Downloaded from YTS.MX
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
♪ ethereal synths ♪
- [reporter] Scientists in China are
trying to determine if a new virus strain is
responsible for a pneumonia outbreak
in the city of Wuhan.
- [reporter] China ordering a quarantine
for the entire city of Wuhan.
11 million people, no travel in or out.
- [reporter] Wuhan, ground zero for this mysterious virus,
and it's also showing up in other cities.
- [reporter] An update now
on the coronavirus outbreak in Italy.
The government's racing to contain the biggest outbreak of
the virus in Europe, imposing restrictions on about 100,000
people and shutting down public gatherings.
- [reporter] The World Health Organization's decision
to declare the 2019 novel coronavirus a "public health
emergency of international concern."
- [Trump] We instituted sweeping travel restrictions
on China, and put in place the first
federally mandated quarantine in over 50 years.
- [reporter] Governor Cuomo just announced the first
confirmed case in New York City.
- [reporter] The World Health Organization calling
COVID-19 a pandemic for the first time.
- [reporter] Tonight, the death toll mounting in the US.
Now, at least 100 dead as the number of cases
of coronavirus tops 5,800.
- [de Blasio] New Yorkers should be prepared right now
for the possibility
of a shelter-in-place order.
♪
- [Dean] When I first heard of COVID-19,
I really didn't think much of it.
It was another one of those viruses like Ebola or H1N1 or,
or even the flu that we're going to read about,
it's going to have some effect on... in China or in Africa or
in Europe or somewhere else.
- I knew that it was going to be a problem,
I just did not understand at all how big of a problem
it really would be.
- When I realized that things were gonna change,
in all honesty, was when... no St. Patty's Day parade,
baseball shut down, NBA shut down,
my kids' schools shut down.
- My first real experience with COVID was
looking at a Facebook post
and it was an Italian nurse who looked exhausted and worn
and wearing the mask and saying, publicly to all of us,
"We had no idea what was coming."
- I think when it started to hit Italy really hard is when I was
in meetings and in the hospital and just really starting to
contemplate, "Well, this is definitely coming here.
And is it already here?"
- I got a call from the CEO that he wanted me
to come to a meeting,
that they were developing a task force.
- My birthday was that Tuesday, March 17th,
St. Patrick's Day.
And that was really the first day things started
to change for me.
I went home, I Face-timed with my parents,
and I realized it was the first birthday I could remember
that I spent alone.
- [Dean] That afternoon, we met,
and it was the, you know,
what, what I call the "top brass."
You know, I'm new in administration,
so here were all the VPs sitting around the table.
- The announcement came over telling New Yorkers:
"Remember to wash your hands for 20 seconds
and keep your distance."
The whole thing seemed almost Orwellian.
- [Dean] That's when we started thinking, you know,
"What are we going to do?
How are we going to prepare the hospital?
What do we have to do?"
Fortunately, our chief medical officer happens to be trained
in infectious disease, so the first thing he said was,
"We need to know how many isolation rooms we have
and how many we can make.
We need to divide our emergency room
into a clean emergency room
and a dirty emergency room.
We need to be able to separate
these patients from the beginning."
- Even to the last day before, like,
they closed bars and clubs,
everybody was, like,
"Okay, like, it's not that bad.
You know, we'll, we'll... we just gotta
like, tackle this down and..."
No, people are dying
and it's very real.
- I actually recall that same night,
my second son, my younger son, texting me and saying,
"Is this something we have to worry about?"
And I said...
[exhales]
[speaking softly] Sorry...
Um...
"You don't have to worry about it
unless you're going to China." [voice shaking]
Boy, was I wrong.
- [reporter] Governor Andrew Cuomo has declared a
state of emergency in New York as dozens of
new cases of coronavirus are determined each day.
- [reporter] The first case of coronavirus hitting Queens.
There are cases in Brooklyn as well.
- [reporter] State officials are still insisting
the public health risk is low,
and for now, the only thing worse than the virus
is the fear and anxiety.
- There was a very serious moment when this all clicked.
My whole plan, my whole routine changed immediately.
- The situation started to get a little bit more real for me as
the window for screening started to widen.
- Mid-March is when we got the notification that half of
the unit was going to become a full adult ICU,
and that was going to be staffed by pediatric ICU nurses.
- It started with, "We're gonna screen these patients with a
influenza-like illness from Wuhan, China, specifically,
who were traveling within the last two weeks,"
to Mainland China, to now the countries of
China, South Korea, Iran, and Italy.
- We had to empty out all of the operating rooms,
all the equipment, all the supplies and transition into a
fully-operating ICU in less than three days.
- Towards the end of the month, you know,
if you just came in with a cough or fever,
we were isolating you.
- Because we were getting direction
from the Department of Health that we needed to
prepare ourselves from a 24-bed ICU
to a 75-bed ICU.
- I gave every one of my employees the option,
if they were frightened or concerned,
that they did not have to attend work.
- [Vincent] Environmental started coming in and, and
and putting, you know, the plastic up, and
it was like a scene out of a movie.
Remember the movie 'Outbreak' with Dustin Hoffman?
I'm telling ya, it's, it's like that.
- [Susannah] Our life changed
within a span of a week as pediatricians.
We started initially taking up to 25-year-olds.
And then the next day, it was 30,
and then the next day, it was 35.
And then the number just kinda kept going up until age 50.
- [de Blasio] We're going to need massive medical capacity on
a scale we have never seen in
the history of New York City before.
- [reporter] The Mayor is sounding the alarm
about the city's medical supplies.
He says, "Hospitals have what they need right now,
but that will be a different story next month."
- [reporter] With the biggest challenge:
Critical care facilities.
There are only 45,000 ICU beds in America
and about 160,000 ventilators.
And doctors say many are currently occupied
by other patients.
- The first thing that I realized was different was waking into
the hospital and being handed a surgical mask from
a security guard.
And I remember pausing, because usually,
you swipe your badge and you walk in.
It's something that made it more real and made it more
like it's here and it's, it's serious.
- The way we answered the phone changed,
the way we treated patients changed.
My office looks totally transformed,
with plastic covers over everything.
- [Dean] How are we going to expand the hospital?
What areas of the hospital are viable to place patients in?
So we took the plans out and we looked.
"These rooms have electricity, these rooms have plumbing,
these rooms have this, this is our first plan,
this is what we're going to do when we have 20 patients,
when we have 40 patients, when we have 60 patients."
- I began unrolling PPE, personal protection equipment,
in my office, teaching every member of my staff,
no matter what their role, how to use an N95 mask,
how to remove the mask.
- [Sarah] March 23rd was the day we officially started to bring
patients into our operating rooms,
not as surgical patients but as ICU patients.
- [JanMichael] I remember, like,
watching the news and you would see, like,
an exponential rise in cases, and then
you got to work and it was just like,
"Okay, we're doing this this day.
This is how it's gonna work out,"
and we just had to adjust to changes.
- Our first patient came March 3rd.
I remember the day because I remember the fear
in everyone's eyes.
- [Cuomo] We are today issuing an emergency order
that says to all hospitals:
You must increase your capacity by 50%.
You must.
- We prepared for it and we had our PPE,
but I think the patient was just as scared as we were.
"What's gonna happen to me?" You know,
behind this wall, this frosted plastic curtain that,
you know, we unzip with all our gear on and go in
and say hello to the patient.
- We went from one patient that first Sunday to
over 50 patients by the end of that week.
- I had a call to go into my manager's office,
and she said she had some bad news for us.
One of the patients we operated on tested positive for COVID.
- We had heard children weren't really getting it,
so when we got the first positive result,
everyone sort of looked around.
"Okay, now what?
What's our policy?
What are we supposed to do?
Is a nurse able to take care of this patient
and another patient?"
- I was kind of shocked.
I came home.
My husband told me, "God knows his children"
and I'm not gonna get it, so we prayed.
And then the following day, I went to work.
