Interviewer(s): Henry
Interviewee(s): Siobhan

Siobhan: My hair look okay?

Henry: Your hair looks great. I only use the audio anyway, so I transcribe it. Your real name will not be used and any references to organizations aren’t named. I mean, you’re retiring, so...

Siobhan: Yeah, it doesn't make a difference. It doesn't matter. OK, um.

Henry: You've any questions for me before I start asking you stuff?

Siobhan: No, I am. Good.

Henry: Great. Thank you. OK, so, um. So first, how old are you?

Siobhan: 55.

Henry: And where are you located?

Siobhan: I am in [Philadelphia Area]

Henry: And what's your job?

Siobhan: Jobs then or jobs now. Retired now.

Henry: What were your jobs in early 2020? January.

Siobhan: [Administrative assistant, EMT instructor, EMT-Basic, Home Care for nephew with brain injury]

Henry: OK. Did you, uh, did you volunteer with anyone?

Siobhan: Volunteered with the squad. [city] Emergency Squad.

Henry: OK, and you're an EMT there?

Siobhan: Yes, I am. EMT b.

Henry: OK. So can you tell me about when you first heard about COVID?

Siobhan: So COVID hit the […] County area around the first to second week, first or second week of March. It was minimal beginning first week of March. By the second week, we start to have considerable, several considerable sizable numbers with respiratory distress and flu like symptoms where our call volume went up from maybe 35 in a week to 235 in less than three days where people were just calling in.

I think I have the flu. I'm really, really sick. I'm having respiratory distress. Respiratory distress started to outweigh by the third week in March by March 16th [County] was in full mode for COVID. We closed down our office and worked out of our main office in Doylestown to start to handle the calls that started to come in about COVID, where we were contract tracing.

Henry: But you'd heard about it before it hit?

Siobhan: Yes, we did. We had heard about it mid-February, end of February. We- myself hearing through the E.R.s, through the doctor's offices, through my medical director at [organization], that, y’know, something they weren't sure what it was. It was some out, as they called it, an out-of-state flu, which was coming in to be even an out of country, so to speak.

Flu, not that it was a flu, but that's what the signs and symptoms of people were mimicking. And everybody just blew it off as flu and they started to get more severe with respiratory distress and there's respiratory distress. Those calls went into cardiac arrest and then the patient was actually, some were DOA before we even got them to the hospital.

They didn't make it.

Henry: Wow. So can you tell me about your initial thoughts about the new virus?

Siobhan: So the new virus, when I came in, like I said, already kind of right when you heard the symptoms, it kind of really rallied around. It was like a flu bug, like a serious flu bug or something, you know, that came from wherever I was active with the avian bird flu back in the night, back in the late nineties, early 2000, where we thought it might have been something that picked up so many years after that.

Again, I was kind of concerned for a while. My nephew has respiratory issues a lot. I know a lot of people have allergies. My daughter barely had allergies. She was pregnant at the time. So I was kind of concerned for that. But I was really concerned because every day there were more and more numbers with people calling out.

911 was overwhelmed with respiratory distress or flu like symptoms, abdominal pain. So I was concerned because I had to be careful who I came in contact with and you want to bring anything home to my nephew? I don't want to come in contact with my daughter while she was pregnant. So I was generally concerned that it was a nasty flu.

And I was like, OK, I need to get another flu shot or what else can I do? I was just- not that I was really worried just for myself, but for the people that I have to deal with and I have to live with.

Henry: So can you tell me about how you were feeling about around this time?

Siobhan: Around this time, I guess I had like and I actually have like anxiety. I was concerned because the people that like I said, everybody that I had like to deal with, it kind of made me heightened. Like if I had a cough or sneeze, I was constantly covering my own face because I had heard from everybody else, oh, my God, you sneezed.

You know, you have you have all these symptoms. Then you start to run through things really well. You know what? I had a headache and there were a couple of days, right? Headache but here, my blood pressure's up because of the anxiety. My diabetes, my diabetes was all out of whack at that under control now. But so there was a lot going on.

So I kind of said I'm I probably have like a real bad like a real high case of high anxiety. Like, you know, I was afraid to do anything, go anywhere, but I still had to go to work everyday. I still jobs. I had to go and do and work and I did work through the COVID pandemic.

Henry: But in those early days, though, maybe you're you're hearing rumors that you're hearing, you know, some of the isolated cases maybe maybe even when you're starting to get swamped. What did you expect to see in the big picture?

Siobhan: So what we had heard and what's being on the squad. So, you know, you're going to get a little bit more back door information than most people like on, you know, if you're not in health field or in the front lines, a lot of the people a lot of the calls that I have like later on in February, a lot of them have respiratory distress, went into respiratory arrest.

I'm starting to get concerned because the cases were getting higher and higher every day. And there could have been somebody who was extremely healthy and young were being like, you know, they were able to get through it quicker. Some of them weren’t; some were deathly ill. We lost a lot. as I know, by the first week of March, we'd already had like 15 to 20 deaths during that.

