(calm piano music)
- Let's see how that looks.
How's that?
- [Interviewer] Adjust the camera a little bit
so you're perfectly in the center.
Right now, there's a little more space
on your left.
- How about that?
- [Interviewer] Yeah, that's great.
I think you're ready.
COVID-19.
- Difficult.
(laughs)
I get minimum three COVID possible
or positive patients a day.
It's just become the normal now.
I've been getting them everyday for the last two months.
- The first thing that pops into my mind is fear,
even though I don't really want it to be.
- Unprecedented.
- Unpredictable.
- Shitty.
I lost my grampa to COVID-19 just a few weeks ago
and it was probably one of the worst experiences
of my family's life.
Not being able to be there for him,
for him to just go out like that was pretty damn shitty.
- [Interviewer] COVID-19.
- Overwhelming.
- Nervous.
- [Interviewer] Why?
- On a selfish level, I'm nervous
because I'm supposed to go to grad school in the fall,
like at my dream school.
It feels like this is never gonna end
and the changes are just so constant
that it's tumultuous right now.
- In my household, I live with my mother and my brother.
They stay upstairs, I stay in my basement.
If I get it, I get it, I don't care.
It's just I don't want my family getting it.
My brother has autism.
He's in such a routine where he knows he sees me every day
and it's heartbreaking because I'm breaking that routine.
- Okay, one word to describe COVID-19.
Courage.
- Isolation.
- Isolating.
- Scary.
- I work in the emergency room so we're the frontlines.
We actually had someone who was a healthcare worker
who was threatened to be shot at
because we were the reasons why COVID is a thing.
She was in her scrubs and it was crazy
and so we got this huge email and text saying,
"Please come in your street clothes just for your safety."
- Chaos.
- Uncertain.
- This has completely changed the paradigm.
Learning on the fly what works and what doesn't
and at the same time, people are losing their lives quickly.
And it's been a challenge.
- As a nurse who has to do my job,
we could potentially be the cause or be carrying the cause
of someone's death.
We're weapons.
We're walking biological weapons.
- I was sent home from work today
because I actually had a low-grade fever
and I had no idea.
I felt completely fine but they turned me away
and told me to go home.
So if this persists, I think, for more than four days
then I've gotta get tested
and I'm not looking forward to that.
- Pandemic.
- Oh man.
(laughs)
Can that work, "oh man"?
Okay.
(interviewer laughs)
Oh man.
- [Interviewer] What happens when the pandemic is over?
- I don't know.
That's the thing, it's like,
are we gonna go back to being our normal lives?
Are we gonna still be very precautious about what we touch,
and how we interact with each other?
- But is it ever really over?
Is the real question, is it really ever over?
Yeah, the world will go back to normal
but I think people will still continue
to die from this virus, unfortunately.
(calm piano music)