- I think the thing that's really specific to emergency medicine
is you never know what's gonna walk through your door
at any given moment, day or night.
And so you're trained to be ready for anything
that comes through the door.
Overnight, our, our heart attacks,
our strokes, our GI bleeds, our psychiatric patients...
they disappeared and they were replaced
with a flood of patients in respiratory distress.
- I've never seen us or myself change directions
twice or three times a day, totally 180, and now,
we're doing it this way.
- [Liza] And when I say "respiratory distress,"
I mean I have never seen oxygen levels
as low as I have seen in this,
um, population of patients before.
And just one after another after another.
- It was stressful.
It was very stressful because the last thing that you wanted
to do was make a wrong move and expose a certain person,
and above all, like, y... you know,
you, you wanted to protect yourself.
- [Dean] As a physician, I think that's what we do.
The patients come into the room,
we talk to them, we develop a rapport with them,
we ask them questions so that we can develop a,
uh, solution to their problem.
COVID is completely different.
There is no solution.
And it's not one patient, it's many patients.
We're not ready for COVID.
- [Kathy] I dealt with a couple of patients,
and then I got COVID.
And my children got COVID.
I am a Brooklyn girl, born and raised.
I moved to Manhattan and that's where I began my nursing career.
I have five wonderful children, four girls and a prince,
and it made this so much more real.
I think I was scared for myself because of my history of cancer.
I'm a survivor now of five years,
so I think a lot of the skills that I learned
during the cancer...
is helping me cope with this a little bit better.
I was out of work for 11 days, and the whole time,
hearing from my colleagues on a daily basis
of what was going on there.
And, um, I felt guilty that I wasn't there with them.
I feel blessed that I got through it.
I feel like I was a survivor again.
Finally, in the beginning of April,
I went back.
And it was just... thrown right into it.
[medical equipment beeping]
There were makeshift ICUs throughout the hospital.
COVID units were made in numerous areas of the hospital
to try and just...
deal with the, the load.
♪ ominous music ♪
- On a bad day, up to four intubated patients...
patients on medicines that are keeping their blood pressure up,
keeping them alive, basically having them on life support,
and you're talking about within a 24 to 48 hour period,
almost your entire emergency department is,
is full of those kind of patients.
It shook all of us to our core.
- We were running out of room fast.
- It was the volume, it was the acuity,
these people were so sick.
- The standards that we were used to of making sure our patients
were bathed and turned and comfortable were kind of thrown
out the window, it was just, "Keep these patients alive for
your 12-hour shift so that you can go home,
sleep, and, and come back and do it all over again."
- You're wondering which ones are gonna do well,
which ones aren't going to do well,
which ones are gonna qualify for some of the protocols,
which ones aren't going to...
and we really don't have an answer.
- [Kathy] We still don't fully understand this virus,
and it's taking characteristics over time
that we're learning more about, something else pops up.
- It was like a crash course in ICU nursing for me,
but for a lot of my peers,
it was a crash course in bedside nursing.
- [Susannah] Our patient load was double to triple.
This is the most hardworking, smartest group of doctors
I've been around, but they're exhausted,
utterly exhausted.
♪ emotional music ♪
- [Kathy] We were tired.
I had never...
seen so many sick patients before.
- [Vincent] It wears on ya.
Um...
I would, you know, get dressed in the morning,
go to work, change into my scrubs,
and, and be ready to go.
But now, there's a whole routine.
I get to work, I have to change,
I make sure that my clean clothes are put away
so that I can wear them out clean when I go home.
You gotta, you know, get on your PPE,
wear your face mask, your hairnet,
your shoe covers.
- [Vida] So I was in my room when I heard,
like, a lot of noise and commotion in the hallway.
I came in and one girl told me that
one of the girls is put in there and she's crying.
You know, she doesn't want to be in there because she's scared.
So I went to the managers and I said,
"I wouldn't mind."
And the manager said, "No, her name is first."
So I'm like, "I wouldn't mind doing it.
And maybe, if I do it, she will get the courage
to do it the next time."
- It's not... it becomes not about me anymore.
I can take care of however many people, you know?
And...
if I'm not there, who else is gonna do it, right?
And I think all of my co-workers felt that way, you know?
It's just, like, we have to be there.
They need us.
♪
- [reporter] Medical professionals on the frontlines
of the coronavirus crisis in America are facing a shortage of
personal protective equipment.
The demand for these medical supplies is especially high in
New York City, the epicenter of America's coronavirus crisis.
- [Kathy] I became a nurse in the '80s during the AIDS epidemic,
and I worked in Manhattan.
And I remember all the isolation and,
and, and the gowns.
But it was nothing to the level this is.
Nothing could have prepared us.
- It would take maybe five to seven days before we'd actually
get an official positive or negative result,
so in that time, we had to treat them as if they were positive.
It turned out that a lot of those patients were negative,
and we've gone through thousands of N95 masks.
And then, we started getting the positives
and we were low on PPE.
- So when we got our N95s, we were told to hold onto them
until they were broken or visibly soiled,
which was very different from everything
you've ever learned in medicine.
- The first policy change was "surgical masks are good for
four hours, N95s are good for a whole day."
We didn't understand how are we keeping our patients safe if
the masks that I'm wearing in one room,
I'm wearing again in the next room for four hours straight.
- I was wearing PPE, but still, in the back of your head,
you wonder "Is that enough?
Are the people I love safe?
Is my family safe?"
And I remember, at that point, knowing I couldn't go home.
- I think we all knew by that time that the virus itself
is actually smaller than the filter diameter on the N95s,
and the nature of the N95 just means it filters out 90%
of particles of a certain size and above.
Truth be told, I certainly didn't feel 100%
confident in that level of protection.
- And I called home and said, "I, I don't know when,
but I can't come home anymore."
- [Liza] I did five night shifts at one of our hospitals.
We must have intubated and put on life support at least
30 to 40% of the patients who walked through the door.
During that five-day period, I realized I was scared to death
of getting anybody else sick around me,
because we didn't know and we still don't know so much
about this disease.
- Eventually, N95s were a week, surgical masks were a day.
Then, N95s were indefinitely.
- So it's something that you would never even think of before
this, and now, it was something that you had with you
at all times and you knew where your N95 was.
- [Susannah] Our hospital didn't have enough,
and they still don't have enough.
- Now, we're collecting them so that they can be decontaminated
and perhaps used in the future if we need them again because
you can't find them anywhere.
- [Cuomo] Can you imagine the nurses who leave
their homes in the morning, who kiss their children goodbye,
go to a hospital, deal with people who have the coronavirus?
They're worried and they're going out there every day,
despite their fear.
And not for their family,
they're doing it for your family.
- You know, we took this on, we made this choice to take on
this profession and whatever comes with that.
Our children didn't. Our families didn't.
- I just kept thinking, "I have to, I have to remove myself
from them or I have to get them to a safe place.
This is, this is really bad."
And it meant sending my husband and kids and my in-laws...
who wonderfully live in the same building we do...
um, sending them away.
- This is the first time that I can think of in history where
the danger is brought home.
I have a son in, in the Army.
It's, again, a risk,
but that stays on the battlefield.
We're bringing this home to our families,
and we've never had to deal with that.
- I decided to live in the hotel
and go home only on my last day.
I go to the hotel,
bathe, change everything, and my husband will pick me up,
and then I'll go home for my days off.
And then, I do the same thing again the following week.
- Mommy!
- [Susannah] Yes!
- Mommy!
- [Susannah] Yes, you want a hand?
Okay!
One, two, three!
The first couple of weeks that I was working in the hospital,
I had so much anxiety that I would kill my family.
And I have a toddler, you know?
She's so innocent.
And every single day that I walk home from work,
that little girl runs up and hugs me,
like, all over my body.
And she gives open-mouth kisses and,
like, you know, she's licked my face.
All the, all the gross little two-year-old things.
I strip on our front porch and literally nothing from
the hospital goes into our house.
