-4-0, headed to north central Bronx for the code red.
Has she been out of the home in the last two weeks?
-Screening positive. 3-0.
-Make sure you speak in full sentences.
-Ambulance is on its way.
-303 good. -031 responding.
-We're used to death.
Not to sound callous or anything like that,
but we're a lot more used to death than the average person.
We see it.
We're there for some of these people in the worst moments
in their lives.
But mentally, because it doesn't happen constantly,
one after the other after the other,
you have time to kind of recover and deal with it however,
you know, you deal with it.
Now since it's so many, it's disheartening.
You feel like you can't do anything.
So this patient, when we were screening the call,
we told them, you know, when they were asking
the questions, the patient said they were stable.
And if we can, we try to get them outside
so we can limit contact with other people
in the home and the environment.
How long has this been going on?
-I went to the doctor on Tuesday.
-Okay.
So this is gonna go in your nose, around your ears.
This little thing right here
is gonna sit right in front of your mouth,
and it's gonna tell me how your lungs are doing, okay?
We train for infectious diseases,
and we train for mass casualty incidents,
which is a large number of patients
overwhelming the system.
Typically, we don't have both.
303, 10-8, code 7.
They'll give you their signal shortly.
I'm gonna have a 14-I to come after.
-10-4.
-His oxygen level is a little low.
So typically, your normally oxygen level
is between 95 and 100.
His was 78.
The scariest part about this disease
is typically somebody who is that low, they'd be blue.
We're not seeing that anymore.
We hear people complaining about staying at home,
and, "Oh, I have to deal with my family this whole time,"
or, "I have to do this."
Like, I don't get to see my family at all.
I -- you know, there's EMTs, there's paramedics,
there's nurses, there's doctors, the true front liners
in this pandemic that are sleeping in hotels,
sleeping in cars because they're worried
about bringing it home to their family.
And people can't stay in their home to stop this.
-Texting a medic, 5-1.
Third party caller who left the scene.
-I don't got -- just confirm the numeric.
-Gonna be on the second floor.
-No. -No?
His oxygen level is way too low.
-Yeah, he's corona positive, right?
-Uh, positiva coronavirus?
Because we've been so busy and we've had so many hyper-acute
or super sick patients,
they all just meld together into one big, bad call.
-Feeling better?
A little better?
Okay.
This changed everything for us.
So we did a months worth of cardiac arrests
in a 24-hour period.
We did three months, four months worth of intubations
in a 24-hour period.
If people saw some of the things that we see on a daily basis,
they wouldn't want to go outside.
They would follow those social distancing rules.
It takes its toll on you.
No matter strong somebody says they are or how okay with death
that someone says they are,
you're still a human at the end of the day, and we all feel it.
Nobody gets into EMS for the money.
We do it for our patients.
You know, slowing down is hard
because it gives you time to think.
You know, we've all seen,
especially lately, a lot of death,
a lot of super sick patients that our mind necessarily
hasn't had time to fully process.
You know, I wonder how it's gonna be for all of us
once it goes back
to what's gonna be the new normal.
You know, how are our EMTs, our paramedics, our nurses,
our doctors, our hospital staff,
you know, the morgue technicians,
the funeral directors who have dealt with so much death --
more than anybody should ever deal with --
how are we gonna be after all this?