January 5, 2021 • 30 mins
Every day, cities and states are breaking records for COVID cases. Governments are scrambling to take the right measures at the right times. And the news is reporting all of it. But some of us still seem unaffected. Why is this? What will make us stop and think? Or, at the least, feel something? This week’s episode of Contakt World dives into the hot-button issues of race, privilege and the politics of health – specifically, through the lens of Fiana Tulip, a grieving daughter who lost her mother, a Latina front-line worker in Texas. As the vaccine rolls out, and we turn the page to a new year, we’ll talk about how the front line isn’t just made up of medical workers, it also comprises marginalized individuals. We’ll also discuss how we can do more to resource health agencies, help workers get proper protection (like hazard pay), and most importantly, ways we can help each other through this pandemic.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
So when my family members were urging her to go
to the hospital, she would tell them, you don't understand.
It's worse there. And that's because she knew what it
was like at the hospital because she worked there. She
saw that they were overwhelmed. She saw that they didn't
have enough ppe. She herself had to reuse ppe for
two weeks, and she told me stories about how people
(00:24):
would hide their ppe so that they could get more
because they didn't want to reuse the surgical masks. It
wasn't even the n N, it was the basic surgical masks.
That's Fianna Tulip, a grieving daughter who lost her mother
to COVID nineteen. Isabel Papa to Metru died at age
sixty four alone in a hospital bed on July four,
after having spent a week battling this horrible disease. Turning
(00:48):
her grief into action, Fianna wants to make sure her mother,
a Latina frontline worker from Texas, is more than just
a number scrolling on the news feed. I want people
to know that this crisis the one where my family
must stay apart to do our part, even when we
most want to be together. It's more than just death
(01:10):
rates and a death count. It's a human life. It's
a person who has passions, it's a person who has
children or grandchildren, and it's a person who I didn't
want to die this way, and it's a person who
didn't want to die alone in a hospital. I want
people to know that and and to think about that.
(01:35):
I'm justin back, founder and CEO of Contact World and
host of this podcast, and I'm here to shine a
light of truth on our health care and public health systems.
I want to take a moment to talk about contact
World and why we're here. I'd like to remind our
listeners that I don't have a public health background. I
founded contact World the company because I was frustrated with
the lack of technology available to our public health system,
(01:58):
the disparities and our economic system, and the inadequacy of
resources allocated to public health. Most people don't realize how
we got here. Did you know that historic inequities in
our healthcare system actually date back more than a hundred
and fifty years, or that we spend more on healthcare
in the US than any developing nation with among the
lowest ratings of care. Did you realize our public health
(02:21):
system receives two or three percent of the funding that
providers do in our country, so it's no wonder we're
in the place we're in today with a pandemic proving
to be the great revealer of disparities in our health
care system. Contact World is here to help change that
by improving public health technologies, and this podcast is the
voice of and for the people. We learned from experts
(02:44):
task with fixing the pandemic and other disasters of humanity,
and we hear from people harmed by a system that
wasn't designed to support them in the first place. We're
here to do our part to improve that and to
inspire change, and we're really grateful to have you with us.
I want to welcome all of you back. Happy New Year.
It's great to put behind us. Catherine and deep t
(03:08):
thanks for being with us again to tackle these important issues. Now,
before we jump into the discussion, let's remember what Daniel
Dawes said our guests from episode two. I hope that
this is not just a moment right that we're in today,
but it's going to continue to manifest in a movement
to elevate health equity in a manner that will positively
(03:28):
impact all of our communities. So I think in order
to do so, we really need to increase our engagement
with communities and work in tandem with them so that
we can't affect the solutions that are necessary to move
that needle. You know. I think about it this way,
that the people who are closest to the pain or
(03:48):
closest to the problems are the ones who should be
leading the solutions. So one of the things that I
don't think that we put enough emphasis on is the
risk that health care workers take every day in their job.