- [giggling]
- No matter what happened during the day,
she gets in the tub, we play with her ducks,
we play with the fish...
and I just have to be a regular-old mom,
which is the best.
- [Vincent] My kids are my peace.
I do everything I do in this life for them.
I, I said to myself at the start of this,
this is my job and if I get sick,
that's one thing, I'll deal with it.
But I, I couldn't deal with harming my, my own family.
- The day I kissed my kids goodbye,
I... it's... I,
I almost can't say it out loud but I, um...
I definitely... [voice shaking]
thought, um, that might be the last time
I was ever seeing them again.
Uh, and that, that is probably my lowest low
and my greatest fear,
is leaving my family behind.
- [Susannah] I had no idea that it would come here like this.
I don't think anyone could.
I, I'm still in shock.
I think all of us are still in shock.
- There's this novel virus.
We don't know how contagious or deadly it is or why it's
affecting people a certain way and why it's being,
you know, asymptomatic in other people.
Just the unknown factor created a lot of fear for us.
- Early into this, I started writing things down
in my journal.
I go back and look through it
and every entry I wrote, it kinda seemed like,
"Okay, this is our peak, this is how bad it is.
Look, it's finally gotten here."
And then, I write another entry and it's even worse
and even worse.
- You saw the ranges of severity with the patients
that were coming in, and they were, you know...
yes, there were old people who were coming in
and they were near-death,
but there were also young people who were
coming in who were near-death.
- I have a 93-year-old woman who came into my practice who
has been home ever since this started.
She came to my office and said, "I want to be tested and
I want to see if I have antibodies,
because if I do, I would like to donate my antibodies
to help people."
And what we found out is that she indeed
had had the virus.
And she had it right then... also.
So she was developing the two types of antibodies
that we develop.
Didn't have one symptom.
She has so many comorbidities.
And then, I have people that are in their twenties and
in the hospital and just...
near death's door.
- What made me the most nervous was the fact that
these brilliant doctors that I work for,
you know, day in and day out and,
um, the team that I was, uh, working with,
I think we were all scared and we all didn't really know
how to approach it.
- We were starting to see our colleagues,
um, and the nurses and doctors throughout the city
who were becoming patients due to this virus,
so we knew that, like, we weren't invincible ourselves.
- [Annabel] And I wrote, "This is, this is bad,
they're increasing their age limit."
But each time one of these changes happened,
I wrote this journal entry, like,
"This is it, we're here, this is the peak of COVID,"
and then, just the next thing.
- There was no training... not in medical school,
not in residency, not in fellowship... for what I termed,
uh, before as a "mass casualty event"
that doesn't happen at once.
You have two or three patients today,
five patients the next day, seven,
then 10, then 20, then 50.
Um, and it doesn't stop and you don't know when it's gonna stop.
- As ICU nurses, we, we kinda strive on being challenged,
but the emotional aspect, we were not ready for.
We take a patient and we do everything for that patient.
All levels, we deal with.
From the care to the families to education...
Um, we weren't able to do that this time.
♪ sparse emotional music ♪
- [Cuomo] In terms of lives lost,
that this situation should exceed 9/11 is still beyond
my capacity to fully appreciate, to tell you the truth.
- [reporter] Medical staff struggle to keep people alive.
In one 24-hour period, 13 people died from COVID-19.
- [reporter] The crisis in New York
reaching a critical mass.
Paramedics now empowered to make life and death decisions
that were once considered unthinkable.
- [Dean] The planning starts from the moment
you wake up.
You grab your clothes, you're in your car,
you, you know, grab whatever it is to drink,
sometimes you get there, you're parking your car,
and you don't remember if you passed any red lights or not,
you know?
Because your mind is somewhere else.
- [JanMichael] It's affecting all hospitals and it's on the news
and it's, it's spreading and it's, it's spreading fast and
these people will keep coming in.
And there was many times where it may have been the family's
last time seeing the patient as they dropped them off,
and a lot of the times, it was also patients who were dying
up front and we had to rush them back.
- When somebody comes in in respiratory distress,
meaning their oxygen levels are anywhere below 90%,
the first thing we'll try is just putting a little
two-pronged nasal cannula on you and giving you
a little bit of oxygen.
- They'd come in and you'd see that,
you know, maybe their fingertips were blue or
they had this grey color to them.
Then, you had those other people that came in
and they were starving for air.
- If they need more than that, we'll go and put a full...
what we call "non-rebreather mask" on.
It covers their nose and their face and it allows us to give
them a higher concentration of oxygen.
When that doesn't work, you have a couple of
tools in your toolkit.
One is called "CPAP" or "BiPAP",
and that's a mask with a seal on it,
and that gives you air with pressure.
That type of respiratory support has be shown to
aerosolize the virus immensely.
The other type of intervention is something called
"high-flow oxygen" and that, too,
is a highly-aerosolizing intervention.
Two of the things that we try our best to use to allow us to
not have to intubate somebody, allow us to not put somebody in
a medically-induced coma, we did not have at our disposal early
on because of the great fear of aerosolizing the virus.
- [reporter] Startling new numbers
from the New York City Health Department
showing a 110% increase in coronavirus deaths
just in the past 36 hours.
- [reporter] Authorities are also considering whether
to use Manhattan hotels to help treat the sick.
- [reporter] The healthcare workers in
coronavirus hotspots are exhausted.
Hundreds are sick themselves.
- I try and put things together:
How many patients were admitted the night before?
Um, how many patients were in isolation?
How many required ventilators?
Um, how many patients we lost?
- They have feeding tubes.
You're cleaning them.
And they go to the bathroom a lot.
We are turning them so that they don't get bedsores.
- A bedsore is terrible.
A central line infection is terrible.
But that's not this patient's biggest issue and we need to
keep them alive at the end of the 12-hour shift,
and I need to keep myself healthy
so I can keep helping people.
- [Kathy] We started with the focus being pneumonia,
then we went into coagulation.
It's just so evolving and we're trying to keep up with that.
- The whole 13 hours, there's no rest until you go on lunch.
And if you go on lunch, you don't even feel like eating.
♪ sparse, tense music ♪
- We're all experimenting with different medications that
the FDA approves and then changes over time.
Some of them are helpful, some of them not so much.
- We've had some people in their twenties on ventilators
and it really hits home and it's scary.
- [Dean] You don't have a magic bullet.
You don't tell that first person that,
"Don't worry, you're going to do well," because
we don't know that they are or that they won't.
- [reporter] A rare syndrome in children linked to COVID-19.
New York State just revealed 64 children now have it.
- [reporter] 64 children,
coming as a surprise, I'm told,
even to some senior State Health Department officials.
- This kid was just over a week old and
these were brand-new parents.
We were all very surprised by it because there was
no sick contacts, they hadn't left the house.
They were like, "H... how did he get it?
Where did he get it from?"
And then, they wanted to know if they were safe holding the baby.
Did they have it?
Could we test them?
And she was like, "Well, what can happen?"
And standing there and feeling...
scared too and trying not
to portray that to her, but I, I had no idea.
To be the physician who's supposed to give guidance and,
and help and to just stand there and say "I don't know" was...
not a good feeling.
I know what it's like to be the family
and not understand what's going on
and have a thousand questions when the doctor
comes in for what seemed like 30 seconds.
My little sister and I have always been extremely close.
Um, the day after her 16th birthday,
she suffered a hypoxic brain injury
where you don't get enough oxygen to your brain.
We spent 14 months as a family in the hospital...
me, my two sisters, and my mom... and we just rotated,
and it's part of what drew me to pediatrics,
and it really shaped who I want to be
and how I want to practice.
- [Annabel] In nursing, we have policies and procedures
to prevent any sort of hospital-acquired condition.
That's your job, is to prevent these patients
from getting worse.
With the COVID patients,
that all went out the window.
I was told, "You don't go in there to
turn them every few hours,"
which is what we do to prevent bedsores.
"You go in there only when necessary."
- [Vincent] There's no emergency
during a pandemic, right?