And it was just it was really kind of hard to even listen to what because you'd hear whispers down the line and it wasn't let's forget lying was it was cold, hard facts. I had those patients. I transported them early on. I knew what was happening in the hospital where they were keeping everything kind of like hush hush.

And they're like, anything you see here, you know, keep it under wraps. You don't formally put it out because you don't want to be in trouble for anything. But like I saw it going into the E.R., people were just sick as dogs. And this was in the first several weeks. And the rumor mill, as far as it was, it was true, but it wasn't as drastic as what we already knew behind the curtains that, no, they're not going to make it.

They're already on a respirator and it doesn't look good for them. So as far as whisper down the line really didn't listen to much that I knew the cold, hard facts in the beginning of that and what it was. So I didn't really too much to the rumor mill, you know. a lot of it was kept hush hush under wraps.

You know, don't put nothing out. And then CDC went online and went out, major announcements and everything and then complete panic. Then there was no more whisper down the line.

Henry: Did you have, like a eureka moment.

Siobhan: When was.

Henry: That moment when you realized, like, how bad this was going to be?

Siobhan: Kind of at first I was like, all right, it's probably just really be obviously we'll get through it. But I guess once I got closer to where like further into like the end of March, I was kind of like, holy shit. They just completely, like, completely shut everything down. Like, it was almost wanted to I almost want to think of like the Spanish flu that it was going to be something like that.

Were so many people died from the Spanish flu because only beginning and in the middle, you could compare that to what the Spanish flu was back then. They weren't as far advanced in medical as we are today, but I was like, and then I started to lose personal friends from it and like I think nothing like that's a flu shot to give us a shot.

Good but being on the cause and seeing the really sick people, I'm down. Holy shit. This is like, oh my God, we might lose a lot of people. And we have we've lost close to I think we believe [indistinct] like a million people have died from COVID and I guess that's when it really set in like, holy Christ.

Not that I wasn't taking it seriously, I was, but I guess I just wasn't hiding it because I'm like, hey, we're advanced. We can fix things. We'll figure out whatever it is, but not knowing where it came from and knowing it could take down somebody old, somebody young, could take out an infant like a child, like a young, healthy, you know, young, healthy adult, you know, it kinda really put things in perspective, like, holy shit, you got to really be careful.

And then I would get I would see people, like, not really distancing, not wearing, like just not following really what they were told to do. And I would kind of get enraged. And I know I had to step back from that because these are the people that I wound up having to treat as a patient at some point in time, you know?

So, yeah, my oh shit moment was the end of March.

Henry: Did you realize how long it would last for?

Siobhan: I honestly, I was completely, I guess, kind of taken aback when it just seemed to like drag on, drag on and nothing was getting better. And I got it got to the point one time where we had our medical director post it and he goes, honestly, people, he goes the CDC is at its wit's end. They don't know what they're doing.

They got vaccine companies offering all this kind of stuff. And this was early on before they even started talking about vaccines. The drug companies were already like in the works of trying to think it was some kind of flu. They were going to make up some vaccine and save the world even way before it was even thought, you know, before it was brought to the public yeah.

I guess I really was concerned. Like, I'm like, holy shit, this is going to wipe out a lot of people. Then I became almost like OCD, like always wore masks, always wipe things down. Like I was like I was considerably you know, I was upset because anybody some of the patients I lost were diabetics. Had high blood pressure. Well, I have high blood pressure and diabetes.

So I was like totally like, holy Christ, I'm going to get wiped out before I hit 60, you know? So I was concerned, but I had a job to do, and that was my job, to go to work every day to help the people that were really, really sick, kind of talk them through things, you know, contract trace with them.

But yeah, I was, yeah, completely like, holy shit. Now I got to be careful myself, you know. But I wouldn't put myself first. I was always worried about everybody else. And as usual, I like, I put myself last, you know, but when it got that close on, like, holy shit, there's getting people wiped out with like, I have diabetes and high blood pressure, you know, I kind of started to worry a little bit, you know?

Henry: Yeah, that's totally understandable. Response. I mean, if you're seeing people just like you who are getting hit hard.

Siobhan: Exactly. And you were like, who, like, ran every day and exercise and eat, right? I do. Trust me, I don't have the best diet, but like, I'm not overweight. I'm not obese, but I just like perfectly healthy. People my age were dropping like flies, and I'm like, how am I still here? Like, you know what I mean? And I try not to think that way because, you know, EMT, that's my job.

It's like, I need to take care of the public. That's my job. That's my job. You know what I mean?

Henry: My parents are little bit older than you, but they're in great shape and they got hit really hard by it.

Siobhan: Oh, God, you lose... Yeah.

Henry: I know. My dad didn't think you would get it because, you know, he's a medical worker. Thank you.

Siobhan: Did he get it?

Henry: Oh, yeah. He got it. Like, immediately. [...]