On one hand, you think of people being exposed to
a virus, but on the other, health care worker or
(04:10):
the front lines actually expose themselves to this virus, often
with inadequate protection, highlighting the inequities in our health care
system every day. Healthcare safety healthcare worker safety is actually
patient safety, which means that if you're not taking care
of your healthcare workers, you're also not taking care of
(04:31):
yourself being a patient, because if they are not protected,
you are not protected. And there is need for capacity
building resident health systems, better training for healthcare workers protection.
I mean, all these are universal problems, and I think
the best thing we're doing through this podcast is actually
raising the voices that need to be heard so that
people world over are acting or talking more about that
(04:55):
access to health is a human right. One of the
things that Fianna said that really touched me. She was like,
you know what, my mom was not a number, she
was a human being. She was a person. Yeah, we're
somehow desensitized by this ticker on the screen that talks
about the number of people that are dead. It's just
(05:16):
unfathomable that this is reach such a havoc, especially on
communities of color. We have to just do more to
resource health agencies, and we have to appreciate the work
that these people are doing, not only the clinicians and
the frontline workers, but we have to we have to
be more respectful of the public health agencies and the
(05:38):
valuable work that they're doing too. Right, and I think
we're doing our part through this podcast to use that
platform and really help and educate the listeners on those
topics because conversations like that they need to be had.
They need to be conversations that we have at the
dinner table. I hate to say normalized, but to some
extent it needs to become such common conversation that it's
(06:00):
not something that's not being taken care of. Right, So Tept,
what did you learn from your conversation with Fianna Tulip. Yeah, Justin,
I have to say talking to Fianna was tough. Just
to set the context of Fiana Tulip is a daughter
of a healthcare worker from Texas. Her mother Isabel Papa Demitz,
who lost her life to COVID nineteen, who was living
(06:24):
and working in Texas at that point in time, and
she felt that people, you know, they were not using
appropriate protection masks or any of those things. And the
impact that has had the most is on the marginalized populations,
the Latina, the black, as well as the health care
workers who are there to protect us in these times. Hi, Fianna,
(06:55):
on a starting note, even before we dig deeper into
our can the stations, we want to say that you
are a hero who has the courage to turn your
grief into actions. And we know it's not easy talking
about your story, so we really appreciate you being here
and also for stepping up and talking about what really matters.
(07:19):
So on that note, Vienna, would you like to talk
a bit about your mom, your fondest memories of her.
I loved her and and thank you so much for
having me. And I haven't heard myself be described as
a hero because I've been spending all this time describing
my mom as a hero. So if I can be
as any bit of a hero like she was, then
you know I'm doing something right. So thank you. Just
(07:42):
to talk about my mom. She was so special. She
was very loving. She gave to others. She was a compassionate,
passionate person. She spent a lot of her life just
being there for other people, and that translated into her
career as a respiratory therapist. If there was a patient
(08:04):
who didn't have family or friends, she made sure she
was that family or friend and she sat by that
patient and got to know them. Even some of her
colleagues told me, you know, she was like a second
mom to me, And when I hear that, I always
wonder how my mom found the time. She was so
busy with her career, with her two dogs, with her
(08:27):
only grandchild. She was everywhere at once, and it was
a pretty amazing thing she was able to accomplish, and
all the while she was working on the front line
with her patients and she was showing up to work
with a smile, So she was a hero for sure.
I was reading a bit about her Isabelian Mom, and
(08:50):
I remember reading that she was a bank teller and
she studied again to become a respiratory therapist, and that
was because she wanted to help people and communities. Right.
Would you like to talk a bit about the transition,
of course? Yeah, you know growing up when I when
I was little, I remember her being a bank teller,
and I remember driving by with my dad and seeing
(09:13):
her work in the window at the bank. And then
I remember she started going to school and I would
see her come home with all of these books and
she was coloring in the anatomy and I would watch
her and I would color it with her, you know,
to learn about the heart and the lungs. And this
(09:34):
was at a time when I was taking dance classes,
I was in gymnastics, and it was so hard for
her to be going back to school to study something
new while I was having my dance recitals and my
piano recitals. But she was so passionate about helping others
that she pushed through and she tried to to be
(09:57):
everything at the same time, and she got her respiratory
therapy degree, and then she had to start working nights
that that was the the available shift for a newbie,
and working nights and sleeping through the day while I'm
going to elementary school and junior high. I can't imagine
that was easy for her. But this was a passion
(10:18):
that she had and she really wanted to help people.