You see somebody who's in a room behind that plastic
and they need you.
Before this pandemic, I would just open that door and run in.
Now, I'm saying to myself,
"Okay, slow down.
Is my gown on?
My mask on?
My eye shield?"
It was eerie.
- We were trying to deal with the PPE,
which was a new experience for us to this level,
and still render the same level of care.
When you went in these rooms,
which now were plastic zipper rooms,
we tried our best to coordinate our care
so we weren't in and out, in and out.
- We would have patients come in
when they were satting out in the field at 50 or 60%...
and I'm talking about a normal oxygen saturation
being really 94 and above...
so these were profound levels of hypoxia.
And if they didn't come up to 90 or,
you know, 88 to 90, 92,
we were making the really hard decision
to intubate these patients.
- That was when I had to tell myself,
"This is wartime.
This is...
not a normal situation."
- [Liza] When I say "intubate a patient,"
you're talking about paralyzing them,
sedating them
and putting them in a medically-induced coma,
and placing a breathing tube down into their lungs,
and putting them on, on a machine,
and up to 90% of these patients
never can come off a ventilator.
- [Susannah] We're listening to their lungs,
we're changing the vent settings
so that we can maximize the air.
Like a balloon, you want to put enough air in to
get it to inflate, but you don't want it to pop.
- [Vincent] It was almost as if
these people were trying to die on you,
and it's not their fault.
No matter what we did, we could not oxygenate them.
- There have been patients who are on a ventilator,
comatose, and then their cell phone might,
you know, ding, and they got a text message from someone.
A few days ago, they were a member of society,
walking around, and now, they're on their deathbed.
- For a while, we were proning these patients
who were in very acute respiratory distress,
and it would take four to five people
and we would actually have to take these vented patients
and put them on their bellies facedown,
and it helped with their oxygenation.
- If you've ever turned someone
who is, like, dead weight, it...
I mean, it's very hard and physically difficult,
so we're, like, turning these patients and cleaning them,
so we're drenched in sweat
by the time we get out of the room.
- We have a certain number of negative pressure rooms
in the emergency department which suck air out,
and those types of rooms are very limited,
so you really have to make some hard decisions and basically
decide about rationing those kind of interventions.
- You're not ready for that.
The idea that we may have to make a decision
to take somebody off a ventilator
so we can use it for someone else...
no one's ready for that.
- I think one of the things
that impacted on me most was the sounds.
I don't even know how to describe them.
The numerous, numerous rapid responses,
code 64s, that we would hear all day long,
to the volume we never heard before.
[medical devices beeping] Somebody was crashing.
Another COVID bed needed to be filled.
You'd hear it and you'd just have to keep working.
- [Susannah] We hear these vents in our sleep.
All of us can hear these tiny little vent alarms go off
when we're barely paying attention.
So they're just... they're... it's overflowing the hospital.
- There's a problem here, there's a problem there,
we're running out of equipment here,
we don't have enough tests in the emergency room,
um, we're running out of antibiotics,
we're running out of sedatives,
we're running out of paralytics,
we're running out of...
stuff.
The stuff that we need to take care of our patients.
We're running out of staff.
♪ emotional music ♪
- [Vincent] At my hospital, a lot of my co-workers got sick.
We've actually had two, two co-workers of mine
pass away from COVID-19:
One nurse and one nursing assistant.
The nurse who passed away, I knew well
and I worked with him in the emergency room.
He was in his early fourties, had children.
He fought for his life.
I remember the day that he passed,
I was working in the emergency room,
and, and, and the news made its way
downstairs from the ICU that
our friend had passed away.
That was the one day I went home and cried after work.
Um...
it was just... it was like the wind was taken out of our sails.
That day stunk.
- There's a lot of catastrophe all around us,
there's a lot of death and dying around us,
and there's a lot of isolation that we're just sitting in.
- [Dean] And you go home...
and you think...
"Maybe tomorrow won't be so bad."
♪
- As we are trying to get ready for the body,
I realize that I was so overwhelmed,
I, I didn't even finish feeding one of my patients.
So I went in, fed him...
and then went to get my vital signs machine
to take his vital signs.
So I went in, tried to take his blood pressure,
and then the blood pressure keeps,
like, making noise.
Like, pim-pim, pim-pim.
And then, the nurse over in tha section walk around and came in
and, and heard the, you know, the noise.
So she walked in and she's like...
"But he's dead."
♪
- When we're giving post-mortem care,
you know, do we have to double-bag the patient, right?
Or single-bag them?
Um, what do we do with their personal belongings?
We send them downstairs to the morgue and the morgue got full,
so they had to bring in a refrigerator truck.
And they literally were having to put these, these people
in this refrigerator truck because our morgue was full.
- [Vida] So then, I have three patients
out of the seven patients dead.
It was tough.
But what really struck me was, um...
the last one had, uh, belongings,
so the lady who transport the body said she cannot take the,
the belongings with the patient.
Her words was, "Oh, his son said keep it with the body because
he's gonna burn the whole thing,
you know, with the body."
I know he's in his nineties,
but he's also a human being.
At the end of the day, I went home,
I went to the hotel, sat in my tub...
for like an hour...
just thinking about all these, you know,
patients.
And I realized that, my God...
we are nothing.
Human beings are nothing.
♪
[sighs]
- [reporter] The Mount Sinai Health System
restricting access to visitors at all of their hospital and
ambulatory sites in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.
- [reporter] Mayor de Blasio stresses the demand for
15,000 more ventilators for April and May.
New York's stockpile currently won't last another week.
- [reporter] The number of deaths is so staggering,
funeral homes can't keep up.
- [reporter] More than 5,000 dead this week.
New York State alone has more coronavirus cases than
any country on Earth.
- I remember probably the darkest night
was getting a call from the intensive care unit...
and them telling me that...
we just used our last ventilator.
And what do we do now?
There's four or five more hours until the morning
and we don't know how many more patients are gonna come
because they don't announce themselves.
They don't say "Hey, we have five more
coming from the field," they just...
land in the emergency room.
- [Vincent] I was the ambulance triage nurse that day
and I think like seven ambulances showed up at once.
And I just had nowhere to put the people.
We, we were filled up inside already,
and it was a cold March day...
I literally had stretchers with elderly women on them
outside in the cold, and I just kept thinking to myself,
"This is someone's mother, this is someone's grandmother."
- I've certainly had moments where I'm at the head of
the bed, I'm getting ready to intubate a patient...
and intubation is maybe the most aerosolizing procedure...
doing so with my limited PPE.
And I've definitely wondered, "Is this...
is this the moment that I get infected?"
- My biggest fear out of all of this was potentially
seeing one of my family members, um, in the hospital
in a very dire situation,
and unfortunately, that fear came into play when
my grandfather was sick.
I remember the day very vividly because I
was on the phone with my mother and sister trying to coordinate,
so I had said, "Whatever it is that we have to do,
just make sure that we get Grandpa here
because I'll be able to watch him."
- [Susannah] My low point was probably when I was caring for
a 17-year-old that came in.
She was doing really terribly.
I came into the shift and ICU doctor just looked at me
and just kinda said, "Okay, she's gonna code."
- We got him in-house.
I was able to see him.
And I said to my co-workers at the time,
"Do what you have to do for him
and I'll come see him at the end of the shift."
- [Susannah] I barely had looked at her labs at this point.
I hadn't done the things that I normally do before I...
you know, to start the day.
And I just stood outside her room watching her.
- He needed a little bit more oxygen,
eventually being on intermittent non-rebreather,
so now, we're talking about, like,
the maximum amount of oxygen that we can provide via mask.
- The biggest difficulty for me was when I started seeing
my loved ones in my patients.
- [multiple] ♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
- I have a grandmother who is not in good health and
I called my dad and said,
"If she gets diagnosed with COVID-19,
you really need to consider signing a DNR."
- I knew that if my grandpa was gonna be put on a ventilator,
there was no chance that he would survive,
so I, I opted out for that.
