Safety in “Ice-olation”:

Watching a Pandemic from the Bottom of the World

By Eric Chaney

For most of 2020, Antarctica was the only continent on Earth free from the newly emerged

coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. Efforts to keep the virus, and the resulting COVID-19 disease, from

reaching Antarctic shores severely reduced the amount of travel to and from the continent during

the 2020-2021 season. McMurdo Station, the logistics hub and largest base of the U.S. Antarctic

Program, canceled much of the scientific research that normally occurs during the summer

season and cut staffing by about two-thirds, leaving a skeleton crew of around 450 people.

My sister-in-law, Michele Medori, was one of them. Michele, who had worked in

Antarctica the season before as well, left Atlanta in early September 2020 and endured weeks of

quarantine just to reach McMurdo, where she spent more than four months under strict on/off

safety protocols to support the single goal of “doing absolutely everything within our measure” 1

to keep the continent COVID free.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to add new dimensions to the hundreds of decisions

that we all make every day in regards to our safety and raises questions about the fluid nature of

the very concept of “safety.” What does being “safe” mean, and how do we determine the

relative safety of both ourselves and the people we are close to? What effect does a worldwide

health crisis have on the malleability of the idea of “safety?”

Michele, isolated in a remote and dangerous place, endured weeks of strict masking and

social distancing protocols interspersed with periods when nearly all restrictions were lifted and

life at McMurdo resembled a pre-pandemic reality that much of the world was not experiencing.

1
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, September 26, 2021.
Meanwhile, in the relative “safety” of the US, her mother, sisters, and their families grappled

with uneven enactment, execution, and enforcement of pandemic safety practices and near daily

uncertainty about their own decisions.

This dichotomy raises intriguing questions. When did both Michele and her family feel

safe and when didn’t they? How did each feel about the measures in place (or not in place) meant

to keep them safe? How safe did they feel in comparison to their loved ones in different parts of

the world?

Methodology and Scope

The COVID 19 pandemic began less than 5 years ago, a mere blink of an eye historically

speaking, yet journalists, photographers, and filmmakers around the globe have created

mountains of primary sources for historians to study in the years to come. Except, that is, at the

bottom of the world. There is no media based in McMurdo, save for the USAP newsletter, The

Antarctic Sun, which, between 2019 and 2022, made mention of the pandemic ravaging the

world just twice, and briefly at that. In such a media dead zone, studying the impacts of an event

with such an incipient historiography requires a novel approach, that of oral history.

Oral historians create their own primary sources by recording the experiences of those

who were there. There are those who believe that oral histories, especially those taken at some

remove after the events they recall, are less reliable or less important than primary source

documents created at the time. But oral history helps to fill in the gaps left by those documents,

helps to tell the history of an event “from below,” in Michele’s case quite literally as well as

figuratively. No monumental events happened during her tenure at the bottom of the world, no

“great figures” of the times were present. Her experience even be considered truly unique, as
hundreds of people shared the experience with her. Yet the oral records of her experiences will

provide a rare perspective on the COVID-19 pandemic for historians in years, decades, and

centuries to come.

Oral history is, however, not without its drawbacks as a research tool. The scope of this

project changed early on from a broad look at multiple staffers’ experiences “on ice” to a more

intimate look at Michele and her family due to difficulties in contacting sources and securing

interviews. One must be comfortable with the interview process and attempt to assuage some

subjects’ natural reticence to speak openly and deeply about difficult, sensitive, or personal

topics. My background in journalism was useful in this regard; however, my close personal

relationship with my interviewees was likely more of a hinderance than help. Yet there is at least

the possibility that, while my subjects are living, these interviews could be expanded upon in

both scope and depth.

Cognitive Inertia

Pandemics and pandemic response, of course, do have an extensive historiography. The fluid

notion of safety is not unique to COVID-19. Public health officials in the United States struggled

with many of the same issues regarding personal notions of safety during the Great Influenza

epidemic, which raced across the world in 1918.

Historian Tom Dicke noted that many Americans in uninfected areas underestimated the

danger posed by the Spanish flu because cognitive inertia — the tendency of existing beliefs or

habits of thought to blind people to changed realities — caused them to see the flu as the

nuisance it had always been rather than the killer it had become. 2 This early inertia “grew out of

2
Tom Dicke, “Waiting for the Flu: Cognitive Inertia and the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918–19,”
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 70, no. 2 (2015): 195, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24631740.
the widespread understanding of flu as a seasonal visitor that while frequently unpleasant almost

never killed the strong and otherwise healthy. This view of the flu was powerful enough that it

blinded many in the unaffected regions to the threat for weeks even in the face of daily or near

daily coverage of the pandemic's spread.” 3

Physician George Price, writing in 1919, called the Spanish flu epidemic both “destroyer

and teacher,” 4 though “it was freely confessed by all that we are at sea as to the proper methods

of treatment, cure and prevention; That we do not know as yet how to prevent and control the

spread of this disease, and that most of the methods employed in fighting it, though pronounced

efficacious by some their adherence, have been held little value by others.” 5 The “ordinary gauze

mask” Price wrote, “was characterized by many as a snare and delusion and as giving a false

sense of security.” Yet the psychological effects of the “safety” provided by masks was