So yeah, her transition was pretty special. And and looking back,
I can realize how hard it must have been for her.
And I think, to this day, I never realized how
it's important she was to her patients and to even
(10:39):
the pandemic because she was always my mom, right, I mean,
you used exactly the right words that how important she
was to the pandemic in general, as all the other
health workers are, right, or the frontline workers are. And
it is so unfortunate that she lost her life to
COVID while serving the people. And it's absolutely heartbreaking, And
(11:01):
we know it's tough. It's really really tough to talk
about lots of someone so close to you in your family,
let alone talk about it in public. Tell me about
the moment when you decided that you want to turn
your mother's grief into action. It happened pretty quickly. I
spent July four, the day that she died, crying and
(11:24):
feeling upset and confused. And I also tried to figure out,
how do I get my mom back. She's not supposed
to be gone, she's supposed to be here. What kind
of vortex can I crawl through to just pull her
back with us? Or how can I go visit her?
And I know it doesn't make sense, but you know,
when you lose someone that close, it's hard to understand,
(11:46):
and when you lose someone to COVID, it's even harder.
And my way of getting her back was to keep
her spirit alive, and that involved talking about her constantly,
and and I turned to social media and I just
started telling stories about my mom and talking about how
special she was. And then it turned into talking about
(12:10):
face masks and how we needed to wear them to
protect other health care workers. And the more I talked
about that, the more I realized, Oh, my goodness, there
is a huge challenge here that we have. People don't
believe in the efficacy of face mask and they don't
believe that COVID is real and it's coming from our leadership.
(12:32):
And so I at that point. I couldn't just sit
back and cry over my mom. I needed to tell
her story so that I could help other people not
lose their mom like I did. And you said it
didn't make sense, but I think it definitely made sense
for all the good reasons that you talked about right now,
and indeed, many families have publicly expressed the degrief in
(12:55):
the last few months over the death of their loved
ones due to go with and they're blasting elected officials
for what they see as in actions leading to these
deadly consequences. Do you think, of all things ignored, just
by having a mask mandate in Texas at least a
(13:16):
month earlier, I would have saved your mom's life. I
do think that the mask mandate was loosely put into
effect a day or two before my mom died, and
that was before a big holiday July four, which is
a little too late. Here in New York, we had
(13:36):
a mask mandate a few months before that, And in
Texas they had a governor who was downplaying the virus,
who was opening up way too early, and who wasn't
mandating a mask. So he had a whole state who
were trusting him and following him, and also looking at
(13:58):
the President who wasn't wearing a mask. So by the
time he said alright, it's time to mandate mass, I
think he already had a bunch of people who just
didn't believe in it anyway and probably didn't follow. So
I think my mom could have been in a better
place had more Texans believed in mask wearing or agreed
(14:19):
to mask wearing, and had they had a governor who
really took this virus seriously and communicated in a way
that let people know this is no joke. Absolutely I been.
I mean, it's spot on what you're saying. Indeed, your
story was also featured in Biden had his campaign right
or what It mentioned that COVID nineteen represents um an
(14:41):
unthinkable level of tragedy, and almost by any metric, the
US has had one of the worst coronavirus responses of
any advanced country that I know of in the world.
So taking the conversation for you mentioned your mother had
the challenge of being a Texan and in particular Latina.