I had a discussion with my family members to see why
I opted out for that, and we all were having this discussion.
And I remember at this point, I had called my grandmother
and I put her on speakerphone so they can, you know, communicate
because I wasn't at work the next day, so
I wanted to make sure that they had a conversation in place.
- So I'm looking through the window,
she's right there, and I see she's wearing her purple cap
on her hair to try and keep her hair nice.
But I did talk to the mom that night and she said,
"Can you put her on speakerphone?
I'm really close with my daughter.
It'll, it'll help me."
And I said, "I'll get you on speakerphone
so you can talk to her."
We had another patient who got really sick that night.
And I got involved with that patient,
so I never put her on speakerphone.
- And she was saying in Spanish to him,
"Fight for your life,
fight for your life so you can come back."
And at that point, I remember holding the phone up,
like, while I was holding his hand and I just started crying.
My grandpa might die in the hospital and I might be
the only person who sees him.
- So the next morning, I signed out to my team...
it was a couple hours later... and I said,
"Please call Mom and put her on speaker."
So my buddy said, "I will do it, I will do it."
So my friend texts me the next day and she was like,
"I called Mom.
Don't worry." [voice cracking]
Sorry. [sniffling]
But, um...
she died.
♪ emotional music ♪
- A lot of my co-workers were just pulling me to the side and
they were just like, "Are you okay?
Do you need to step away?" And I was just like...
"Nah, like... I need to be here.
Like, this will help me, being here."
With the following week, he had needed less and less oxygen
and had actually recovered on his own.
I was in shock.
To this day now, he's, uh, he's back at home and
he's hangin' fine, COVID-free.
- [Cherese] My patient is still intubated
and on a respirator.
I was the only one that she was
able to speak to before this happened.
I was sitting with her, holding her hand and trying to
soothe her fears about what may or may not happen.
This might be the last conversation that they are
able to have with anybody for the rest of their lives.
- I'd say the "no visitor" policy,
although completely necessary and understandable,
was probably one of the most difficult parts to navigate.
- [Susannah] We had a couple of pediatric patients that died.
I cared for both of them, um, and the awful thing was I'd be
on the phone with the mom and she'd, you know,
she'd be like, "Can I talk to her?
Can I come in?"
The answer was, "No."
- The component of social isolation during all of this
has been profound, and that meant leaving family members
out in the ambulance bay, even just outside in the hospital,
um, in the driveway.
- Seeing people who die and they die alone because of
these restrictions and not having visitors and
no one deserves that.
- And before any of our intubations,
if there is even a five-minute window of time,
I think we've all taken that time to even use our own
personal devices, work phones, whatever we have to try to
Facetime in a loved one, because I think we really recognize that
those may be the last five minutes any family member gets
with their loved one.
- [Cherese] I want my patients as comfortable
as possible,
even if they're making decisions for end-of-life.
So I sit and I speak with them face-to-face,
eye-to-eye, and talk about very real situations.
So it's very important that you make that conversation count.
Unfortunately, some people come in and it's rapid-fire and
they're intubated before they even know it.
- Knowing we don't have a definitive treatment for this...
is just trying so hard for loved ones to connect.
- As the weeks went on, we did start Facetiming with families.
We brought the phones and the tablets into the rooms,
we held them up for the families to see the patients,
and I'll never forget the sounds that I heard when these people
walked into the room to say goodbye.
It's just like nothing...
you're ready for in your life, it's nothing anyone
should ever have to go through.
There's nothing that I can say to make it better.
You really became one with these family members.
- I've even run down the road trying to catch a loved one
who's gotten in their car just to
try to have that eye-to-eye contact,
so that they really know I'm gonna do
everything I can for their loved one.
- No one should ever leave this Earth alone,
and we do that in this crisis or not.
If someone is passing and their family's not there,
we all make sure someone is in there,
and I, I feel blessed to be able to do it.
- We're not their family, but we can at least be supportive,
we can hold their hand as they're dying
and be with them so intimately.
- At its core, it's heartbreaking, but we
owe it to them and we owe it to ourselves to do
that and just remind all of ourselves that we're human.
- [Kathy] We...
tried our best to let them know that they were...
cared for... [voice cracking]
and... leaving this world with some level of dignity.
- [reporter] The largest study of frontline medical
workers at the height of the pandemic in New York City
found 57% of them had acute stress,
48% saw depressive symptoms,
and nearly 75% experienced insomnia.
- There's frustration at every turn.
There's guilt at every turn.
- You always wonder "Could I have done something
a little different?
Could I have done this better?"
- We sort of feel like we're doing a crappy job,
honestly, a lot of the time.
It's a virus, we're giving these meds that don't always work,
people are dying.
Every patient, I feel like I've missed things.
- I was mad at myself because I couldn't...
I, personally, couldn't give them the quality of care that
I strive to give.
- I just felt like a bad nurse.
I knew what I needed to do and I couldn't do it.
- I don't let myself feel a lot of feelings,
but the one I do, because I think it's motivating for me,
is...
anger.
- This is just the basic standards to make sure that
being in the hospital doesn't get them sicker,
and I wasn't allowed to do that,
and I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing.
- Just angry about why this had to happen,
why we don't know more about this disease,
why we don't have a definitive treatment,
and why, despite years of investment in training and
school and putting yourself around the most talented
individuals, it's still...
it's still not enough to save your patient.
- [Vida] We didn't even care about ourselves.
Some of us do also get easily irritated.
Sometimes, people don't even talk to each other.
It's like, I have my break, I'm just quiet and
focusing on myself.
- [Liza] I worry about physicians in general and the extent to
which it's a culture of sort of martyring yourselves for your
patients and for the healthcare system.
- When the numbers got better in the city,
our pop-up ICU closed and we returned to a full pediatric
ICU, no longer taking care of patients up to 35.
And I, surprisingly, really struggled with that because...
my city was still struggling.
- [Liza] It's survivor's guilt, looking at the colleagues
that we've lost and the patients we've lost.
It's guilt when you are sick and you've come down
with coronavirus and you are sort of sidelined.
- There were still nurses on the frontlines dealing with COVID,
and I was still getting applauded at seven o'clock,
but now, I was in my safe, pediatric bubble.
And I felt like I wasn't doing my part in COVID-19.
- Losing patient after patient, signing death certificate after
death certificate is a, uh... a new low point in my career and
my life, I would say.
- An opportunity came to volunteer with the
family liaison program, so I've been doing that,
where I go into the patient's room with an iPad so the
family members can Facetime their patients.
- Anecdotally, patient comes into the hospital,
a patient that is, uh... has declared them self what we call
"do not resuscitate," they're not gonna be resuscitated,
they're not gonna go on a ventilator,
on the verge of respiratory failure.
Can we give them this medicine?
No.
They're not gonna benefit and someone else might,
so I can't give you that medicine.
You feel guilty.
You rely on the fact that you hope you made
the right decision and that, that medicine you have is now
gonna be used appropriately so that, um,
you are helping somebody rather than just throwing it away.
- We've lost colleagues to this disease and to the emotional
toll that this disease has had on the community.
I can see myself in that suffering,
and I see a lot of my colleagues in that suffering.
And that breaks my heart and it scares me.
- Here we are with limited tests, limited medications...
medications that don't work anyway...
and patients that we need to care for.
Frustrating.
- [reporter] The nurses are extremely, uh,
extended.
The work they're doing is, is nothing short of heroic.
- [reporter] A life saved from COVID-19 requires others
accepting the risk of self-sacrifice.
- [Susannah] I do not see myself as a hero.
- [Vincent] I realize that what I'm doing is important
right now, but I'm doing my job.
- "Hero" is a hard word for me to...
take on.
My husband, being in the Army, gets called that all the time.
He gets clapped for.
Someone will come up and be like,
"Thank you for your service."
And he's always like, like, "I have buddies who are,
you know, infantry."
It never sits well with him.
I feel how he feels in that, like,
"Not me, like,
you should see what my friends are doing."
