While researching articles and profiles to feature in last week’s post, We Failed Our Most Essential, I came across many excellent articles featuring first-hand accounts from essential workers. These doctors, nurses, EMTs, grocery clerks, and more, have been on the frontlines working in healthcare and other essential sectors that require extensive contact with the public. They worked during the height of the pandemic, often without sufficient PPE, and they continue to do their part as the virus surges in the United States. Their stories deserve to be shared.
Read their full accounts in the links below, and call on your senators to support the Heroes Act.
Photo by Mick Haupt, Unsplash 
Photo by Mick Haupt, Unsplash
“Heroes, Right?”— As told to Eli Saslow, The Washington Post
“I woke up this morning to about 60 new text messages from paramedics who are barely holding it together. Some are still sick with the virus. At one point we had 25 percent of EMTs in the city out sick. Others are living in their cars so they don’t risk bringing it home to their families. They’re depressed. They’re emotionally exhausted. They’re drinking too much. They’re lashing out at their kids. They’re having night terrors and panic attacks and all kinds of outbursts. I’ve got five paramedics in the ground from this virus already and a few more on ventilators. Another rookie EMT just committed suicide. He was having trouble coping with what he was seeing. He was a kid — 23 years old. He won’t be the last.”
Anthony Almojera, New York City Paramedic
“Calling Me a Hero Only Makes You Feel Better”— Karleigh Frisbie Brogan, The Atlantic
“Cashiers and shelf-stockers and delivery-truck drivers aren’t heroes. They’re victims. To call them heroes is to justify their exploitation. By praising the blue-collar worker’s public service, the progressive consumer is assuaged of her cognitive dissonance. When the world isn’t falling apart, we know the view of us is usually as faceless, throwaway citizens. The wealthy CEO telling his thousands of employees that they are vital, brave, and noble is a manipulative strategy to keep them churning out profits.”
Karleigh Frisbie Brogan, Oregon Grocery Store Employee
“Is This Another Death I’ll Have to Pronounce?” — As told to Eli Saslow, The Washington Post
“[W]hat I’m learning lately is, it’s a lot harder when the body you’re zipping up is a face you know or a face of someone you love. I’ve lived here my whole life. At least 30 of these victims are people I knew by name or considered friends. Six of our preachers have died. Probably at least seven or eight more from church. Two neighbors. Three school friends. The probate judge who had the office next to mine at the courthouse. These are my contemporaries. I’m 62. We’ve had 36 people here die in their 60s, and at least a dozen more who were younger than that.”
Michael Fowler, Georgia Coroner
“I Think What Was Surprising Was the Reality of the Shortages.” — Dr. Sumit Mukherjee
“We’re trained to deal with severe lung issues. We’re not trained to deal with a breakdown of the system. I assume that when I go to intubate a patient, I’m going to have a ventilator and I’m going to have the right medications. Honestly, my biggest worry as this goes on is how I’m going to deal with the situation where I have to decide who lives and who doesn’t. Up until this point in my life I’ve always been able to say I’ve done everything I could. I’m trying to remain positive. I’m trying to be prepared. But I’m certainly scared, and this is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”
Dr. Sumit Mukherjee, Nebraska Pulmonologist
“A First-Hand Account of an Essential Worker During COVID-19” — Bella Coulter, The Page
“We also have been instructed not to give any refunds on grocery items if the customer took the product out of the store because we are unsure of where the product could have gone. […] This new policy has caused so many verbal assaults by customers, I’ve lost count. It has gotten to the point where I actually get anxiety when someone comes up and asks for a refund, because I’m so scared of their reaction when I tell them I can’t give it to them.”
Bella Coulter, Teenage Customer Service Clerk in Virginia
“I Want My Death to Make You Angry” — Emily Pierskalla, Minnesota Nurses Association
“If I die, I don’t want to be remembered as a hero. I want my death to make you angry too. I want you to politicize my death. I want you to use it as fuel to demand change in this industry, to demand protection, living wages, and safe working conditions for nurses and ALL workers. Use my death to mobilize others. Use my name at the bargaining table. Use my name to shame those who have profited or failed to act, leaving us to clean up the mess.”