(15:08):
We know that Latinos account for of all COVID dits
and Texas, and even though they are only forty of
the state's population. What would he say to this disproportionate
impact of COVID on Latinos or other marginalized populations. It's
so hard to watch. To me, it feels like it
(15:30):
feels like the leadership is letting my people die. Hispanics,
the Latin X community, people of color. It feels like
they're just throwing them to the wayside and saying good luck.
And it's speaking to deeper divisions that we have and
to structural inequalities in this country. Unfortunately, you know, the
(15:52):
Hispanic community, they are on the front line. They work
in jobs that increase their risk of contracting the virus.
They are the ones who are caring for their elderly
and living with them. They're fulfilling online orders, they're working
in the hospital. They live in institutions such as prisons
and homeless shelters, and these are all places where it's
(16:12):
easy to spread this virus. And there's no support. There's
no support. If my mom didn't go to work, um,
she wouldn't get paid for that day. So what message
is that sending. If you're sick and you need to
pay for you know, your next meal or your rent
(16:34):
or your mortgage, you have to go to work and
there's just no protection. So this is a huge threat.
If we want to get real on the response, we
need not only to reduce their risks, but to support them,
ensure that they have paid time off and that they'll
be able to stay home when they're sick or at
(16:56):
least earn hazard pay. But no one's no one's talking
about that. I mean, exactly what you're saying is basically
that pandemic has brought out inequalities in the system. But
they have been existing always, and we just don't need
to cure this for right now, but for the longer future.
(17:17):
It has brought out these issues in the open for
people to act on. So let's see hope in that.
I also remember one of your comments that the least
you were hoping for during the elections is the hope
for a moral victory. Now we do see that change
(17:39):
with the election of the new Biden administration in the US.
But what would you say to the results in Texas
where Republicans have gained majority again. I was heartbroken. I
had high hopes. We had worked so hard and so
many different campaigns and so many different organizations, and by
saying we am I'm speaking about Mark Covid and the
(18:01):
b Abbot team. We worked so hard to spread the
message and to tell people that what we have going
on right now is not okay. And to see that
the state stayed read it was heartbreaking because people are
dying in droves. It is the most mishandled state in
(18:27):
the country, and they still voted for Trump and I
just don't understand. And so my heart was broken because
I really wanted for Texans to see the light, and
I truly thought that they would with the way things
are going right now, I I don't know. We've got
some work to do, and that's what the election told
(18:50):
me and told many people. There's work to do. Our
story is not over, our fight isn't over. I do
hope that with Biden being our our new president and
the next year, that they will start to see what
could happen when we elect somebody who is competent and
who crosses both lines, and who addresses the socioeconomic and
(19:16):
racial inequities that we have, and who addresses the pandemic
in a way that it should be addressed. Definitely, let's
hope for the best. So, going back to your mom
a bit, your family members and you really try to
get your mom to go to the hospital when she
was sick, but she refused why. I wish I could
say that I was part of that urging, but I
(19:38):
didn't know how sick she was because she didn't tell
me for five days after she started getting symptoms, and
even when she got her positive tests, she didn't tell
me because she didn't want me to worry. And that
just beaks to how strong she is. It speaks to
how she's thinking about me before her, But it also
tells me that she didn't think it was that serious,
and then looking at texts and things that she wrote,
(20:00):
she did think it was a mild case, but I
think towards the end she probably knew it wasn't. So
when my family members were urging her to go to
the hospital, she would tell them, you don't understand. It's
worse there. And that's because she knew what it was
like at the hospital because she worked there. She saw
that they were overwhelmed. She saw that they didn't have
(20:22):
enough Ppe. She herself had to reuse Ppe for two weeks,
and she couldn't even keep it with her. Her manager
gave it to her at the start of her shift.