- [Vida] If you have a job, do it...
and do it well.
- [JanMichael] This is exactly why we do what we do.
I had felt purpose because I knew that I was here to do this.
Like, to, to help, you know, protect the city that
I was born in.
- I was raised in a family that really focused on service
and volunteer work.
I chose to go into healthcare, and specifically nursing,
just because I realized when I was pre-med in college that...
the human side of it fell more towards the nurse
than the doctor.
Nurses are the ones right there with the patient every day on
the hardest day of their life, trying to comfort them
and make them feel better.
While I don't consider myself a hero,
a lot of people have been saying, "We signed up for this."
I also don't agree with that.
I signed up to work grueling hours,
to work an extremely high-emotion job,
I signed up to give myself fully to patients on the worst day of
their life and to their families,
but I didn't sign up to not be safe at work,
I didn't sign up to feel like I couldn't do my best job
as a nurse.
- I see my office staff as my heroes,
coming to work even though they know it's going to be risky.
- [JanMichael] I think the better question to ask is,
you know, have, have we always been heroes?
And I think is it just being shed light now?
I don't wake up every day and think,
"I'm this hero," it's "No,
I'm a registered nurse in an emergency department."
- [Dean] I just did what I needed to do so that
other people can do what they need to do.
No.
I'm not the hero.
- Growing up, my grandfather was my role model
from almost day one.
Um, he was a general surgeon.
He actually encouraged me for years to not go into medicine
because I think he really saw the sacrifice it took
to be a great clinician.
He was the one who said, "You know,
if you really think you'd want
to do this, try it out."
He encouraged me to join my ambulance squad in high school,
which I did.
Um, and I fell in love with it.
When I finally called him and told him I,
you know... I have to do this, he, um...
he actually got tearful on the phone.
He was so happy. [voice cracking]
Um...
and that meant the world to me.
He is my favorite person in the whole world, hands down,
and I hope I can be half the doctor he is.
I don't have a cure for my patients.
I, I've lost a lot of my patients.
I don't... I don't feel like a hero.
- [reporter] Doctors across the country are dealing with
unprecedented levels of traumatic stress,
not only from the sheer pressure from their jobs but also
the moral decisions they're forced to make in split seconds.
- In terms of coping with this, I think right now,
none of us can answer that question.
- We haven't been trained to compartmentalize
this many deaths.
That's the reality.
- [Shannon] Stress on the job is something, um,
you talk about in med school, but this was different
in the sense that it was constant
and it was all-encompassing.
- It takes me a long time to really come to terms with
a lot of the things that I see in the hospital.
Um, a lot of the difficult situations,
I ponder for months and months.
- I think that we are in the midst of, of...
trauma, and you can't heal until you're past the trauma.
- We saw so much death and dying quickly...
it was... [exhales] I don't know.
I just usually gave myself a sign of the cross
and...
stepped out of the room.
You know, tried to forget.
And I think I've probably suppressed a lot of it...
which is not good.
- I get a sense of... well-being when I'm able to call a family
who has lost someone and just talk to them for a little bit.
- We all chatter about PTSD right now.
We also don't talk about the hard stuff often
at the hospital.
Sometimes, if you're caught up in your emotions,
you're not doing your job,
you're not caring for the next patient.
- I really flip a switch in my head when I walk
through the door and I, I go into work mode.
I'm focused on keeping my team safe,
doing the best things I can for the patient,
and then moving on.
And in emergency medicine, things move so quickly,
I'm almost thankful that there's not too much time to sit
and process, in the heat of the moment,
the emotional toll that this ultimately does take on
all of us.
I cry pretty much every car ride home after every shift,
and I think that's important for me to do.
To just be feeling the horrendous feelings that we
need to feel after witnessing something like this.
- [reporter] Mental health experts say an entire generation
of medical workers will likely suffer prolonged psychological
effects from working through this pandemic.
- [reporter] There is a, a real barrier,
especially in the field of medicine,
to asking for help.
- My preceptor was like, "Why don't you just go take a break?"
And it... having someone be like, "Take a break" and then,
"Just take time for you."
And I just left clinic and just started crying,
I called my husband and I was like,
"I don't know if I can go back to work,"
He's like, "Just go sit somewhere"
I just sat outside and I just...
like, cried for a little and just had a release,
like, just really, like, "Turn it off.
Take care of yourself."
Okay, now I need a tissue.
[laughs]
- [Susannah] I don't like to cry in front of my family because...
I don't like to bring them into it.
'Cause they don't get to move on the way I do.
- I try not to talk about it too much. Um...
my children ask me,
they say, "Daddy, um, are, are you working with the
coronavirus people?"
And I just tell them, "Yeah, Daddy's taking care
of people that have the coronavirus."
And I kind of give very brief answers.
- My program has started doing weekly check-ins,
so they do a Zoom check-in with our chiefs and our program
director, just as a space just to talk amongst each other about
what's going on and how you're coping,
how you're handling.
- I think that prior to the pandemic,
I tried not to wear my emotions on my sleeves,
and I kind of tried to, uh, be very stoic.
There was plenty of times where I would find myself just,
like, you know, I'm not okay
and that's okay.
It's okay to not be okay.
Once you start to internalize all these situations that are
going on, uh, especially as a healthcare provider,
I think that's when people are kinda set up for failure.
'Cause you're not gonna save everybody.
- And I can't really verbalize what those mechanisms are
for me.
I am able, to an extent, compartmentalize what I see
and do at work everyday, and it makes me worry about our
interns, um, people who haven't done this for a long time
and don't have those mechanisms in place.
- So I think we just get up and go to work and give it our all
and come home and pray that this will end soon and,
um, just keep doing the best we can.
- I'm gonna go up in the shower.
Okay.
- [reporter] There are signs of some progress in this
daily battle that the tri-state is facing in this
coronavirus pandemic.
New York recording the fewest number of daily deaths in
nearly two weeks.
- [reporter] Promising news in the battle against COVID-19:
For three days in a row,
the number of hospitalizations, ICU admissions,
and intubations in New York have all gone down.
- [Cuomo] By the data, we could be either very near
the apex or the apex could be a plateau and we could be
on that plateau right now.
♪ soft emotional music ♪
- [Kathy] We've experienced a lot of darkness,
but there's been also a lot of light and just a lot of hope
around everywhere you looked.
- [Vida] When a patient died, I die.
The fact is, if the patients get better,
it makes me feel good, so it pushes me to help and do the
best that I can, 'cause that's the reason why we are there.
We are there to save lives.
- I was caring for a patient who was very young,
he was in his fourties, I knew that he had young children.
I spoke to his mother and his wife on the phone.
He rapidly declined and, all of a sudden,
his numbers were way off,
he wasn't ventilating appropriately,
he wasn't responding to the medications
in the way that he should.
- I'll never forget this 26-year-old female
who came in walking in, and within half an hour,
we had intubated her.
- [Susannah] I'm looking at this guy, he's grey.
He's like the greyest of grey,
and he makes this sound that you...
oof, it was awful.
- I was talking to him because his family asked me to.
His wife said, "Please tell him 'You need to get through this,
you need to pull through.'"
- And I remember speaking to her mom,
who was primarily Spanish- speaking, just saying, you know,
"What's gonna happen to my daughter?
What's gonna happen to my daughter?"
- Trying to get the board under his back
so we can give compression's so it's on a hard surface
so that they'll work... I think this guy's about to die.
- I was like, "You have to get through this,
you have to pull through, come on, you can do this."
- We were doing everything that we can to keep her alive.
- [Susannah] And we delayed compression's for...
maybe 15, 30 seconds
because we were putting sheets on our
COVID patients, on top of them,
so that when we gave them compression's,
their secretions weren't being spewed onto us.
- One of my patients, he would squeeze my hand...
and seem to be aware when I was in the room.
- [Susannah] And then his heart rate popped up,
and we didn't give him compression's.
And... he was fine.