I was in I was in China. Actually, I was around when it started. I got out of China by like three days and we took a family vacation down in we were in Singapore. Malaysia.

Siobhan: Oh cool.

Henry: Yeah. I remember. Like, I mean, like, I had like the pack of masks surgical stuff. Like, a pack of masks. I was like, you guys are going to want this to wear for the plane.

Siobhan: Right?

Henry: Yeah. And obviously they didn't. And you know, I remember like I was with that, I came back from Asia, so I care for them in the house and then they were good, and I went back to the place in Manhattan. In Manhattan, and I see the masks I gave them unopened on the table.

Siobhan: Unbelievable.

Yeah. Yeah. Smack your parents in the head. […]

Henry: About the time, like the flu, like the months preceding. So the news coming out of China, the news coming out of Italy.

Siobhan: Well, you know, yeah, I was we were because we were put on alert because we work for the health department. The State Health Department actually alerted us so we would actually follow not so much at home because I was working health department during the day and I was at [hospital] at night before they cut classes at [hospital]. So anything we did, they would have like something around like between one and four in the afternoon and we would just sit in and we would just have a meeting and we would just follow along that way through the CDC, through CNN, like anything where we could get the news from.

Because when I came home, honestly, I had so much of it bounced into my head even before it really, really hit. They were saying, you know, our medical doctors, like, you know, this is something you got to what we may have to watch for. It's something that's coming out of China. It's coming out of the countries. People are going to be coming here to America.

I'm like, oh, great, you're going to bring it here. And lo and behold, it was so I mean, yeah, we were following along. We had meetings like two or three times a week about different things. Like in the event of we actually had public health preparedness, our PHP Department, who was actually the one who, when it came right down to it, set up everything where we set up like a phone room.

We had a call center, we had a center to take contract tracing. Like we already started to like put our ducks in a row in the event of they came here and got bad. So we were actually free and say, how I can say this. We were, we were ready. We were like, pre-ready like if something hit, we were ready to go.

We were ready to act. You know, to have the information. Like it was research, like there was call sheets written up. They had notes and implements implemented into us. So when somebody called, I could ask answer any questions they had to ask me and what they had to do to get tested. And like, you know, now my whole family’s sick, what do I do?

And then but we already had like the ball was rolling already pre that, hey, this is what we're doing. Work shut everything down. So we were like ready for before. Like we started to put the steps and put it into motion and get it going. So when it hit, literally, we shut our offices, our offices down, only [city] office stayed open, and we were ready to roll.

And by that first day when they said everything was shut down, we were ready to roll.

Henry: Who was in charge of that operation? Was that through the state health department?

Siobhan: Nope. That was actually what the state health department said. This is. You know, we're going to this is what could happen in the event, OK, here's a plan to work with. So I took that plan, put it into place. So when it hit we were ready to go like other counties, shut down, Montgomery shut down Philadelphia County, shut down.

[County] County was the only county open. We have people from Philadelphia County, Montgomery County, Chester County, surrounding areas where their health departments weren't open. We were the only health department open. I worked for 79 days straight. 7 days a week, and we were there for like maybe ten, 12 hour days. And all we did was take phone calls and we were taking phone calls from other counties because they had no health department to call. Everybody closed their stuff down, that was it.

We were the only health department open.

Henry: On those calls, you were giving out information?

Siobhan: Yeah. So when they would call, they would go, OK, so my husband has these symptoms, what should we do? And they went to us, Well, they have to be complete isolation. Ten days, no contact they can't eat with you. They can't share a bathroom. When you serve food, knock on a door, leave it at the door, run away.

When they're done, have them holler. But the plates out, like it was a whole thing that they were told to do. And then when that person on their 11th day, they can call and go, hey, I'm over my symptoms, OK? How many family members do you have now? The family members got hit for 12 days while they were in isolation.

But if they came out before that, ten days was over. Whoever they came in contact with the house had an extra two additional weeks. So some people were trapped in their house for like a month, a month and a half, two months, because if they had big family, they kept coming out. Somebody who didn't finish their quarantine would come out, reinfect the whole house like there was isolation, ten days, no contact with anybody. And none of the families followed the rule.

So we had people trapped in the house. We had one family in our house. We had eight people in the house. They were literally all of them in the house for three months because they kept coming out during their quarantine time and reinfected and it kept getting pushed back every two weeks. Three months, a family of eight in a house. Exactly.

Henry: That people followed.

Siobhan: Because people didn't follow the rules. Oh, I'll be OK. I don't have any. Doesn't matter. Ten days. getting somebody to understand you have to do a ten full days, no contact whatsoever. They would share the bathroom. They would come out before the quarantine. They'd walk by somebody. “Well I had a mask on.” Doesn’t matter, you're still contagious. Ten days, people. And like you said, people don't want to follow this.

They don't want to follow the rules. They don't to listen. I'm fine, blah, blah, blah. And the government's not going to tell me what to do. Because that was a big thing. A lot of the phone calls for some time in the first three weeks, it was a government conspiracy. Let me tell you, those conversations went, Jesus, you'd be on the phone for an hour trying to talk the person off the ledge because they were assumed that the government did this.

