Faces of COVID-19
The challenges Chicago essential workers face during the global pandemic
By Stephanie Muñoz
James Goewey was a dispatcher at United Express Airlines when Illinois had its first statewide shutdown last spring, he suffered the hardships many essential workers faced.
“I pretty much was living my life in solitude, in and outside of work throughout the day,” said Goewey, who worked through the shutdown as a United Express Airlines dispatcher and is now a Time and Attendance Administrator. “Initially, my parents weren’t willing to hang out with anybody or see any other fellow essential workers because a few of us in our family are essential workers.”
In mid-March, the first state of emergency was issued by Gov. J.B. Pritzker which was then extended to a stay at home order until late May. These mitigation decisions were made because of the alarming rates of increased cases in the state of Illinois and the especially affecting the Chicagoland area
This is a reality many essential workers had to face at the frontline of the pandemic. The faces of COVID-19 are those that have continued to serve in their respective essential jobs during a global pandemic.
“Once you sign up for a job in the medical field, you have to be prepared for anything and everything, including this pandemic,” said Mhaylee Jimenez, a nursing assistant at Rush Oak Hospital.
Jimenez was hired during the COVID-19 initial shutdown when many medical facilities were in demand for additional medical staff to assist in the surge of COVID-19 cases. Illinois hospitals at the time were experiencing personal shortages.
For healthcare workers, the pandemic put them at risk to contract the virus.
“I had a partner at the beginning of COVID in March at first when the whole breakout first happened,” said Ryan Yoo, an EMT working in the South Side.
“She wasn’t really too concerned about putting on the PPE that we were supposed to put on and that kind of freaked me out because I didn’t want it. I was very cautious of wearing everything and it just just looked bad on us like one person wore everything and one person didn’t. It was just uncomfortable for me knowing that she doesn’t have her PPE on.”
Alex Palacios, an EMT working on the South Side, stated the high risk EMTs face when responding to calls that are not clarified to be COVID-19 related.
“We got called to a house, we got called for an anxiety attack,” Palacios said. “They were all fine. We asked her, what brought on the anxiety attack. The COVID, I can’t taste, I can’t smell, I have a fever, I had a headache all day, my husband has a headache and he can’t smell, my child has a fever and my husband also has a fever.”
That was one of the most powerful moments as medical providers that we could have had because we just looked at each other in fear. Like we just got exposed to this virus.”’
Although protocol dictates that healthcare providers precautionary questions before providing care, it doesn’t prevent them from being exposed to the virus. According to the Pan American Health Organization, more than 570,000 health workers have been infected with COVID-19, with 2,500 cases being fatal.
The fear of contracting the virus was only one of the many factors that healthcare workers experienced. Many underwent increased levels of stress especially interacting with those infected by COVID-19 and dealing with emotional situations.
Mhaylee Jimenez, a nursing assistant at Rush Oak Hospital stated that having to inform non-english speaking patients of their transfer to the ICU, emotionally affected her.
‘“I just felt really bad because she was Hispanic and she didn’t really know what was going on,” Jimenez said.
“It really touched me because this is how most of the Hispanic community is like, what they’re going through right now is exactly like this, they’re so confused. They don’t know what’s going on and they’re by themselves,”’ Jimenez added.
Palacios states that there is additional stress for not only health care workers but for all people facing the pandemic.
“Maybe they’re just a little lonely or sad inside their house is nothing compared to watching people actively, like I said, people kill themselves because of this,” Palacios said. “I think that was the first experience that I really had with how this virus affected people in non-traditional ways. Aside from your lungs, or you know, being actively sick from it, like what’s it doing to society? And that’s really where things can begin to become really real.”
Although medical professionals are seen in the media as being in the direct line of COVID-19, workers outside of the medical field are facing similar difficulties in this pandemic.
“We tend to define an essential worker as just a health care worker, doctor, or a nurse because a lot of these are the face of essential workers but a lot of us essential workers are not being necessarily represented,” Goewey said. “ Just like throughout society, people of color, or people of a certain demographic are not being represented equally in comparison to their contemporaries. My father works for Walgreens, if he’s not working for pharmacy, he’s not going to be seen as an essential worker, because he’s a cashier, or because he’s stock.”
