“Stay home. Stay home. Stay home,” a New York nurse told the Amsterdam News. “They tell you now, if you are not really, really, really sick stay far from the emergency room…because you are going to make yourself even more sick if you go there. It is not the safest place to be.”
The coronavirus horror is real. The home-based solutions are also real.
Edith Johnson is a Critical Care Nurse at Brooklyn’s King’s County Hospital. She spoke with the Amsterdam News only under the guise of a pseudonym. “I want people to know what is really going on,” said the 15-year healthcare giver.
New York is the epicenter of the nation’s coronavirus dilemma. As of Tuesday, March 31, 2020, there were 75,795 confirmed cases in the state; 43,139 in New York City, and 1,550 deaths in the state. The nation has 175,000 cases, and 3,416 deaths.
“It’s very, very bad,” said Johnson. “Half the hospital population is COVID-19 positive, and yet the nurses are working under horrible conditions. They have no protective gear. They are making nurses wear one mask all shift. So, if you have 4 positive patients you are expected to go from room to room with a dusty mask on. Because they don’t have enough, they don’t know when more are going to come. Some of the patients were not even positive they are negative….isn’t that contamination? The number will keep going up until something is done. I would say about 60% of the patient population is positive out of about 500 and something.”
The 40-something mother of three school-aged children opined, “Most of us have families. We have children, we have husbands, we have wives, we have mothers, we have fathers at home. But we leave work to come to be with them, it is so unfair. They have been isolated. The kids are not at school, the husbands and wives are working from home. And you’re coming from work––not well protected, and you have a been exposed to all these positive patients––and you are bringing whatever home to these people. It is not fair.”
The career nurse continued, “It was all over the news that Elmhurst hospital had13 deaths in one day, that was like Kings County. On Thursday [March 26, 2020], I saw people pushing 6 dead bodies––we have a makeshift morgue at the back of the hospital now, because the morgue is full, they have nowhere to put dead bodies. They were taking these corona positive bodies to the trailer, when they were coming back they told me that was the 12th body they had dropped off. It was 4.30 p.m. But, the hospital was still having codes, people were still dying. People don’t even hear about Kings County. On that day, I’m sure we recorded more deaths than Elmhurst.”
With unveiled frustration, the Brooklyn mom continued, “There are bodies everywhere. There is no space in Kings County.”
It is dire. What should someone do if they feel like they may have been exposed to the virus, or have symptoms?
“Even when you go now they turn you back if you don’t have symptoms. They even tell us now even if you’re positive, if you don’t have symptoms you have to come to work. That’s how bad it is. The doctors and the nurses––even if you are positive, you have to come to work and take care of people, some who are negative. That’s not even right. Isn’t that possibly contaminating a negative person by a person who is positive?
“It is because there’s a lack of nurses, lack of staff, lack of healthcare workers. People are sick. We have a lot of nurses in ICU right now here in my hospital, they are positive. They are very, very sick. These are people that I know, people I work with. Some of them are on ventilators, life or death, some of them we don’t think will make it.”
“It’s the worst place you want to be right now. If you don’t have corona before you go to the Emergency Room, trust me you’re going to come out of there positive.”
In that “If you stay home, we can go home,” train of healthcare worker speak, Johnson reiterated throughout the interview, “Stay home.”
Johnson’s socially responsible caveat is, though, “If you have it, and you’re really, really sick then go to the Emergency Room. If you think you have it, but you have no symptoms, or the symptoms are not really that bad, stay home unless you are having shortness of breath. If it’s just a cough and a fever try and control it with Tylenol, and cold baths, if you could manage it that way then just stay home. And hopefully eventually it will pass after 14 days or something. But, if you do have shortness of breath then you do need to be seen in the hospital.”
While 3000 plus people have died, in the U.S., 113,000 have recovered.
Johnson advised that the general public should stay indoors. “The fewer people out here, the better. That’s how it is spreading when people keep coming out.”
Johnson added incredulously, “I am seeing so many millennial healthcare workers who say that they do not think they can get the virus, so they walk around the hospital without protective gear. But they are wrong. It is effecting all age groups.”