People control.

Henry: Was that only when it was just kicking off? Or was that-

Siobhan: Yeah, when it first kicked off, I swear to God, they opened up the floodgate and all the conspiracy theorist people came running out and literally for the first month and a half, those are the majority of the phone calls that we fielded a lot of. We actually set up a separate department to deal with those crazy, nutty people.

I don't budge, but I understand people have their theories, whatever. Do what you want, but don't try to shove that down my throat. And then our other friend who took like the people who were sick and they were reporting because they'd have to report to the health department. They were told, if you're sick with symptoms, you have to call the health department because you can't go to work anymore.

You can't go to school anymore. And then when they closed stuff down, we still had some people that were considered essential workers, grocery stores, you know, people who work in the hospitals, the cleaning people like whatever. There were people that still had work and those people were getting sick and then taking it home. And that's how it filtered through a lot of the homes.

Henry: So but you think that this is like April, May, right? Late March, April, May?

Siobhan: Late March, early April.

Henry: OK, so let's go back to January and February, though. You're hearing news there from CNN, from the Health Department. Do you talk about this with your squadmates at all?

Siobhan: You know what? for as far as the squad people would go, they were following different guidelines. So we got to the point to where, you know, I would go, hey, I would send over images of like, hey, this is what I heard from the health department. And you're like, yeah, yeah, we know. We're just following what our medical director says.

And I'm like, OK, well, unless [name] got like, unless he's following, this is where you should guys should be doing. No, we're not doing that. We're doing something totally different. So, you know, a lot of the squad chiefs got together, had a meeting. They chose their way, how they wanted to follow the guidelines, not so much through the CDC.

And then when they did things and if they got called out on something, they would call the health department and would go, [name], what can we do? I'm like, didn’t I call you guys about a month ago and tell you what you should be doing? And I send you emails? Yeah, can you resend them? Like, where are the ones I sent you? Oh, we deleted them.

Like, Oh, well, sucks to be you like. And I get it because a lot of the people that I ride with, we have a lot of career personnel and they were just like, Yes, just some bullshit flu saying it'll be fine. But then when they started getting really sick patients and they said, Yeah, we need to follow something else because it's not working, because then it got to the point to where they cut us volunteers, our volunteers, we were allowed to ride anymore.

Only the paid people could ride. So it kind of got to where you know, no, we're going to do this our way and it's going to be fine until they started losing employees, they started losing volunteers because they were getting sick themselves. You know, and this was late January, early February, just trying to keep them-

Henry: Even at that point, some people were thinking, OK, this is just a flu.

Siobhan: Oh, God, yeah. All I can tell you out of the the 75 people that we employ, whether they're EMT or paramedic, more than half of them thought it was just the flu. They don't get flu shots. They don't like do anything like. And a lot of those guys work like three and four squads because they got to get the insurance for the family.

So a lot of them don't get insurance for themselves. So so a lot of them became sick. We actually just lost one of our paramedics because his was an ongoing COVID. He actually he was 31 and he died and they just buried him like three weeks ago. He actually died from COVID.

Henry: Who?

Siobhan: Was it his do you remember I don't know if you remember [name]?

Henry: I don't think I met him.

Siobhan: Yeah. I don't think he was in your class. He was he was a [school] student. But he went on to do the paramedic program and he was a paramedic. And the reason he died from is from Covid. he was really sick with it bad and kept hanging on. Kept hanging on. He's got a clean bill of health, and he got real sick again, and he just passed away and he was only 31 so yeah.

Henry: But but OK, all these EMTs, they thought it was just the flu.

Siobhan: Yeah. And a lot of them don't get flu shots, you know.

Henry: Do that. I mean, did that do those conversations change how you perceive the crisis?

Siobhan: So what it really started by May there was a complete and it sounds like so late to when everything started. But by like mid-May there was a complete 360 like they took everything like and I was getting like emails and texts. I probably got it from them too because I need you to come in here and talk to us about covid.

And I'm like, dude, CDC guidelines. He's like, yeah, but I need you to do that, I'm like I have to clear it with my medical director because when we first started, it was only the health department. We were taking phone calls and not that they were trying to keep thing closed, but like when our medical director tried to approach, like I said, because I said to I'm like, dude, I said, you know, I said, Doctor [name], you really need to like involve the I said, the squads.

I said, they're getting inundated with calls, they're on a date of course. So he tried to reach out to our chief and the chief blew him off, my medical director and I was like, So it kind of, I, I don't know, it kind of put like a wall up like he's like, well, fine, let them EMS people figure it out on their own.

So he kind of got pissed about it because he was like, you guys really need to be careful. You need to get vaccinated, this is what you need to do. And they were like, yeah, yeah, whatever. They try to, like, fluff it off and let it go, like, oh, we got this. It's a flu thing and then have it bite you in the ass. And that's when you start losing people, you know, just, you know, most of the people in the offices in my squad are men.

