelming, while the Armenian Ministry of Health’s resources were taxed. Many staff there too were falling sick.

Even today, Libaridian said, patients in Armenia get a laundry list of treatments, with too many antibiotics and steroids, and some might even be harmful. There is a lot of misinformation and it is difficult to communicate with providers who are overwhelmed and on the verge of collapsing. This was one similarity with the US, where health care workers also became overwhelmed emotionally and burnt out.

Effect of the Artsakh War in Armenia

As if the pandemic were not enough, Armenia was involved with a war with Azerbaijan in Artsakh. Libaridian gave a concise background for the non-Armenian listeners. She remarked that Covid numbers began to go up during the war, and though surrounding countries also had similar peaks at that time, she felt the war no doubt had an effect.

The most important one was noted by Dr. Armen Hagopjanian, a podiatrist who went from Los Angeles as a surgeon during the war. He pointed out that with patients with life or death threatening injuries, nobody cared about Covid when they came in. This, Libaridian stressed, was  a main difference of what was experienced in Armenia vs. Cambridge.

Dr. Hagopjanian, like many other doctors and nurses, got Covid while there, but continued to practice because there were no other providers, so Covid spread like wildfire. Libaridian said that she was in Armenia when the war ended and there was significant political upheaval. Very few in the large mobs and protests wore masks, as Covid seemed not to matter at that point, Libaridian said.

Volunteers who went to Artsakh from Armenia and abroad to fight took the virus with them, as did healthcare personnel. Families sheltered for days and weeks in bunkers without ventilation and then were placed on buses to Armenia, bringing back Covid.

The losses of thousands of lives of soldiers had a massive psychological effect on the Armenians as a nation. No masks were generally worn in funerals, and there are at least two documented cases of funerals turning into superspreader events, but no one cared any more. Libaridian exclaimed that the psychological effects were and still are astounding. They changed how people thought about Covid.

Another difference between Cambridge and Armenia is that Armenia has a diaspora which mobilized on two fronts, the Artsakh war and the war on Covid.

The Future

Hopefully Covid-19 vaccination will be the light at the end of the tunnel. Libaridian said that questions of trust, misinformation, disinformation, and equity along socioeconomic and racial lines continue during vaccination in Cambridge, but now there is an excess of vaccines and we need to understand as a society and city why people still are hesitant toward vaccination.

Armenia, she said, has the same misinformation and disinformation, and with the upcoming June 20 parliamentary elections [editor’s note: the meeting happened 10 days before the elections], vaccines are used as tools of criticism. Equity issues concern province vs. city in Armenia as opposed to multiethnic and multicultural roots in Cambridge. There are mobile units in Armenia as in the US to help increase vaccine uptake but it still remains very low in Armenia.

In Cambridge over 60 percent have gotten one or more doses of vaccine, though there are wide variations in populations ethnically and pockets not vaccinated. In Armenia, it is much lower, as the war had such a large impact on perceptions, Libaridian explained.

She pointed to a survey by the Republican Research Institute (IRI) about 1 ½ months ago, which asked households what their most important problems were. Healthcare was only the fifth most important. When asked what is the most important problem facing Armenia, healthcare and covid did not even make the list.

In sum, though there are similarities because of the human condition, as Libaridian termed it, the situation in Yerevan is very unique and very different because of the types of concerns Armenians have, especially as a result of the Artsakh war. All eyes were, during the time of the lecture, on the forthcoming election.

After the formal presentation, questions were taken from the audience. CYSCA’s president expressed a wish to continue a dialogue with Libaridian to see what CYSCA could do to help the Covid situation in Armenia.