“repeatedly admitted.” Price quotes the health commissioner of Chicago: “‘It is our duty to keep

people from fear. Worry kills more people than the epidemic. For my part, let them wear a

rabbit’s foot on a watch-chain if they want it and if it will help them to get rid of the

physiological action of fear.’”6

US Department of Health sanitation engineer George Soper agreed. “It must be

remembered that it is better for the public morale to be doing something than nothing and the

general health will not suffer for the additional care which is given it.” 7 Soper noted that “the

personal character of the [preventative] measures which must be employed” had great effect on

the spread of the disease especially because “the kind of preventative measures which must be

3
Ibid, 197.
4
George Price, “Influenza-destroyer and teacher: a general confession by the public health authorities of a
Continent.” Survey (Magazine) no. 41 (1918): 367, https://guides.library.txstate.edu/ld.php?content_id=54633974.
5
Price, “Influenza-destroyer and teacher,” 368.
6
Ibid.
7
George A. Soper, “The Lessons of the Pandemic.” Science 49, no. 1274 (1919): 505,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1642775.
taken in order to control the respiratory infections devolve upon the persons who are already

infected, while those who are liable to contract the disease can do little to protect themselves.” 8

“It does not lie in human nature for a man who thinks he has only a slight cold to shut himself up

in rigid isolation as a means of protecting others on the bare chance that his cold may turn out to

be a really dangerous infection.” 9

The safer an individual felt – “I don’t have it. Even if I do it’s just like a cold. I won’t

spread it. I don’t need a mask. I can still interact with others.” – the more likely they were to be a

danger to people.

“Stale Shared Air”

Antarctica, by its very nature, is a danger to people. The average annual temperature at

McMurdo is just 0 degrees Fahrenheit and winds of more than 115 mph have been recorded. 10

Much of the terrain is deeply crevassed ice, and safety training courses are required for all those

who venture off the base’s establish trail system. The United States Antarctic Program

Participant Guide which Michele was given states clearly: “Antarctica – every part of it – can

suddenly and unexpectedly become a very dangerous place. You must always keep this in

mind.”11 Michele’s family was understandably a little concerned for her safety during her first

season there.

8
George A. Soper, “The Lessons of the Pandemic.” Science 49, no. 1274 (1919): 502,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1642775.
9
Ibid.
10
“About the Continent,” United States Antarctic Program, accessed December 2, 2021,
https://www.usap.gov/aboutthecontinent/.
11
National Science Foundation, United States Antarctic Program Participant Guide 2018-2020 Edition,
edited by Jim Mastro and Terri Edillon (Alexandria, VA; National Science Foundation, 2018), 54,
https://www.usap.gov/USAPgov/travelAndDeployment/documents/ParticipantGuide_2018-
20.pdf#search=%22participant%20guide%22.
 “I mean, it's Antarctica,” said her twin sister Melissa. “There's, there's not a hospital

down the road – it's, it's – when someone needs to get, you know, serious help, they have to get a

life flight, medevacked out to Christchurch [New Zealand], and that scared me.” 12

Yet the conditions in Antarctica do provide a unique environment in which to research

respiratory diseases. In 1970, “thirteen men wintering on an Antarctic base were isolated from

other human contact for 10 months.” Some were injected with Coxsackievirus A21 and influenza

A2 virus. “Coxsackievirus A21 produced symptoms and apparently spread to uninoculated men.

It also appears that repeated re-infections occurred and that the virus persisted in this small

community for most of the period of isolation.” 13 A 1973 study conducted on bases of the British

Antarctic Survey showed that “acute respiratory infections among small groups of men during

and after isolation in Antarctica has provided fairly clear evidence that in such an environment

the common cold usually behaves as an infectious disease introduced from the outside.” 14 A

similar study in 1986 at McMurdo concluded that although “incidence of respiratory illness was

twice higher in the smaller living units than in the spacious main dormitory,” “movement of the

colds was slow.”15 A small 2019 study on a British Antarctic base reported “poor transmission of

seasonal cold viruses.”16

So, although it seems clear improvement has been made in the prevention of Antarctic

respiratory outbreaks – likely due to advances in base architecture, medical prescreening, and

12
Melissa Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, October 1, 2021.
13
M.J. Holmes, T. R. Allen, A. F. Bradburne, and E. J. Stott, “Studies of Respiratory Viruses in Personnel
at an Antarctic Base.” The Journal of Hygiene 69, no. 2 (1971): 187, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3861474.
14
T.R. Allen, “Common Colds in Antarctica,” The Journal of Hygiene 71, no. 4 (1973): 655,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3862012.
15
D.M. Warshauer, E.C. Dick, A.D. Mandel, T.C. Flynn and R.S. Jerde, “Rhinovirus infections in an
isolated antarctic station. Transmission of the viruses and susceptibility of the population,” American journal of
epidemiology, no. 129 (2) (1989), 319–340. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.aje.a115136.
16
Tom Everett, Jenny Douglas, Shoshanna May, Simon Horne, Peter Marquis, Richard Cunningham, and
Julian W Tang. “Poor Transmission of Seasonal Cold Viruses in a British Antarctic Survey Base”. Journal of
Infection 78, no. 6 (2019): 495, doi:10.1016/j.jinf.2019.03.007.
environmental controls – the potential for base wide outbreaks at McMurdo remains and is

treated by the residents as simply a fact of life. “Everyone has the 'crud.' It's very hard to avoid,”