So, you know, you guys are. I'm just kidding.

Henry: Even with insurance I don't go to a doctor, so.

Siobhan: OK, there you go. Oh.

Henry: No, I got it. I got it. I got a free checkup when I first got to China. They give me the what? The chest Xray and everything. I'm good. I'm good for another five years.

Siobhan: I how good did they check you for TB, too?

Henry: Yeah, exactly. TB and AIDS.

Siobhan: Nice. Nice. [description of Chinese medical checkup]

Henry: I guess we could. I guess we could wrap this up. So it's been two years, but we have a million dead is this what you expected?

Siobhan: Honestly, no. I expected the numbers to be a lot higher because you know what? That covid is still hanging on. And now with that new variant coming through? We've actually we actually just stopped testing. We were testing just to school kids. So the high school, middle school, elementary the teachers, the aides, the staff, we still have a lot of them with the symptoms of COVID.

A lot of them are vaccinated and have two doses under their belts and they're still getting sick with the same symptoms. So some people are times like, oh, it's just a flu. Like it's not the flu, it's this other variant that came through. Now I get to say knock on wood I've not gotten to, but I've had two shots plus a booster.

OK, so but like we just stopped testing the end of April and I got to tell you that first May 2nd the phone rang off the wall at the health department. People were panicking. Oh my God, my kids have symptoms. Where do I go to test them? We can't test them anymore. So now we're sending them to like CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, all the pharmacies that are doing all the testing now, and we don't do it.

Vaccines we're vaccinate two days a week free, no charge, and they're going to cut them off, I think the end of May, first week of June. They're not going to give shots anymore. They're going to push it back on the doctors and the pharmacies here to do that.

Henry: So just to go back to one thing that you said earlier, you said we hold all these EMTs who thought it was just the flu, can you tell me about how they changed their minds?

Siobhan: So a couple of the cases hit really close to home. A lot of them have parents like my age, a little bit older. A lot of their parents started going on respirators and a lot of them like… to where like some of their parents didn’t make it off the respirator. Some of them lost their parents. So I think it hit close to home when it started to affect their family members and they started to lose loved ones and stuff like that.

And then you'd have ones that have like younger kids like two and three years old, be sick as a dog and have that croup cough and have that really bad respiratory and here they are EMT and they could do nothing for their child at home to where they sit, where they got that look. Like when I would see some of them like, my gosh, like, I can't do it anymore.

I got to get I got to, you know, like they completely switched and said, I don't know why we didn't listen to you. I'm like, yeah, well, I just I get it. It is what it is. It's that, where, it's only a flu. That's all it is. Blah, blah, blah. Because we're so used to so many people with bullshit calls.

Like I told you guys in class, it could be for like a hangnail or something stupid. And when they would call, I'm having chills. I think I have the flu. Like, I'll take Tamiflu and you'll be fine. Like, EMS workers get that, they get that angry side where oh this is just a bullshit call. They weren't bullshit calls after a while when it came to their own families, everybody else was a bullshit call.

But when it came to their families, it wasn't a bullshit call anymore. Oh, my God, this thing is real. I think that's when it really kicked in. A lot of them started like like my phone would, like, explode during the day, like, oh, my God, you got to call me, blah, blah, blah. Can you email me? You know, whatever I got to do with my kid and I and it got to the time.

No, I didn't laugh, I didn’t smirk, but I'm like, for real, you can listen to me two months ago when we were trying to help you ahead of time and you blew it off. And that's what a lot of people did. I got to say, Henry, a lot of people blew it off. Thought it was just a flu.

Oh, get a flu shot. I'll be fine. Can't get a shot when you're sick and have a fever. You can't give me any vaccines. I let it run its course. I don't think people really understood how harmful this was to people. Like it literally wiped out a million people. Like, people never took it seriously. I know they take that shit seriously now though!

I know some of the EMTs I ride with are pigheaded, “it’s bullshit”. It just it's not bullshit. It's not propaganda. It's a real think and it killed people, you know.

Henry: So yeah, I mean, it killed a lot of people.

Siobhan: Mm hmm. Even healthy.

Henry: Even healthy people. And, you know, like, looking at these numbers, you know, but like in January, February, March, it, you know, it was possible to see it coming, kind of.

Siobhan: The people blew it off and took it as a flu. Like I said, we started by the end of January. We were already like, we would just have people call in general like, hey, you know, do you have a clinic? I'm not feeling good. This is what I got going on. You know, my doctor can't get me in for like a month or two and all the urgent cares are booked.

Can you? And we were like, well, we don't do anything for that. You know, we we were like deflecting them back to their family physicians, back to like the urgent care to the. And then it got to a point where the hospitals, every time you turn around, it was a supposed flu case, but it wasn't, it wound up being COVID.