Like waiting for the medical cavalry, Johnson demanded that [Pres.] Trump, the city, state, and federal government “release the money for resources, to start making masks, bring the ventilators, and start producing the things we need.”
With 15 years’ experience, the New York City critical care nurse said that she is a member of the New York State Nurses Association.
“The union doesn’t know what to do, they are overwhelmed. But their members are complaining. They are frustrated. But they can’t tell their members not to take care of people.”
The Amsterdam News reached out to the union whose hospitals include Mount Sinai, Montefiore and HHC of New York. We did not hear back by press time.
“We want to report the hospital to the States about the practices and conditions they have subjected the staff to,” said Johnson. “The management doesn’t care, they just want the job done. They are not on the forefront, they don’t see how it is. They are just giving orders.”
While neither the persons nor offices of Gov. Andrew Cuomo or Mayor Bill de Blasio responded to a request for comment, Kings County’s Director of Communications Alexis Davis forwarded this NYC Health + Hospitals/Kings County statement: “NYC Health + Hospitals facilities are on the front lines and our dedicated employees are working day and night to ensure that all our patients receive the care they need. Reports of lack of personal protective equipment in our system are false. We currently have the resources needed for all of our staff, but are fully cognizant that there is a nationwide shortage of supplies. Because of the national picture, we have taken serious measures to conserve what we do have. However, every health care worker in our system who needs PPE is able to receive what they need to care for patients safely. We continue to advocate to local, state and federal agencies for additional personal protective equipment.”
Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that even in these most testing of times, New York hospitals are looking at $400 million in cuts. This, as ER rooms are filled to over-capacity with patients lining the walls, and in every spare room. With so much citizen-journalist news/pictures/videos out on the internet, perhaps one of the most harrowing local ones was by an emotional man posting a video showing bodies being forklifted into an 18-wheeler refrigerated truck on the street at the back of a Brooklyn hospital.
Also in Brooklyn, but much better news, East New York’s political power couple––Assemblyman Charles Barron and his wife Councilwoman Inez Barron––are doing much better. Assemblyman Barron has returned home after his coronavirus stint, and his wife Councilwoman Barron is self-isolating at home.
“We are staying in the house. We are focusing on our health and recovering completely,” Assemblyman Barron told the Amsterdam News. After being admitted to Brookdale University Hospital Medical Center three weeks ago, Barron said he is now in recovery from his positive diagnosis. Meanwhile, his wife, Councilwoman Inez Barron remains in self-isolation at home: after spending days by her husband’s side she had been told that she too had contracted the coronavirus.
“Inez is helping me 1000%. We are going to be back fighting fit, better than ever,” said Charles.
“I feel great,” Inez said from another room. “I am about 97%. I am feeling really good!”
Her husband added, “We are now advocating for Brookdale and all the hospitals in our community. They are in great need, and we are fighting for them. They must get all the resources and funds from the city, state, federal government that they are eligible for to deal with this pandemic.
“Brookdale needs more gowns, masks, and ventilators. The beds are all full, and, we want to know how the governor and the mayor are deciding which hospitals get what.”
There’s a new tense landscape. Fervid movements in the supermarket. Nervous smiles or non-eye contact at all. Sprints out of vehicles to banks and still-open-stores. Quick hops onto the back of buses. Near-empty thoroughfares. Social media is king/queen. There, local activists like Erica Ford host virtual informational town hall meetings; DJ D Nice combines Quarantine ‘Homeschooling’ parties with rocking-the-vote registering with Michelle Obama; while in the real world Rihanna and Jay Z made massive financial donations to New York, African tailors in Harlem are using their skills to make hospital gowns and Flatbush activist/former Marine Anthony Beckford is distributing his home-made hand sanitizers.
Across the globe over 150 countries from Europe to Asia to Africa are fighting this pandemic. Physical-distancing/social media collaborating is the new normal. Thanking healthcare and essential workers is the new “Good morning/good/afternoon/goodnight.”
Hope must overwhelm fear, if there is to be a psychological and actual win here.
New York got through 9/11 and the trauma that it left in its wake.
Resiliency is built in the bricks, fortitude interwoven in the fabric, and punching through impossible scapes is the behavior.
Solid.