Michele wrote to her family during her first stint. “Everything is shared, you really can't get

away from each other. The same stale shared air inside the dorms, offices, galley, etc. and all the

surfaces.”17

When The World Changed

As Michele traveled home from her first stint in Antarctica she thought, “I’ll come back, I'll look

for a job, I'll settle back in and, and everything will just, you know, just be normal again.” 18 But

things would not be normal. Near the end of their time “on continent,” Michele and her co-

workers began to hear about a virus that was affecting travel in Asia, and Michele saw a few

people in the airports wearing masks. But it wasn’t until she arrived in Atlanta that major

lockdowns were put in place. “I remember feeling very sad for Michele,” said her older sister,

Amanda Medori Hallauer. “She was here for a week and now suddenly everything is shut down,

and we're isolated, and she's not going to get a job, and she can't see anyone, so I remember

feeling terrible for her, particularly.” 19

Michele had the right of first refusal to return to her position in Antarctica for the 2020-

2021 season, so she faced a choice. And suddenly, the thing that had seemed nerve wracking to

her family the year before, seemed to Michele like the safe thing to do. “The thought of going to

Antarctica and kind of just getting out of, of the States and, and the craziness that was going on

with lockdowns and the uncertainty and, you know, not sure if you're going to get sick and so

forth, all of that was, it was refreshing to think that, that I could kind of kind of escape from that

17
Michele Medori, email to author, December 10, 2019.
18
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, September 26, 2021.
19
Amanda Medori Hallauer, interview by author, Atlanta, October 22, 2021.
and go to a different continent that had not, you know, at that time, been affected in any way,”

she said.20 “I stayed in touch with my employer, [and] I did hear that they were certainly being

responsible and putting in their own measures. So, I had to kind of evaluate that with my, with

my plan of going, of going back because there were some things that were going to be different,

and I knew that … I knew it was going to be quite strict and definitely not like the experience I'd

had the season before, but it still seemed like a better option, to be restrictive down there than to

be restrictive here in Atlanta.”21

While Michele felt like Antarctica was the right place for her to be, her family wasn’t as

sure. “The thought of one of my children being on the other side of the world, sick and me not

being there is always a fear,” said Michele’s mother Claudia Medori. “And … I had remembered

her first experience there, she kind of laughingly said ‘Yes, it's like being in a petri dish, you

know when someone catches a cold everyone catches a cold,’ and that was during the healthy

time. Well of course that worried me because I thought ‘My goodness, there's only so many

places, those people can go.’”22

“A Pretty Controlled Environment”

But first, Michele had to get there, which involved a flight from Atlanta to San Francisco, a

week-long quarantine there, a flight to Christchurch, New Zealand, 15 days of quarantine there,

and finally the flight to Antarctica. “It seemed like it was going to be really, really, really rough

to get there,” Amanda said, “… the process she would have to go through of traveling and

quarantining and that just seemed kind of excruciating.” 23

20
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, September 26, 2021.
21
Ibid.
22
Claudia Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, October 17, 2021.
23
Amanda Medori Hallauer, interview by author, Atlanta, October 22, 2021.
 While many Americans were worried about catching COVID on a plane – U.S. airlines

carried 557 million fewer passengers in 2020 than in 2019, down 60% year-to-year 24 – Michele’s

family was more concerned about her mental health and safety. Michele herself found that

traveling wasn’t particularly worrisome. “There weren't a lot of people flying,” she said. “I think

I had a row to myself [on the Atlanta to San Francisco flight], there weren't that many people on

it. Everyone was following protocols.”25 “I didn't have any fears about flying or traveling. I felt

really safe because it really was a pretty controlled environment.” 26 Control, or lack of it, seemed

to be the barometer for safety, then, for both Michele and her mother.

“They Probably All Have COVID”

The New Zealand government felt the same way. The country was quick to shut down foreign

travel when the virus had first appeared and seemed to have things under control. But a rash of

new cases appeared in August, around two months before Michele’s arrival, which sent the

country back to a higher alert level. 27 The New Zealanders seemed to feel their safety was

threatened by a planeload of Americans landing in Christchurch. Michele said she and her

colleagues felt like pariahs from the beginning. “It was just very much like we were the

American flight that had just come in, as opposed to any sort of you know New Zealand flights

that were arriving, so it felt as though we were being kept separate.” 28

24
Bureau of Transportation Statistics, “Full Year 2020 and December 2020 U.S. Airline Traffic Data,”
published March 11, 2021, https://www.bts.gov/newsroom/full-year-2020-and-december-2020-us-airline-traffic-
data.
25
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, September 26, 2021.
26
Ibid.
27
Radio New Zealand, “Timeline: The year of Covid-19 in New Zealand,” published February 28, 2021,
updated March 24, 2021, accessed December 2, 2021. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/437359/timeline-the-
year-of-covid-19-in-new-zealand.
28
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, September 26, 2021.
 The deplaning and customs procedures felt “military,” she said. 29 There were guard dogs

and “agents,” possibly from New Zealand’s Aviation Security Service or the New Zealand