So after a while, like I said, by the end of January, we were deflecting phone calls to go back to their family, go to an urgent care, go to the E.R. and then in by like the middle of February, it was twice as worse. The phones worked like constantly. They did us. They got a phone room together. They actually hired additional staff to just come in and phone the field all the same calls.

So we were like even ready, even before the announcement was ready, like we were already getting phone calls, like, what do I do? How can I come in and get a flu shot? Because most people only get flu shots from like September. So like December. And then they're done. They don't. They think they don't. You know, it doesn't follow into January.

Flu usually doesn't hit here in the States until like February or early March. So that's why everybody thought it was flu. So…

Henry: Yeah, ok. Yeah. I mean, the flu. Yeah. You know, you're not the first person to mention that. You know, the flu parallels with Ebola or swine flu or both, which were you know, they cause a lot of fear, but they didn't cause the disruption that this did.

Siobhan: Right. Exactly. I mean, in some of the things like people had like had issues with their feet, had issues with their back, had rashes, show up all over their body, like severe back pain, severe abdominal pain, diarrhea, vomiting, like nausea, dizziness, weakness, passing out. syncope numbers, went through the roof. They'd be sick, have a syncope and they would take them in as a syncope.

Here they’d have covid and they wound up on a ventilator. You know, it just snowballed. It really did. It just seriously just snowballed from them thinking it was a flu into something. Oh, my God. This is really really bad.

Henry: So what else would you like to tell me about the way you felt in early 2020, specifically? January, February, March.

Siobhan: I guess I didn't get, like I said, didn't start to get real edgy till like the end of January. So then I started hear from friends are like, Oh my God, I got this really bad thing going on. And like listening back and when we were following news I’m like, oh my God, I got a friend that's got those symptoms.

Oh my God, I got a friend that's got and people are like, Look at me. They're like, Well, what are they doing? I'm like, No. I told them like the other doctor. I said, It was that bad. Call 911. Go to the hospital. I guess I started to get edgy. Like in the beginning it was kind of like edgy, you know, and then I started running into people that I knew that had like diabetes and had, you know, high blood pressure and stuff like that.

Some of them are sick and some of them died. I was like on edge by February because I'm like, Holy Christ, I got those same things, you know? But I was constantly work and work and work and work, and there was no rest. It was like, you go to work at 8:00 and why don't you be home with seven or 8:00 at night?

Like it was seven days a week for, like I said, 79 days straight. I work and come home, dog tired, talking to people off the phone, talking them off the edge, you know, contract raising them trying to explain to them what they had to do. And people just didn't want to hear. They wanted to hurry up and give me something to fix me.

Give me Tamiflu. Tamiflu is not going to help. like the end with being on edge and then having to deal with those people that were on the edge kind of stressed you out. Yeah, like almost like a form of like PTSD, you know, is the same thing. It was like Groundhog Day every day, same thing over and over and over again.

You'd come home, you'd be all stressed out and there'd be like me, I'd have like road rage coming home because I'd be like when they cut it out and like, nobody was supposed to be out except for essential workers. You start people after, like, not paying attention what they were doing. And I would just be so enraged from the phone calls I had to wear.

Like, you can't yell at the people because you're trying to be calm. Trying to keep them calm. So but yeah, it was kind of like a PTSD kind of like thing. because it was the same thing every day. You know.

Henry: I heard that even though the number of people on the roads went down, the number of accidents went up.

Siobhan: Oh, God, yeah. Oh, God, yeah.

Henry: They drive worse to compensate mm hmm.

OK, what else do you think I should have asked about?

Siobhan: did you get any numbers on, like, the death tolls? Like, so how [County] County did it? Was like they broke down the deaths? All of [County] County. So all the little towns and everything. Like, they broke down all the numbers to see where our highest poverty numbers were. And our highest poverty numbers were here in the area.

That I’m, like, in now, and they were extremely high. I endorsed him, and then Philadelphia was running right up behind us. Like, for the first beginning, we seem to be the highest numbers because that's where they were coming from, from this area of [County] County, and then our numbers, they didn't go down. They kind of steadied out. But that man, Philadelphia, came on hot and heavy and it was, I call it, and they shut their health department down.

Montgomery shut their health department down, Chester County, all the surrounding health departments cut down. We were the only ones open giving information to everybody who called from every other county. you know, like the numbers were insane..

Henry: in that MCI response and crisis response, those shutdowns must have done must have had a real negative effect, right?

Siobhan: Oh, my God. People would call and go, my effing health department is closed. And I was told what they did was they actually took our call center number, put a voicemail on a machine. If you're calling about COVID, please call the [County] County Department of Health. We have people from Philly, Montgomery County, Chester County, Delaware County, just calling the phone calls.

One day we took… what was the highest number… we took like 6200 phone calls in like a 12 hour span. That was a phone number of over 100 people just doing nothing but as soon as you hung up your line blinked, you picked up an offense you weren't even able to like hurry up and finish writing any kind of notes and you had to make like half assed notes and then go back and try to get all the info it was I got it to like the one day was 6200 calls we had one day and it never stopped.