“The Best Part of My Supermarket Job Was the People. Now, They’re the Worst Part.” — Donte Martin, The Washington Post
“I wish more people knew that grocery store employees take care of the community. I wish we had Plexiglas at our work stations, and more protective equipment. I wish we had professional security — that it wasn’t up to the clerks to account for the public’s behavior. I wish people had a more united approach to this crisis, and tried harder to understand the reasons behind public safety rules. These rules aren’t about bossing shoppers around. They’re about all of us looking out for each other’s health.”
Donte Martin, Maryland Front-End Manager of a Grocery Store
“No Mask, No Entry. Is That Clear Enough? That Seems Pretty Clear, Right?” — As told to Eli Saslow, The Washington Post
“[T]he local sheriff went on Facebook and said he wasn’t going to enforce the state requirement because he didn’t want to be the “mask police.” So now what? I have customers who are breaking the law and putting my life at risk, and what am I supposed to do? I’m a freaking retail clerk. I ring up beer and boat supplies for 10 bucks an hour. I don’t want to deal with this. If I didn’t need the money, I’d be home working in my garden or visiting my grandkids. I don’t come into the store every morning looking to make some big moral stand, but when I see something that’s wrong, I can’t let it slide.”
Lori Wagoner, North Carolina Retail Clerk
“It Was Me. I Know It Was Me.” — As told to Eli Saslow, The Washington Post
“I keep thinking: What if I’d stopped going to work when the first people started to get sick? What if I didn’t live with my mom? What if I’d stayed upstairs in my room like I’d been doing all week? What if I’d kept my mask on? What if I’d turned away when she reached out to hug me? We only had close contact that one time, and it barely lasted a few minutes, but that was all it took. A week later she was in the hospital. Ten days after that she was gone.”
Francene Bailey, Connecticut Nursing Home Employee
“Do Not Call Me a Hero.” — KP Mendoza
“I want people to know that this is beyond difficult. This isn’t the world of healthcare I expected to enter; none of us did. I studied to save lives. I signed up to care for the sick and dying, and yes, I acknowledge that this is all at the risk of my own health. But, do not misconstrue my choice of profession for a diminished sense of self-worth; I did not sign up to die. I want the country to know that if I end up on that ICU bed, it is because I was not given a hazmat suit or enough PPE to protect me. I want the country to know that America has failed its people, most especially those it deems ‘essential’ – that, I truly believe.”
KP Mendoza, New York Registered Nurse
Thank you, essential employees for showing up, and for being Super Awesome™. You deserve better pay, better workplace protections, and more appreciation from the people you help. I will keep reading your stories and fighting for your safety and health.
Read More Stories on Essential Workers and the Pandemic:
- The Emotional Evolution of Coronavirus Doctors and Patients (Dhruv Khullar, The New Yorker)
- 15 Heroic Firsthand Stories From the Coronavirus Front Lines (Alex Knapp, Forbes)
- Essential Workers are Taking Care of America. Are We Taking Care of Them? (Emily Stewart, Vox)
- Voices From the Pandemic (as told to Eli Saslow, The Washington Post)
- “We’re Disposable”: Faced with coronavirus dangers every time they do their jobs, essential workers are still pushing for better pay and adequate PPE (Rhea Mahbubani, Business Insider)
- “I Became a Full-Throttled Warrior.” Frontline Workers on Their Fight Against COVID-19 (Rebecca Oh, PBS)
- The Risks of Normalizing the Coronavirus (Clayton Dalton, The New Yorker)
- Hospital chaplains offer solace from the sidelines, as patients ask them: “Am I going to die alone in here?” (Rhea Mahbubani, Business Insider)
- Lost on the Frontline (Kaiser Health News and The Guardian)
- Fallen on the Front Lines: Hundreds of Health-Care Workers Lost Their Lives Battling the Coronavirus (Kent Babb, Brittany Shammas and Ariana Eunjung Cha, The Washington Post)