Defence Force, watching to ensure that “we were following all the … social distancing and

masks and doing everything that was asked of us.” 30 “I remember the process took a really long

time, because they'd, they'd only take you know a few people at a time. In fact, it took about an

hour just to deplane because they'd only take about three people at a time. You'd have to take

your mask off that you'd worn on the flight and put on a new mask and dispose of that. Just all

kinds of real strict requirements like that.” 31 “It did kind of feel like you're walking through the

Twilight Zone because it's just a little different than, than normally just getting off the plane,

you're going through busy customs and you're excited. It was just like, it was still a lot of

unknown, like, ‘What is this managed isolation procedure going to be?’” 32 The bus ride to the

quarantine hotel felt “like a prison bus … you're being herded onto it and herded off.” Armed

guards at the hotel “were filing us in,” sorting them by last name, and “then section by section,

the armed guards would take us aside, they tell us what to expect that we were going to go and

check in, you know, one by one into the hotel.” 33

Once in their rooms they were only allowed outside the hotel in a specific area, a fenced

in gravel side yard to the hotel that “we called the prison yard, because that's what it felt like. We

have to sign in and out … [there were] armed guards who [were] watching us. I guess there had

been some previous managed isolation, people not with our program but New Zealanders who

tried to make a run for it. So, you know, there were, they're there to make sure we didn't try to

29
Ibid.
30
Ibid.
31
Ibid.
32
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, September 26, 2021.
33
Ibid.
escape.” The prison yard felt “demeaning” Michele said, especially because “there were areas

that were kind of open and people could look in.” She recalled:

So while we're masked and kind of penned up in this area, you know, New Zealand life is
going along, it's – we're right downtown in Christchurch so there's, people working or
people in office buildings, walking up and down the street. And it was definitely surreal
because you could see people in office buildings right next to you like looking out at you
and staring at us into the yard. There'd be people walking down the sidewalk and literally
taking, like looking, peering into like the pen and taking pictures of us like we were wild
animals or we were zoo animals. That's what it felt like is like we're zoo animals and
people were staring at us like “Oh my gosh, those are the Americans and isolation, they
probably all have COVID,” you know, that's what it felt like. 34

For Michele, the concept of safety had changed again. She had gone from feeling uneasy about

the virus in the United States, to feeling surprisingly comfortable and safe while travelling to

being (along with her colleagues) the object of a nation’s fears about its own safety.

“What Have We Gotten Ourselves Into?”

Claudia recalled that she worried more then, when her daughter was quarantined in San

Francisco and Christchurch, than during Michele’s entire time on ice. “Being alone somewhere

in a hotel room is not a great situation,” Claudia said. “And, also, you're in a situation where you

can't always control what's happening. And even though she kept in contact with us … I worried

about her being down too, you know, getting down.” 35

From the beginning, Michele and her colleagues knew that this was going to be an

experience that would challenge their mental strength. “I remember driving up to [the hotel] …

and it was deathly quiet on the bus,” she said. “Even though most of us had been before, this felt

so different. I think there was a little bit of fear.” 36 “I just remember looking at the hotel and

34
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, October 6, 2021.
35
Claudia Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, October 17, 2021.
36
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, September 26, 2021.
seeing the fencing set up all around the hotel and just thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, what have we

gotten ourselves into?’ We're about to spend our next 15 days in that area and [I] just felt [a] kind

of a pit in my stomach. And I don't think I was alone because, like I said, no one said a word.” 37

Michele’s first floor room had small, dirty windows and little natural light, which was “really

hard just because I knew I had … some coworkers who … had big rooms and even a couple …

with balconies,” she recalled. “I really felt like confined.” 38

Fear, uncertainty, isolation, restrictions on movement and socialization, and even lack of

sunshine are all factors that can cause depression. 39 Fortunately, those in charge were well aware

of the risks. “Every day we had at least a couple phone calls from the New Zealand medical staff

just asking how we're doing, ‘Are you feeling okay?’ I think they were checking on our mental

health as well.”40

Despite her initial displeasure with her room, Michele admits in retrospect that she was

“really quite comfortable” and “in retrospect … it wasn't bad. We're getting paid. You could use

the time … as you will.” For Michele that meant working out, watching TV, listening to music,

and Zoom calls with family, friends and even her USAP crewmates on different floors. There

was a sense among that crew that “we were all in it together,” heightened by a group Facebook

page for sharing news, gossip, photos and more. “We all communicated, mainly via that

Facebook page … that was a lot of fun. The person on the 13th floor had a fabulous view, and I

[got] to see what they were looking at.” 41 “Most of us spent most of our days just looking out the

window. That was, that was a lot of what we did.”42

37
Ibid.
38
Ibid.
39
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, September 26, 2021.
40
Ibid.
41
Ibid.
42
Ibid.
“The Little Things That Keep You Entertained”

One day while looking out the window someone noticed a “really cute dog,” a German Shepherd

whose owner walked him around the hotel every afternoon. He was easy to spot because of the

bright orange traffic cone he carried in his mouth, which, they would later find out, was meant to

curb his aggression toward other dogs. “One of my coworkers affectionately named him ‘Cone