It finally kept running and kept running because none of the health departments opened up. Montgomery County still hasn't opened up. They still they're all working from home. Chester County just opened up their health department again. Delaware County, they closed theirs for good and they're going to tag along with Chester County. So like it put people like completely out of work.

Like we lost a lot of people in the county, like a lot of jobs. Now the people don't come to work anymore. They're able to work from home. The rest of us, a lot of us have to come in and work out of the office. Now I'm not there anymore, so I don't have to. But yeah, for the longest time, we actually shut our Levittown office down where I work, and those people were out for like three months.

They still get paid, but they just didn't work.

Henry: You've given me a lot here. This is actually a very different interview no other ones… so really thank you for this.

Siobhan: Oh, God, I hope it's helpful. I mean, I'm not like not giving you information you can't use, right?

Henry: I mean, but I can use I I mean, essentially, you know, your descriptions of the ambulance squads are really good. You go more into details of patient care than some others. Oh, that's good. You're in. You'll probably have to get a quote in the final product.

Siobhan: Yay! OK, as long as it gets you an A.

Henry: Well, they don't use As here. It's zero to ten. 5.5 is a minimum pass, but they never give 10s.

Siobhan: That's bullshit. You better get a ten or I'm coming and never lands of being your teachers ass with my bat. I will get that on a plane. [...]

You just there for school? Oh, OK. Um, any other questions? Anything else? I can give you? I want to help and I want to get you that 10.

Henry: Maybe about that panic? Underestimation? Watching the numbers go up?

Siobhan: I can I can tell you when we were able to get the vaccine, we had a lot of people make threats, terroristic threats that they were actually going to hijack. The vaccine runs where we actually had Merck officers that would go and pick up the vaccine or they had to take somebody from the health department to pick up the vaccine and loaded literally in a bulletproof vest like they were like locked, loaded, ready to go to take out anybody who even approached any of the vaccine.

So that that was panic. We had people that actually out in front of my medical director’s house because they thought he wasn't handling it properly. He was following the guidelines by CDC. He actually had people make threats on his wife threats on his daughters. They sat outside of his house 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and just harassed him.

Something fierce to where it got to the point where his wife and his daughters, they went to an undisclosed place and they basically had like guards around them, like when the kids went to school. And then when they went to Zoom, it wasn't a problem. His wife is a dermatologist, so she really wasn't seeing patients unless she had to.

But they were in an undisclosed place where nobody knew where they were except for him. And he stayed at his house and he had somebody outside. He had 24, 24, seven surveillance put on him because people were making threats. They were panicking. He wasn't doing his job. He was doing everything he could do. You when your hands are tied and you're following the state health department and the CDC, there's only so much you can do.

You know, and we overly informed people and people just took it to where like, well, you should be doing more. Well, what more can we be doing? You know? So it became the panic where people made threats. and made threats the entire time. I think he said he finally his last threat was like this January. He has had no threats since. so in January, he was still being threatened by people.

And in a pandemic. Pandemic, honestly, there's really nobody doing anything anymore. You know, it's pretty much done in over there were people they even made terroristic threats at the squads. Well, if you don't come, because we'd be backed up with calls and they'd be calling the radio room and threatening the radio room and the radio room of call us and go, yo, I got a hostile guy over on such and such address.

Might want to have police meet you when you get there. Like, how sad is that? You got to make sure the cops are there so you don't get out and get beat by somebody because you didn't come take their mom first, you know? So a lot of panic, a lot of threats, a lot of like doom and gloom, kind of like people's you know, like, oh, my God, you got to do something.

If you don't do something, I'm going to come and burn your house. Damn, we're going to shoot you like literally something you had to worry about, like when you left to work. And when you left, the health department looked at me like looking over your shoulder to make sure when anybody out in the parking lot waiting for you.

So they even made threats against health department. I'm going to blow up the health department. My great let me make sure I'm in a health department shirt so my kids get more money. Like, you know, I know that sounds horrible, but after a while, like, your sense of humor becomes, like, twisted. But like when we started to find out that they were starting to make terrorist threats and they were calling the health department and making this kind of like there's a bomb in the building… What the hell’s a bomb in the building, they don't even think like, you know what I mean?

Like the building. There was always somebody in it. It was crazy. People are going to make terroristic threats because do you think your medical director's not doing enough? There was only so much you could do. You know, people like I said, people blew it off the first couple of months. Like, this is bullshit. It's a conspiracy, it's the government, blah, blah, blah.

Until people started dropping like flies and they wanted somebody to blame.

Henry: Or do you think that, what you think people blew it off?

Siobhan: Because because when it first came out and it sounds horrible to say, but the news put it as it is just a flu. It's a really bad flu. That's all we're looking at. It's a really bad flu. Oh, OK. And then the news as usual, can always backpedal and go, well, we were misinformed and CDC says this is something you should take.