He came back.
- A couple weeks ago, we just had found out that
she was discharged and on her way home.
- I can't even describe how good it felt
to just have that wave of relief,
knowing that he was gonna pull through.
- I would play for him these relaxation videos we have
of the beaches of Hawaii or the Grecian islands,
and I would tell him, "All right, sir,
today, we're going to Santorini,"
and play the videos.
- And I think that idea of, like, you know,
she's coming home and she's reuniting with her mother
and, um...
it kinda put my mind at ease.
- He had five kids, um, and he's fine.
He went home.
And I don't think he knows who I am
'cause he was intubated and sedated when I cared for him,
but he literally died in front of me and...
then he went home, so...
that's pretty good.
- He's finally taken off sedation and extubated.
He woke up and asked if he was in Hawaii.
And [laughs] I guess if you have to have...
COVID-19 and be intubated in an ICU,
it's not too bad if you think
you're on a beach in Hawaii.
♪ uplifting music ♪
- Some of the patients also give me the strength,
because some patients gets better.
And, um...
they get extubated, and then, we rejoice and scream and yell.
- And when you pull that tube out, and you
hear them cough, it is like the best thing
in the world.
- Our hospital started a new protocol where patients who
recover from COVID-19 get a clap-out.
[applause]
- Just to know that these people are gonna start
to, like, begin their journey towards a somewhat normal life
again, and just to be in those very first moments of that is
something special. [applause]
- [Dean] Play a little song, and everybody knows that
somebody's going home.
And when you hear that once, it's great.
When you hear it twice and three times and four times and
you start hearing it five, six times a day,
um, each one is special, each one means something.
That's what gives us hope: When we see somebody getting better,
when we feel that we've done the right thing at the right time
for long enough that...
they're going home.
- [Vida] I can't save everybody, but I will be able
to save somebody.
That gives me strength.
- [Liza] People do recover from this disease,
and a lot of people don't have catastrophic illness with
this disease, and I have to remind myself of that
sort of every day.
I have a weird and unique existence right now where I live
in the thick of only seeing the sickest patients
with this disease.
And that can warp my reality sometimes.
♪ emotional music ♪
- Especially my co-workers that I work with,
I think everyone's kind of finding their own way of
achieving this, like, perfect state of mental health and
being able to rely on each other, confide in each other.
Like, that workplace camaraderie has been probably at its
highest point that it's ever been.
♪
- I work with the most amazing people,
which is why I have been in this hospital for 24 years.
We're a family.
- There were doctors who kind of took that hat off and, and did
anything and everything to help the nurses and explain things
and start from the beginning and the basics.
The level of teamwork was really amazing.
- The wonderful thing about emergency medicine: At its core,
it's a team sport.
You rely on your fellow residents,
physicians, nurses, techs, everybody,
to get a job done.
- We vent to each other, uh, we blow off steam,
we'll, like, curse to each other if it's a really difficult
situation, and we're really there for each other,
which I think has been absolutely essential.
- [Susannah] You find that, like most of your social interactions
are with your residents right now.
There is a sense of unity at the hospital that... it's unique.
I've never felt that true bond.
You have a tough time relating with your outside-of-medicine
friends because they're just having such a different
experience than we are.
- There really isn't anybody else who can ever understand what it
is we've just gone through, except for the people I worked
shoulder-to-shoulder with every day in the emergency department.
I feel bonded to them for life.
- [Cuomo] Our healthcare workers,
who are doing God's work, when you see them on the street,
when you see them in a hospital, please,
just say "Thank you" and smile and say "I know what
you're doing."
- [reporter] Cheering, clapping,
banging pots and pans, all around the city,
New Yorkers are giving a round of applause to healthcare
workers out their windows.
- We've seen awful, terrible things,
but we've seen people come together and some
amazing parts of humanity.
- [Sarah] I think that seven o'clock cheer is
very reminiscent of that feeling of, of running the marathon.
Um, that, like, goosebumps, chills feeling that,
you know... this city is so big and there are so many of us but
we're really all here for each other.
- [Janmichael] I grew up here in East Elmhurst.
I think I take full pride in being a born-and-bred
New Yorker.
It's... it, it feels good.
It feels like, you know, the city's got your back.
Like, they... like, New York is thanking you.
- [man] Thank you guys!
Thank you so much!
Wow.
- This one couple, um, that every night,
seven o'clock, are outside the hospital,
um, with signs... "Thank you" signs... and cheering.
Um, it's been night after night.
I don't know who they are. I need to find out.
- Just driving home, I passed our local hospital.
Um, people sitting outside with, um,
pom-poms and streamers screaming,
uh, "Thank you, healthcare workers."
Uh, and I, of course, started crying driving home
so I had to pull over.
- [Vida] I love New York.
The other day, my 11-year-old called me and said,
"Mom, somebody knock on our door and just brought us food."
I thought that was amazing, how everybody is trying to help each
other, you know, to fight this.
- [Shannon] Someone pulled up and rolled down their window.
Being a New Yorker, immediately got a little scared that
I cut them off or something,
and she just started clapping and cheering and was saying,
"Thank you, God bless you, thank you for all you do."
- Someone had come and put a rose on everybody's car.
At first, I though maybe my husband came by
and did it for me.
But looking around, I saw all the roses.
And it just gave you a sense of "We're doing this for a reason."
- [Vincent] My grandfather was a member of the
Air National Guard, and he was really my role model.
I lost him, um, early on in life to,
you know... to his having cancer.
He used to fly in C-130s, and sure enough,
on May 15th, which was the anniversary of my grandfather's
passing, what flies over my hospital?
A C-130 with the Air National Guard.
My mother was like, "That's your grandfather looking
down on you."
- [Kathy] The support that we received from the community
was just overwhelming and...
meant so much. [voice cracking]
♪ hopeful music ♪
- I try to leave work at work, and when I come home,
it's really just, you know, time with the kids.
My daughter, she's my angel.
My daughter knows that when Daddy's having a rough day,
if I say, "Sophia, come give Daddy a little medicine,"
that means she has to give Daddy a hug.
- My inspiration every day were my children,
because I think I've learned they truly look up to me
and respect me.
- My passion that's driving me day in and day out is to,
one day soon, to be able to hold my niece.
I don't want her to forget me and I want her to
be able to recognize my face and my voice.
- My family is always by hugest support and,
um, gives me my, my greatest strength.
- My boyfriend has definitely taken on the role
of cheerleader for me.
I think his words of affirmation have really kept me
going and made me see things in myself that maybe in that moment
I wasn't capable of seeing.
- My husband is a Staff Sergeant in the Army.
Thinking about seeing my husband again
is what I think about every night.
- My cope and my strength...
comes from my husband,
'cause every night, he'll call me at the hotel,
and then we will pray.
This necklace was given to me by my husband on
my 20th wedding anniversary.
Any time I put it on, I feel like it's my lucky charm.
- Mommy!
- Getting to see my family again was the best,
and it was the first moment I felt any semblance of normalcy
in almost two months, um, and it was much needed.
I just tried my best to be in that moment.
Oh my God, just hugging my kids and seeing them excited
and smile... it was the best.
- [Cuomo] This has been hard.
It's put everyone under pressure.
The beauty you see and the strength that you see
compensates and balances for the weakness.
And I get inspired by the strength,
so I can tolerate the heartbreak of the weakness.
And it's that generosity of spirit,
for me, makes up for all the ugliness that you see.
- We're fragile, humans, and I think I've learned the fragility
of humans during this pandemic.
- If this pandemic showed me anything...
there's still so much to learn in nursing for me,
there's still so much out there.
- I'll always look back on these moments and, and remember the
difficult times but also remember the strength that it
took us as healthcare workers to get through it and the support
of my colleagues and of my friends that I work with.
- I see...
how people are blissfully unaware of what's going on in
the hospital, and I'm grateful for that because I don't think
everybody should have to see what we see.
But just appreciate being home, appreciate that you have the
opportunity to stay home and to stay safe.