Dog,’ Michele said. “So, we all started calling him ‘Cone Dog’ because we didn't know what his

name was.”43

Michele and her colleagues jumped on this slightly unusual occurrence with an intensity

that only boredom can bring. Sightings of “Cone Dog” became the highlight of people’s day, and

the group kept a close watch on his whereabouts. “Each day someone would be on [the]

Facebook page, ‘Has anyone seen “Cone Dog” today?’, ‘Oh, I've seen him, I'm on the southwest

corner of the building. He just passed the park.’” 44 “We got really excited about our ‘Cone Dog’

sightings, and we kind of became attached to this adorable dog,” she said. “Some people started

putting signs in the window saying “Hello, ‘Cone Dog.’” “It kind of became our own, our own

special inside joke if you will, but also … just a bond that we had, something to talk about.” 45

“It's the little things that keep you entertained.” 46

But the story of “Cone Dog” just kept getting bigger and bigger. One of Michele’s

colleagues posted a message on a local social media group dedicated to dogs - “Does anyone

happen to know who the dog is that walks in downtown Christchurch around the Crowne Plaza

Hotel every afternoon with a traffic cone?” The thread blew up, and a response came swiftly,

43
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, September 26, 2021.
44
Ibid.
45
Ibid.
46
Ibid.
“Oh, I know that dog, I know that owner. Dog's name is Marco.” 47 “Before we knew it, this

[story] had exploded in New Zealand. Everyone wanted to hear about this group of Americans

stuck in managed isolation that were fascinated with this dog,” Michele said. 48 “We all found out

that, several days after this had started, that the local news was doing an interview on ‘Cone

Dog.’ They even used our terminology, called him ‘Cone Dog.” They took pictures of him, they

referenced our USAP program. It was, it was absolutely such a typical thing of our program to

have such an odd, odd thing become national news for New Zealand.” 49

Yet “Cone Dog” would ultimately become one more test of mental strength for the USAP

team. A few days after the news stories ran, sightings stopped completely. “We were all starting

to get concerned,” Michele said. “We [didn’t] see him today and then we didn't see him the next

day and we were even more concerned and quite sad because and was a little bit of a highlight of

our afternoon, was, was to watch him and his owner on their walk.” 50 On the third day, someone

got word to the USAP crew that “Cone Dog,” had been involved in an incident with another dog.

“Ultimately, I don't know the details, but poor ‘Cone Dog’ had to be put to rest,” Michele

recalled. The owner wrote the crew a letter thanking them for their signs and letting them know

that “she recognized that we all loved her dog. And we sent, we sent a card and some flowers to

ah – [chuckles] it sounds so odd –to the owner, because we were able to find their address and

we collected money and sent a sent a sympathy card to this New Zealander from the loss of her

dog.”51

Michele and her colleagues mourned “Cone Dog” as best they could with their limited

resources. “One of my coworkers [is] an artist and he made a rendering of ‘Cone Dog’ with his

47
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, September 26, 2021.
48
Ibid.
49
Ibid.
50
Ibid.
51
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, September 26, 2021.
cone in his mouth, and we made stickers. So, we all have stickers of ‘Cone Dog.’ The hotel we

were staying at put [a] picture up on their TV in the lobby so that we could look at a picture of

‘Cone Dog’ every time we came down into the lobby. So, it was quite the memorial.” 52Still, the

blow to morale was immense. “We were devastated. It was like our own pet had just been put

down, you know, [he] was our little slice of joy in our very dismal day. It felt so unfair and

sad.”53

Lockdown On Ice

Hopefully, Michele thought, she could leave her experiences in New Zealand behind when she

headed south, thought that she might finally be “safe,” or at least “safer,” both physically and

mentally. She had, she said, “a little bit of false sense of hope that when I did get to Antarctica, I

was kind of escaping, you know.”54 But the United States Antarctic Program had been clear with

her and her colleagues that the number one priority was to prevent COVID from reaching the

continent and had “put a huge kind of action plan together about what it was going to look like

on station.”55 “It's not like we got there and suddenly we didn't have to wear masks or we didn't

have to social distance or we didn't have to sanitize,” Michele said. “It was quite the opposite,

where it was every single policy and protocol we had … emphasized those precautionary

measures, possibly even more so than some employers were doing in the States.” 56

Lockdown levels were coded red, yellow, and green. Red level, a confirmed case of

COVID on station, thankfully never happened, Michele said, but they did do an “eye-opening”

drill. “What we learned from that drill was that basically if the virus ever came on station,