You know, be, you know, really be vigilant about. It's not just the flu. It's something more severe. And when the death number started and then they were like really backpedaling and going, oh, my God, we should have taken care of this long ago. It should have been. And they even bashed like our medical director, Channel six, bashed him something fierce, like twice, you know, he he ill represented the health department and not letting people know ahead of time, not letting people know ahead of time dude,

We were taking phone calls at the end of January not letting people know what's going on. Like it was ridiculous. It was a whole thing. But then when [County] County started to get a handle on things and we were we were taking those phone calls every day, you know, anywhere from like 3500 to that 6200 a day, we were taking those phone calls, get the people there answers and people are putting stuff on paper.

Oh, my God, call the [County] County Department of Health. They're the best they're getting the they're telling us what to do or telling us how to isolate. How did you know? How do we clean services? Like we were giving them everything how to keep their house clean, like, you know, like if somebody is positive, you know, in quarantine what to do and how to do and like, oh, my God, the best thing in the world.

So they went from bashing and burning to oh my God, they're the best in the world. And keep supporting the health department. So it kind of like because everybody wanted to point a finger at somebody is what it turned out to be. Somebody always wanted to point a finger so.

Henry: In a disaster, people always want someone to blame.

Siobhan: Oh, God. Yeah. And I got to tell you, in the beginning, the first two months, our PHP, department that we had no offense to them, they had every you know, they did everything they could do. But like they were so slow to react like it actually took my mental director go, hey, you're a PHP department. What are you doing for this? “uh, uh, uh, uh”

Like, you know, where he got nothing out of them, too, like the fourth month in, and it was just and they were just delving out jobs to supervise you. OK, well, you're going to be in charge of phones. This is what you have to do. Every time that they got somebody new, everything changed on how things were done.

And that was a problem. They should have implemented it, put it in stone. And everybody should have followed the same thing. So if you got a new like if somebody got sick with it, then they got pushed out, they came back, they got put somewhere else. You had a new we had like a new like supervision in the phone room, like Christ, every six weeks.

And they would change the rules and everything would change. And it got ridiculous. Like they needed to implement something so they actually sent us out a survey and go, you know, how do you think we did? And I'm like, honestly, you all you know me honestly. You guys all suck. The first four months are like, Wait, wait, what do you mean?

I'm like, I'm going to retire or are they going to fire me? Nope. Laid into them like… I've dealt with mass casualty incidents on 95, two nasty accidents I was able to put all of of my ducks in a row and do what I had to do. I had the training. They had the training too. And it's like they literally the three of them stood there and looked at each other, and I don't know what to do now.

Am I guilty because that's what you went to school for? So our leadership in the beginning, if it wasn't for our medical director, my God, we were. Yeah, we should have been a laughingstock because our PHP had no clue. So now they have completely implemented a whole thing. And if this ever happens again or whatever, they actually have written in a book, it's implemented.

And this is the steps that it goes and it doesn't go out of turn and nobody gets to change anything along the way. Like they actually put an implement and they have a book now, how to handle like an MCI. I'm like, and I said, It's worse. It's not an MCI. It's, it's, it's a complete catastrophe is what happened.

I said I was like the Spanish Flu. Well, how do you figure? Look how many people we lost back then and we didn't really have that kind of a medical go to. Nowadays we get medical go to and that kind of failed us in the begging. All of a sudden, the beginning you know? But yeah, wasn't impressed with our preaching and I said to them, I'm like, I would have did a better job.

They all looked at me, you know, people roll their eyes, you know, and I'm a wise ass. I'm like, I'm being honest. But they asked for me my input on the book, and I gave them everything and all the stuff I gave them they used. So, you know.

Henry: The next one maybe.

Siobhan: This better get a ten or I'm going to be really pissed. No, just kidding.

Henry: I'm a little bit behind on certain things, but I've pretty good I think I've a pretty good shot at making something good here.

Siobhan: Good.

Henry: In the of the original idea actually was to use diary entries, not interviews but, like even that was too hard to find a and also like screenshots and text messages.

Siobhan: Right.

Henry: From the time to that also was too too difficult so that's it.

Siobhan: Right now to really get it.

Henry: Ok so I think you've given me a lot of really useful stuff. So thank you very much for Siobhan.

Siobhan: From let me know what you get for a grade when you have to turn it in.

Henry: I have a peer review draft due in a month and then I got the final the final presentation and graduate and everything due in another month.

Siobhan: Nice. OK, well let me know.

Henry: I'll send you, I'll send you a copy.

Siobhan: OK, that's good. And then you got to sign it so I can never quite like sociology. I wrote this, my student wrote this you know.

Henry: Another [school] success story.

Siobhan: There he goes. Yeah, I got another test. That success story. There it is. There it is. OK, all right.

Henry: So thank you very much. Happy birthday and enjoy your requirement and enjoy your retirement. And thank you. Congratulations on being a grandmother.

Siobhan: Oh, thank you, sweetie. Take care and be safe. All right, you two stay healthy. All right? Stay healthy. You too. All right. Take care, honey. Everybody.