- I hope it doesn't take you having to see how bad
this disease can be for you to, you know...
[inhales]
love your family, hold them tight,
and, um, not take anything for granted.
- I wish all those out there could come into the floor
or the operating room and see people dying.
It shut down your organs.
They can't breathe.
This is a deadly disease.
- [Dean] We see the numbers as if it's,
you know, lottery winnings or if it's how many hours to
the next debate.
Look at those numbers and, uh, see them as real people,
people that had lives, that woke up,
that went to work, that have families,
that have children, that thought that they were going to maybe
achieve something, or maybe they were getting ready
for retirement or maybe they were retired but they
had lives, they have families.
Um...
and my advice is to sometimes just take a step back and
think about... think about that.
Cherish life.
- [de Blasio] The challenge is, and I say this very sadly,
that the coronavirus is alive and well and living in
New York City.
Yes, there's been real important progress and
we can and will make more,
but we're still very much in this fight.
We cannot forget what we're up against and
the power of this disease,
but if we find our own power, if we act on our own power,
I'm also convinced we will prevail.
- The future's pretty far aware for us.
I don't think we can see it so clearly yet.
- [Susannah] I think I'm still gonna be anxious about it.
Anxious that maybe I saw a kid with COVID three days prior and
I have no symptoms and suddenly, you know,
my little daughter has it and she's hugging Nanny.
You know, that's, that's a fear.
- [Vincent] Professionally, I'm saying, "Okay,
so we need to not get lax,
we need to stay prepared, stay ready."
I would think naturally, we're gonna see an uptick in cases.
- I'm not sure what the solution is.
We can get into politics but I don't wanna go there.
I think that, uh, if there's anything
that's gonna destroy science, it's politics.
- We still have quite a few patients and we're still working
very hard and we're still living the same realities
we did weeks ago.
- If this virus were to hit at peak flu season,
at a point when hospital was closer to capacity and there
were more sick people, I, I fear that.
- I hope we move in the right direction.
I pray that we move in the right direction, because if
we don't... we've lost everything.
- Questions are definitely gonna be...
need to be addressed and conversations need to be had...
above and beyond how much is expected of our profession.
- This is different, this is a marathon,
and we're gonna have moments where we're lulled into thinking
it's over, and I'm sure we're gonna get pummeled again at
points, and I think it's just trying to be easy on all of
ourselves and be kind to ourselves.
- Even with the SARS outbreak, the MERS outbreak,
the Ebola, Hantavirus, all of those,
they've all been difficult viruses to maintain and treat,
but never have we seen anything that...
mimics what we're seeing now.
- [Liza] I think we like to all think we're really tough,
that we can sort of handle anything that comes our way.
When you're the helper,
it feels odd, it doesn't feel natural,
it doesn't feel right to ask for help.
And I really do worry about that part of us and... as a community
and what that will mean for us down the road
and in the thick of this.
- [Dean] There will be an end in sight.
At some point, there will be a vaccine.
This isn't the end of humanity.
Um, we'll get through this, it's just a... it's really more of a
question of how much more damage will we do before we
get to that point?
And I don't think anybody knows.
- I mean, I know there's such a divide right now.
And I, I try and be understanding...
because I don't understand the other side of the world.
I still have my job.
Financially, I haven't been hit.
And I try and understand because they don't understand our side.
So we need to bridge this divide and we need to see each other's
side and be a little bit more patient.
And the bottom line is I, I think we did do a good thing.
I think we did stop this from getting so much worse.
Uh, the curve is coming down and I pray it stays that way.
I pray there's not another wave of this in the future.
- [Dr. Adhanom] The pandemic has shown us that there is no health
without health workers.
More than kindness, more than love,
compassion is the emotion that most makes us human.
- [Dean] The healthcare industry, I think, is
a different group, it's a different set of people.
They are the ones that wanna learn a little bit more
so that we can do a little bit better for our patients.
- I know, when I leave work, I try my absolute hardest for
every patient I see.
And I have to continue on that kind of work and I have to rely
on that work ethic and try to help them.
It's a deep-seated calling and a call to help.
- You know, I figure if I can get through this...
then I can get through anything, 'cause this is
one of the toughest things I've ever experienced.
- What I've seen is a, uh... an evolution of our staff.
You see people who start with that fear that I talked about
to, to just kind of morphing into these, these warriors,
really just going up, uh, and beyond what they usually do.
- [Cherese] I had offered my staff the ability to either stay
home or come to work.
I did have a group that wished to stay to help me.
And I, I can't even form words to say how grateful I am.
That selfless act... I'm just in awe of them.
- The satisfaction...
in seeing somebody getting better makes me feel good.
I love my family...
but I love my job.
- [Dean] The nurses are, are the backbone of,
of medicine.
They're the ones who deliver what we order.
I can type in an order and say "This patient
needs that" but, you know, that's simple.
The nurses take care of the human part.
Um, and they, they really do that in a way that you know
they care for them.
They care for them as people, as human beings.
- It's a lot about setting aside that level of comfort,
because my, my comfort doesn't matter.
What exactly can we do to save this person's life?
It's not about my comfort level.
- I think going to work has... it's been hard but...
I wish this wasn't happening, I wish people weren't
going through this, but if given a choice to stay home or go to
the hospital and be a nurse, I wouldn't change anything.
- [Annabel] Before this pandemic, I was...
uncertain if I should be a nurse.
Nursing is exhausting, it has a very high burn-out rate,
especially when you're working night shift.
But this pandemic kind of changed that.
I am very grateful to be a nurse right now.
I have a skill-set that gives me a sense of purpose,
and I get to go to work every day and do something to try and
make it better.
- There is no one there who doesn't deserve thanks.
No one.
Uh, how do you thank them?
How do you thank somebody for devoting their life to
someone else's?
There's no way of thanking them.
Um, we can't afford to give them raises and,
and that's no thanks either. Um, it's not enough.
You can give them food, you can give them
bottles of wine, you can give them the day off,
but...
you really can't thank them for what they're doing.
- We're trying to make a difference and we're hoping we
did, um...
big or small.
And it's, it's, it's... it really is an honor to do what
we're doing.
- Just don't thank me.
Just wear the mask, social distancing,
and wash your hands and stay safe.
That's the "thank you" I want.
♪ emotional music ♪
♪ soft piano music ♪
- Why did I come here tonight to talk?
Um, to chat with you, to, to do this film,
this documentary?
Um...
- When Sarah told me about the project,
all I asked Sarah was...
"Would it reach an audience?"
And I think even if somebody hear what I have to say,
at least I did something good.
Just to at least save one person.
- I think it's important to see... the human side
of all of this.
Um, to hear about what it was like in the hospital.
- I think it's important to know about the individual and why
they do what they do and who are they,
as opposed to, you know, what's going on just at work,
because before this pandemic, prior... uh,
after this pandemic, we... we are people
and we have our own lives.
- Um, and I think it's really important to get that word out
and that perspective out so that the community can continue to
rally around that, even when we all get really tired of having
to stay home and having to do the things that we don't
wanna do anymore, like socially distance,
wear a mask, um, not go see our older loved ones.
- I want to get the message out there and put
some meaning behind those numbers that we see on TV,
put some meaning behind, um, the success stories,
and put some meaning behind what we normally do on a day-to-day
basis, how we help each other, how humanity is supposed to be.
- I wanted to be a part of this project so people remembered the
positive parts about this, that people came together,
and that we saw goodness.
- I was just hoping to...
be a voice for the amazing people I work with,
and to shine a light on what we do and just how important
this is, what we're fighting for in there,
what we're fighting for in that unit.
- Um, long after this is over...
we can't forget the things that we learned from this pandemic.
- If I can... in just a small way... get people to think about...
their neighbors, their friends, or even people they don't know
in a, in a, in a lighter manner,
in a, in a more pleasant manner,
then I've probably accomplished more with coming out here
than I did in the last three months. [laughs]
♪