52
Ibid.
53
Ibid.
54
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, October 6, 2021.
55
Ibid.
56
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, October 6, 2021.
everyone would have it. We just have too many small spaces and too much close contact on …

this little base.”57 To ensure that never happened, the strict protocols of yellow level were

invoked whenever there were “anticipated risks” such as a flight coming in, any situation “where

there could be some chance of some transmittal.”58 “Actually, yellow would commence as soon

as the wheels were up in New Zealand,” Michele said. “So as soon as a flight left New Zealand,

we had to go in yellow, which was, which was obnoxious because they're not there yet. But it

was just an effort of everyone across station to be ready.” 59

Getting ready meant wearing masks full time and reinstating capacity limits in various

buildings, conditions which lasted seven days after a flight landed in Antarctica. Resupply flights

to McMurdo are heavily dependent on the weather; planes often turn back just hours before they

are scheduled to land. The constant shifts in schedule meant multiple yellow level periods might

be tacked on to each other as flights were pushed by a day or two. Michele and her colleagues

knew that level yellow was the “very last line of defense,” their “last chance to make sure, for the

safety of ourselves and our and our friends and coworkers that … we don't bring this virus on

station.”60

Yet at times it felt almost too safe. “So even though every person arriving on station had

gone through MIQ process [Managed Isolation and Quarantine], it was still – level yellow was

really difficult because we all felt like, we're fine, we're safe.” 61 “Why are we still having to deal

with some of these same restrictions when we've already done so much to be safe?” 62

57
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, September 26, 2021.
58
Ibid.
59
Ibid.
60
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, September 26, 2021.
61
Ibid.
62
Ibid.
“You're Flexible, You Make Do”

Physical safety from the virus again came at a cost to mental health. Michele and her colleagues,

already isolated from friends and family back home, were being asked to retreat even further

from human connection. Yellow level “could be quite lonely,” she said. “It was, it was …

usually the morale was quite low, energy was pretty low when station was, was in yellow.” 63

“After a long, long stretch of yellow where it just felt the energy was so low, and you would just

walk down the hall and you wouldn't even make eye contact with people anymore,” Michele

recalled. “It just kind of was your routine, go get your food, go back to your office, go back to

your room.”64

Michele’s office, as with any human resources office, became a haven for some. “I'd

often have people just come and just chat and just drop by the office and talk about whatever's on

their mind or whatever might be weighing on them.” 65 “Some people are having a particularly

rough time this season,” she wrote to friends in October, “as they have naturally heightened fears

and anxieties from leaving loved ones behind during a pandemic, in a turbulent political climate,

and of course being so, so far away.” 66 Michele was battling those same emotions. “She was very

emotionally torn” about going back to Antarctica, said her sister Amanda. “She felt awful about

leaving and being so far away from family during the time, during this pandemic time when

things were so scary and uncertain, it was a big emotional toll on her I think, thinking about

being far away from family when there was so much risk and … the world was in such an

uncertain place in time.”67

63
Ibid.
64
Ibid.
65
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, October 6, 2021
66
Michele Medori, email to author, October 26, 2020.
67
Amanda Medori Hallauer, interview by author, Atlanta, October 22, 2021.
 So how did Michele and her colleagues balance the needs of the USAP program with

their own mental health? Some were more successful than others. Some decided that the program

needed to take a backseat. “Throughout the season, [a few people] came to me and had to resign

or requested to go home because they had, you know, child, spouse, etc., come down with

COVID and they felt the right thing to do was to go back home and be with them.” 68

For those who stayed, Michele said, the philosophy was simple: “You're flexible, you

make do.” 69 Part of making do meant finding joy in the little things. In November a plane

arrived with 1.5 tons of mail, a “super exciting” event that greatly increased the “overall general

sense of happiness and morale boost.” Michele wrote to friends and family to thank someone for

a “mystery package. I haven’t discovered who my secret Amazon sender is, but it was an

amazing and delicious surprise!70

When a period of yellow cancelled Christmas Eve dinner, normally “a huge, beautiful

occasion where everyone dresses up and we have amazing food in the galley,” Michele “made

do” by scaling things down to one of the station’s lounge areas. She and five girlfriends, the

maximum amount of people allowed to gather together, “sat in our pajamas and watched

Christmas movies and we went and picked up the delicious food from the galley but brought it

back and we just enjoyed each other's company.” 71

Michele is someone who always tries to look on the positive side, and looking back, her

fondest memories are of the connections she made. “It was a very intimate season, where I got to

know my, some friends, much better than I had the year before” she recalled. “We’d gotten to

68
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, October 6, 2021
69
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, September 26, 2021
70
Michele Medori, email to author, November 30, 2020.
71
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, September 26, 2021
really spend some good time together, so [by the end] I wasn't quite ready to leave because I was

really enjoying my time there.”72

“Throw Your Masks Up in The Air”

When the station wasn’t in yellow, it was easy to enjoy her time there. Interspersed throughout

her season were periods of green level, where the strict safety measures paid off to create an

environment where “we can go about our lives as we please.” 73 “We just, we get to live normal

life. So, like no one else in the world was really getting to do that, but we were. We – you could,

you could sit at a table and eat with friends, you could go to a bar, you could, um, you could just

live your normal life, and that was level green.” 74

The transition from yellow to green was celebrated literally the second it happened. Base

staff erected a large clock in the main office building and staff would line the hallways, counting

down “just like those New Year's Eve, you know, 5-4-3-2-1,” Michele said. “And then throw

your masks up in the air, everyone's cheering, hugging each other because they can again. So it

was, it was pretty silly, but we definitely made a little event out of it.” 75

The perks of level green were considerable. After the masks came off, “we’d make plans

to go to the bar that evening, or we'd make plans to you know get together with people, play

games, whatever it might be. It was you know, basically the same as pre-COVID times … really,

really enjoyable, and we really savored all that time.” 76

Michele even got to attend a surprise wedding, held during the annual “fancy” party at

the Waste Barn. Two Antarcticans, whose mainland wedding had been postponed by COVID,

