Interviews

Let The People Speak: Interviews on COVID-19

By: Caroline Allan

I wanted to create a collection of different people’s perspectives on the epidemic. I knew that I couldn't go out and interview people because of social distancing, so I called people that my family or I knew and asked them if they would be willing to answer some questions. I asked people their opinions on online school, how the pandemic had affected their life, what was the most difficult thing about social distancing, what worried them the most, what a typical day in quarantine looked like for them, and whether they had any interesting or positive stories to tell. Then I typed up something they said I thought was interesting.

Ellie Allan, 6th grader from Cambridge: “I find that every morning I have to make a schedule to motivate myself to do it otherwise I get off task. Otherwise I do random stuff on my computer like checking my email. I do work, I check my email, I do more work, I check my email again. I can't stop checking my email, because it's like, my little sneaky way out of doing my work. I get annoyed at Google Classroom because my teachers aren’t tech savvy and don't know how to use it. I think that's one of the most annoying things about virtual school. Ok so, on video calls, everyone screams. And then I'm like “will you mute?” but nobody hears me because they are all screaming. But we use Google chat or whatever it's called--Google meet. Every time someone speaks it switches the call to them, so everyone's speaking and the call just switches and switches and it's really bad.”

Ella Coffey, freshman at CRLS: “Ok so basically my mom is a global health worker at Harvard and she knows all about the pandemic because as a worker in the health area she finds it super interesting, so she knows everything about corona right now. And so she tells me all this stuff and she's like, ‘Yeah, you're not going back to school this year’ because basically right when Cambridge, or the US as a whole, is going to hit the period where there is the most number of deaths, like right when we’re going to go over that huge hill, that's going to be from the midpoint of April to the beginning of June and that's when all the schools are supposed to go back so that's not accurate and not going to work. Well, I guess after everyone has died and like everyone is trying to reset the country we could technically go back to school, but everyone is going to try to reset the country and they're going to have to clear out all the bodies and clean out all the hospitals and get everyone back to where they are and like healthy and it would be like bad to throw us right back into the school patterns after getting used to doing online stuff so I just dont think its going to work.”

Nicole Sutton, Pediatric Cardiologist from New York City: The Covid cases in New York City are very high right now, so she’s been trying to send any of her normal patients home for now, if possible, and meet with them over video calls. They are also trying to reschedule surgeries for another two months. She’s also volunteered to help in a special ICU that's being made to take care of adult patients with and without COVID, although her job normally is a pediatrician:

“It is scary, because you have to wear a lot of equipment and you have to be very careful about what you're doing. We have tried to make it easier for people by limiting the number of doctors who see all the patients. So each patient is being seen only about once a day by a doctor, depending on how sick they are. I do have colleagues who have gotten COVID. We have multiple colleagues in our intensive care unit, and one of our cardiologists has got it, although he probably got it traveling and not in the hospital. We have multiple of our congenital heart disease patients--kids and adult patients--with it, as well. So my hospital has switched, actually today, well yesterday, so everybody has to wear an n95 mask at all times in the hospital. All staff. So we are wearing those masks all the time. So what I'm doing is that I have one outfit of clothes that I'm wearing back and forth to the hospital because I'm driving. I get to my office and I change into scrubs. I wear the scrubs until the end of the day. At the end of the day I change back into that one pair of clothes that I wear in my car. I wipe down my car with lysol wipes when I get back in and out of it every day, then when I get home I have a whole project that happens by my door. So the shoes stay outside and they get sprayed with the lysol. I'm wearing old sneakers that I don't like anymore. I take everything that I've touched and I wipe everything down with lysol wipes. I have a special place for my one bag that I'm using to carry my stuff back and forth too. And then I run as fast as I can into the bathroom without touching anyone or anything to take off my clothes and change and depending on how much contact I’ve had with patients, like today I didn't see any Covid patients because I was doing a procedure, so I probably won't take a shower as soon as I get home, but the other day when I was seeing patients I got home and I took a shower right away and then changed into clean clothes that are my home clothes. Most people are doing some variation of that who are working with COVID patients. If I had a garage, I might be one of those doctors who is getting changed in the garage and then running right into my shower, but most people are trying to keep their clean clothes separated from their dirty clothes. I have not separated from my family yet, but some people have been doing that, where they’ve been sending their family away or they are living in a different part of their house, away from their family, but when I have to take this service where I’m working 12 hours for five or six days in a row in the COVID positive unit then I may actually not live at home for those days.”