Essential workers working during the pandemic in retail and commercial areas of the state and city also shared the same fears of contracting the virus.
“I thought it was going to be like the swine flu.That it’s gonna pass like really quickly and when it didn’t, it was very scary. Especially because I live with my family, and I couldn’t see my nieces for a while because they’re little, and they could probably get sick easily,” said Crystal Garay, an essential retail worker at Target and Starbucks.
Essential employees in non-healthcare jobs that still remained working in the frontlines during COVID-19 included essential infrastructure workers.
As an non-healthcare essential worker, Goewey said that the airline industry and its essential airline workers were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The airline industry is suffering more than people might expect it to be because many customers just come to the airport, everything looks tidy, everything looks pristine, they’re getting on the plane, the plane is functioning,” Goewey said.
“Still, the pilots are still there. The flight attendants are still there, all of the workers are still there but behind the scenes, there’s a lot of different aspects of the airline industry that were suffering more than it was right now.”
In fact, the aviation industry has suffered immensely compared to other areas of the economy. Passenger air transport was down by 90% in April of 2020 and was still down by 75% in August of 2020.
“For the sake of the budget, for us, we didn’t necessarily have authorized unpaid time off, which is basically volunteering, time off,” Goewey said. “For the sake of the budget, higher ups, managers, supervisors had to take pay cuts. I just took random days off. Some people for the sake of their own health took months off, some of them are more susceptible to this virus.
Garay added that the pandemic affected the retail industry and its retail essential workers.
“If we felt like we couldn’t come in, if someone was immunocompromised, you just had to show proof and they would give you two weeks off with pay,” she said. “I’m not immunocompromised, but I didn’t feel really comfortable. I did take two weeks off, and it wasn’t paid but they still understood and they were fine with it, which was good.” Garay explained.
Essential workers were also faced with the effects of “panic buying” during the months of the shelter-in-place order issued by Pritzker.
“In the beginning, it was the whole toilet paper thing, there would be people standing outside at six in the morning, like, just lined up, ready to go in and buy everything,” Garay said. “ At first, we weren’t allowed to get anything. We had to wait for everything to be out there for at least 15 minutes and we had to be on our break. We usually stock everything in the morning by the time a lot of us would go on our breaks there wouldn’t be anything left.”
While people at large shared a shortage of items, there was also a strain put on PPE and ventilators. According to Illinois Department of Public Health data, 595 COVID patients are on ventilators of 5,679 staffed ventilators, currently. The number state-wide was higher during the peak of the first wave of COVID-19 increased cases.
“I just want to be clear about this: People think that PPE is abundant. It’s not. It’s not abundant,” Palacios said. “Ventilators aren’t normal to be used on anyone. Ventilators in the medical field means like, you’re almost dead because that’s the thing that’s keeping you alive.”
Palacios said ventilators are not used on just anyone. COVID-19 has increased the use of ventilators because this virus attacks the respiratory system, causing damage to the lungs.
“It’s important to, I think, for us to not normalize just throwing around words, PPE, it’s really hard to get your hands on it,” Palacios said. “I bet if any of us personally tried to purchase any, we probably wouldn’t be able to very easily. Normalizing those kinds of things makes it more difficult for us to get that or for us to get sympathy for getting those things.”
Workers in the frontlines have as Palacios mentioned been able to obtain proper PPE but there is an at large scarcity of PPE and accessible COVID-19 testing, even for first responders.
“When certain hospitals start taking away our ability to get tested, it’s now not only a problem for us because if I have the virus, I have the virus, and it’s a problem for the patients,” Palacios said. “So in an effort to still help people, we’re still hurting them and it’s a shame.
“I think my biggest frustration with this has been that we can’t get that testing that we need for us and that could be an ethical concern because why should I get the testing over someone else, but it should be made more readily available for us.”