72
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, October 6, 2021
73
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, September 26, 2021.
74
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, September 26, 2021.
75
Ibid.
76
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, October 6, 2021.
decided to tie the knot in a “true legit wedding in front of everyone.” “It was absolutely

something that I … did not think I was gonna see down there, and it just made – it was like this

little piece of normalcy,” Michele said. “And it just kind of reminded me like hey, things might

be different and things might be a little weird but doesn't mean you can't still do, live life the

way, the same way that, that you would before.” 77 Normalcy, of course, translates to safety. But

the feeling of complete safety felt “a little bit, almost irresponsible that we got to kind of

continue living our life when, when no one else did, and, and again we have that complete lack

of really any concern for the virus like some at home would have to have.” 78

Some at home were, quite frankly, feeling a little jealous, said Melissa. “It was hilarious

because they were doing so much that we hadn't done and you know no one had been able to do

in so long. They were having, you know get togethers, parties even, you know, just, even just

hanging out in someone's room. Those are just things that we still weren't considering here.” 79

Claudia recalled, “We often laughed about the fact, after a while I was sitting here in my house

not going anywhere and not seeing people very often and every time I talked to her she would

say, ‘Oh, it's, it's trivia night’ or ‘We’re going to a concert’ or ‘We’re going to the next base for

…’” “And I'm thinking, ‘She's having a lot more fun than we are, A LOT more fun than we are.’

So, it began to be kind of comical.”80

The Reversal of Fears

77
Ibid.
78
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, September 26, 2021.
79
Melissa Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, October 1, 2021.
80
Claudia Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, October 17, 2021.
The initial fears that Michele’s family had for her safety began to fade as they, and she, realized

that despite Antarctica’s remoteness and harsh environment, she was in a relatively safer position

than they were. Melissa recalled:

At first, I probably would have leaned toward, I was safer because I knew what I was
doing, I knew that I wasn't, you know, leaving my house very often, I knew, I knew what
was at stake for me. It was the unknown that I wasn't really sure of with her. But then
again as, as they went through a few weeks and the process was pretty strict and we knew
that they were doing everything … they were doing everything correctly. So that made
me think that they were safer because they actually were adhering to mandates and
regulations.81

Claudia, though she said she “did not spend time worrying” about herself, was at an age where

extra precautions were a must. During a particularly heartbreaking month, she lost six friends to

the disease. She admitted that “after Michele had … been [in Antarctica] a few weeks, I

definitely felt she was more safe.” “She was able to tell us all the time the precautions, the times

that they would go into, you know, quarantine every time a plane would come in and that sort of

thing. And I just, I just felt that probably they were taking a lot more precautions than the people

in my neighborhood were.”82

Michele’s older sister agreed that her Michele was safer, partially because “our

government seemed to be doing absolutely nothing, you know [laughs], to, to manage

[COVID’s] spread.” Amanda recalled spending months hunkered down at home with her

husband and two sons. “It was just frightening. Everything was so unknown and scary. Are we

going to catch this disease? And how are we going to keep our families safe?” 83

Michele, meanwhile, felt fairly good about her family’s safety during the early stages of

her journey, when she herself was navigating New Zealand’s managed isolation procedures. “At

81
Melissa Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, October 1, 2021.
82
Claudia Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, October 17, 2021.
83
Amanda Medori Hallauer, interview by author, Atlanta, October 22, 2021.
that time I didn't have too much concern about my immediate, my immediate family because I

knew that they were all taking it seriously. They were working from home, they weren't doing

anything risky or, or, you know, traveling, you know, I didn't, I didn't have a lot of concerns,

quite yet.”84 But as her season progressed, there was a “little sense of survivor's guilt … we

never really truly had the fear that we were going to get COVID. Whereas you know our friends

and family back home did have to deal with that fear every day of, you know, whatever they

were doing that day, if they were someone that had to go to work, where they, you know, work

in hospitals or they work in schools, you know, they had to deal with that fear that we didn't have

to.”85 When asked who she felt was safer later in the season, the answer was immediate – “Oh,

definitely me.” However, she recalled:

It wasn't like we arrived there and just, “Hey we're safe” and forgot about it. People were
still concerned about, about family and friends at home. They were concerned that, you
know, they were kind of locked up at home. Many people, you know, were from cities
and towns where there's more serious lockdowns. People would still want to check back
in, back home and find out what are the numbers looking like are things improving in
their respective areas, you know, are their families healthy, are they sick. I mean it was, it
was still present in everyone's minds.86

Conclusions

Michele’s experiences, both on and off continent, as well as those of her family at home

illustrated that safety, and how people define it, really has to do with control. Michele felt safe,

and her family felt she was safe, inside a tightly controlled environment that was itself inside a

wild and uncontrolled continent. Michele felt that her family was safe, when they were able to

remain, and work from, the controlled environment of their homes, which were themselves

inside a state and a nation which exerted little control over the fight against COVID. The New

84
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, September 26, 2021.
85
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, September 26, 2021.
86
Michele Medori, interview by author, Atlanta, October 6, 2021.
Zealand government felt that tight control over Antarcticans passing through its country was

crucial for the safety of the country.