Amelia Lewis, 11th grader from New York City: “The hardest part is obviously being able to do schoolwork and stuff. So because I am a junior we have AP tests and college visits and that kind of thing that we're supposed to be doing right now, but because we're stuck inside and we can't go to school, like my entire grade is kind of really freaking out about all that. It's definitely stopping a lot of people from getting to do what they want to do over the summer, getting cool internships, and those are all things that are really really important to college applications, so I think that is one of the hardest things about being stuck inside right now. That and I'm kind of going stir crazy because I haven't really been able to do anything and I have not been able to be as active as I usually am. So those are the two hardest things. I feel like globally obviously this is going to have a lot of impact, but I feel like in America it's going to, like, my school is already having an increase of applications for financial aid, like it's already taking a huge economic toll on a lot of families, families who I know, and who it would be devastating if they left our community and I wouldn't be able to see these students at school and I know that the same thing is happening across the country so that seems like a pretty severe outcome of all this. I know a few people who have it, who have coronavirus, like one of my closest friends, her dad is in the hospital right now, and he had to be put into a coma because he had a very severe case, and I know that Cecily [Amelia’s sister], her really close friend’s entire family got it. One thing that I've realized is that all of this is a lot closer to where you are than you think it is. When I heard about the whole pandemic happening my mentality was like ‘This is the 21st century, medicine has come so far, science has come so far, this can’t affect us,’ especially in America, you know? For some reason the United States seems so untouchable in all of that, being like a leading first-world country, but when your friends start to be affected you really realize just how severe the whole pandemic is and I think I didnt even grasp that until my friend called me and told me.”

Cecily Lewis, 6th grader from New York City: “Around this time, like it's spring, usually I go to the East Meadow, but now it’s all shut down and filled with these white tents that are for hospital patients and instead of regular school of course, I’m at home, and the thing that's different about that is that it's a lot easier than normal school and it's also faster because partially I just rush through my work really quickly, like today technically, I was supposed to be done at school at three, but because I finished all my work and I didnt have another check in with my advisory, I just stopped at one because I didn't have anything else to do. Ooh, I have something interesting. My cousin is the director of health for New York State. His name is Howard Zucker, you can look him up, and now he's on TV, telling us to stay apart right now so we can be together later. The most challenging thing about this is my parents heckling me to go outside to go for walks. Honestly, if I'm going to catch corona it's because of that.”

A CRLS freshman: “I want to go to Kung Fu Tea. I want to go to Boston Tea Stop. These are all food related items. I want to go to a thrift store and buy some dark academia clothing because I need it. And just enjoy being outside with the friends that I have and not just seeing one person who is not related to me. And buying roller skates. Yeah.”

Magda Gyftopolous, teacher at Jose Mateo Ballet Theatre in Harvard Square: “I think the most difficult thing is knowing how much all of the other people in the arts are having a hard time and it's especially hard because dance is something that requires like space and movement and really other people around, and not being able to do that fully or knowing that we can’t give you guys the classes that you need and deserve is like really difficult. So I mean we’re trying to give you guys something over the internet, but not full classes because it would be too difficult to correct you and the effectiveness wouldn't be anywhere near what it can be when we're in the same space. But yeah it's also like that uncertainty, just knowing everyday that's like ‘I don’t really know what's going to happen.’ It's just hard. But it's been interesting because I've also had the opportunity to talk with some other people from different organizations going through similar things. I was speaking yesterday with some people from the Boston Children's Choir and Boston City Singers and West End House, but yeah it was interesting talking with just different organizations. Kind of trying to figure it out and find out how we can still be relevant now even though it seems almost impossible...I have found that people are more willing to share and talk to each other from different arts organizations, more so that they would previously like reaching out and being like, ‘What are you guys doing? This is what we’re doing’ or even just checking in, being like, “Is everything ok?” For me, it's kind of refreshing. I've been having conversations with other people in the dance world especially of the younger generation, you know who are closer to my age and kind of frustrated that this hasn't been happening before. Because we're all like, “Oh if we all just talked maybe we'd have more of a thriving arts scene,” and like frustrated at the older cohorts you know stubborn and just like, “No this is how we’re going to do it.” So it's interesting that it's kind of happening now, but the reason it's happening is not that great. It's definitely a change that I kind of hope continues beyond this point. I don't want to give myself credit for this, but I am going to give myself credit for this, I thought it was important [to set up some kind of call, because I just thought] ‘If I were home with my crazy family I would go nuts. And the only thing I would want to do is hear my teachers voice and see my friends and do some ballet,’ and so I felt like it was really important to reach out to all the students and give everybody the opportunity to do that to some extent or another. I know I wasn’t the only one who felt that way, but I was really pushing for it very forcefully. I think that was a little tiny triumph on my end, just making sure that we had a way for everybody to at least say hi to each other. I know some people have group chats but a lot of younger ones don’t have that ability and just making sure everybody is ok, likely yeah we're just ballet teachers and stuff like that, but to some of the kids I'm sure we’re a little bit more than that, we’re maybe helping some kids stay sane or you know, I think making sure that sense of community is still there. It's so strange because it's like all of a sudden the world kind of stopped and it's like things that you kind of just did mindlessly you're like ‘Oh. I can’t do my plies in front of a mirror today. That's weird.’”

Stefan Econemou, Cambridge resident: I stay at home all the time, and I have to go shopping for three families. Last time I went there was hardly anyone in the store but it was still nerve wracking. I had to shave my beard so that the mask would fit over my face, seal properly.