The intriguing reversal that Michele and her family experienced over whom they thought

was most safe, also relates to control. Both her mother and sisters eventually felt that Michele

was safer than they, due to the strict protocols in place at McMurdo but worried before she left

when those protocols and the risks of travel were less known and understood. The idea that

control defines safety is not a new one, but the success of the United States Antarctic Program in

keeping COVID from reaching McMurdo Station proves it be sound hypothesis even in times of

a global health crisis.

3. You could add more methodological analysis: why is oral history a good research tool for
this? Did you feel like there were limits to this methodology in researching this topic? Any
other takeaways that you could offer to researchers relying on oral history?
 Bibliography

Interviews

Michele Medori
Michele is the main subject of this project and also the sister-in-law of the interviewer, Eric
Chaney. Michele spent six months between September 2020 and February 2021 traveling to and
working in Antarctica as a Senior Human Resources Generalist for Pacific Architects and
Engineers as part of the United States Antarctic Program based at McMurdo Station.

Amanda Hallauer
Amanda is the older sister of the main subject and also the sister-in-law of the interviewer, Eric
Chaney.

Melissa Medori
Melissa is the fraternal twin sister of the main subject, Michele Medori, and also the wife of the
interviewer, Eric Chaney.

Claudia Medori
Claudia is the mother of the main subject, Michele Medori, and also the mother-in-law of the
interviewer, Eric Chaney.

Secondary Sources

Allen, T. R. “Common Colds in Antarctica.” The Journal of Hygiene 71, no. 4 (1973): 649–56.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3862012.
Bureau of Transportation Statistics. “Full Year 2020 and December 2020 U.S. Airline Traffic
Data.” Published March 11, 2021. https://www.bts.gov/newsroom/full-year-2020-and-
december-2020-us-airline-traffic-data.

Cameron, A. S., and B. W. Moore. “The Epidemiology of Respiratory Infection in an Isolated

Antarctic Community.” The Journal of Hygiene 66, no. 3 (1968): 427–37.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3861590.

Dicke, Tom. “Waiting for the Flu: Cognitive Inertia and the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of
1918–19.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 70, no. 2 (2015): 195–
217. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24631740.

Everett, Tom, Jenny Douglas, Shoshanna May, Simon Horne, Peter Marquis, Richard
Cunningham, and Julian W Tang. “Poor Transmission of Seasonal Cold Viruses in a
British Antarctic Survey Base”. Journal of Infection 78, no. 6 (2019): 491–503.
doi:10.1016/j.jinf.2019.03.007.

Holmes, M. J., T. R. Allen, A. F. Bradburne, and E. J. Stott. “Studies of Respiratory Viruses in

Personnel at an Antarctic Base.” The Journal of Hygiene 69, no. 2 (1971): 187–99.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3861474.

King, Hilary. “Epidemiology in Antarctica?” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health

40, no. 4 (1986): 351–56. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25566682.

Marmarosh, C. L., Forsyth, D. R., Strauss, B., & Burlingame, G. M. “The psychology of the
COVID-19 pandemic: A group-level perspective.” Group Dynamics: Theory, Research,
and Practice 24, no. 3, (2020) 122–138. https://doi.org/10.1037/gdn0000142.

National Science Foundation. United States Antarctic Program Participant Guide 2018-2020
Edition, edited by Jim Mastro and Terri Edillon (Alexandria, VA; National Science
Foundation, 2018),
https://www.usap.gov/USAPgov/travelAndDeployment/documents/ParticipantGuide_201
8-20.pdf#search=%22participant%20guide%22.

Price, George. “Influenza-destroyer and teacher: a general confession by the public health
authorities of a Continent.” Survey (Magazine) no. 41 (1918): 367–9,
https://guides.library.txstate.edu/ld.php?content_id=54633974.

Radio New Zealand. “Timeline: The year of COVID-19 in New Zealand.” Published February
28, 2021. Updated March 24, 2021. Accessed December 2, 2021.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/437359/timeline-the-year-of-COVID-19-in-new-
zealand.

Shult, Peter A, Frank Polyak, Elliot C. Dick, David M. Warshauer, Lenard A. King, Adrian D.
Mandel. “Adenovirus 21 Infection in an Isolated Antarctic Station: Transmission of the
 Virus and Susceptibility of the Population.” American Journal of Epidemiology, no. 133,
Issue 6, 15 (March 1991): 599–607. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.aje.a115932.

Soper, George A. “The Lessons of the Pandemic.” Science 49, no. 1274 (1919): 501–6.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1642775.

United States Antarctic Program. “About the Continent.” Accessed December 2, 2021.
https://www.usap.gov/aboutthecontinent/.

Warshauer, D. M., Dick, E. C., Mandel, A. D., Flynn, T. C., & Jerde, R. S. “Rhinovirus
infections in an isolated antarctic station. Transmission of the viruses and susceptibility
of the population.” American journal of epidemiology, no. 129 (2) (1989), 319–340.
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.aje.a115136.