And took it from her at the end of the shift,
and she told me stories about how people would hide
their ppe so that they could get more because they
didn't want to reuse the surgical masks. It wasn't even
the nd It was the basic surgical masks that she had,
(20:44):
and she knew. She knew that her colleagues and her
co workers were struggling, and she thought that she could
take care of herself and treat herself at home. In fact,
she wrote about how she would sleep differently. She slept
on her stomach, and she never sleeps on her stomach,
but she would turn her body from side to side,
front to back so that she could empty her lungs
(21:07):
and breathe better. And the interesting thing about that is
that I wouldn't know what to do. I would feel sick,
and I would call the hospital because my lungs were
completely full. But because she could make space in her
lungs to breathe, I think that was a detriment because
when she had to go to the hospital it was
far too late. But she tried to treat herself at home,
(21:29):
and that was I think that was why she died
so quickly, right, I mean definitely being in the health
care system herself and being on the frontline herself. She
understood the challenges healthcare workers are facing and during the pandemic,
and she didn't want to become burden as well as
she knew that that place was perhaps not safe for
(21:51):
exact more than her home right right. So the coronavirus
pandemic is transforming our political reality, our lives, and we
need to reinforce the fact that people's lives matter. How
would you relay this message to the word in the
context of your own situation. There's so many messages I have.
(22:14):
You know, when I really started out on this crusade,
I guess you can call it. I started realizing that
people would say, no, look at the death rate, it's
not that bad, or but I need to see my family.
It's more important that I see my family than stay home.
Um masks don't work. In fact, I can't breathe with
the mask, And it was so frustrating to me because
(22:36):
I just come back with but I lost my mom.
But but I didn't have to lose my mom if
we had just followed these simple public health measures. So
I want people to know that this crisis the one
where my family must stay apart to do our part
even when we most want to be together. It's more
(22:57):
than just death rates and a death count. It's a
human life. It's a person who has passions. It's a
person who has children or grandchildren, and it's a person
who I didn't want to die this way, and it's
a person who didn't want to die alone in a hospital.
I want people to know that and and to think
(23:19):
about that. I also want people to think about the
health care workers. You know, we can say I'll take
the risk, I'll get on a plane and go see
my family for Thanksgiving because that's important to me. I'll
take the risk if I get sick, it'll be fine.
The problem with that is that you don't have a
choice if you're going to get sick or not. And
(23:40):
maybe you won't get sick, but you don't have a
choice as to who you'll infect. And we don't have
a choice if they'll die or they'll live. And we
also don't have a choice whether they will go to
the hospital or not. And so the end result is
health care workers who are tired and they're scared, and
they're working on the person that we may have infected
(24:00):
because we wanted to go home and see our family.
I read about this health care worker. She's a respiratory therapist,
and she said, I see these restaurants being full of
people without masks. I see people at bars, I see
people getting on flights. Why am I staying apart from
my family. I've been apart from my family for eight months.
Why am I doing that if no one cares. I
(24:22):
haven't seen my daughter, I haven't seen my husband for
eight months, and we're forgetting that. So there's so many
things in that message, but I think the end result
is we've got to think about the people who are
working and and risking their lives to save our lives
at the end of the day, and we have to
remember that we don't have a choice into how this
(24:43):
virus acts. We can't choose whether it infects us or
infects someone else. And we can't choose if we stay
alive or if we die. Absolutely, I mean, I believe
it just boils onto one message that protect yourself and
protect your family by not treatly, going out and meeting
lot of people and real thinking about the healthcare workers
who are working around the clock to make your life easy.
(25:07):
At this point in time, Fianna, you clearly understand that
when faced with such unfortunate circumstances like yours, you have
two choices, transform or collapse, and you have clearly taken
the transform route. What would be your message to people
who are grappling with the loss of hope in this
(25:29):
current crisis. My message would be, and I know it's
hard to say, but stay strong. You know, everyone processes
grief differently. What I want people to know who have
lost hope is that it's okay how they're feeling right now,
and it's okay to be angry and it's okay to cry,
(25:51):
but to know there are so many people who are
going through the same thing. More than two million families
are suffering the loss of a loved one from of it.
So I want them to know that they're not alone
and that we're all struggling together, and to keep talking,
to keep sharing, and to keep expressing you know how
you feel. I feel like that's important. And the way
(26:14):
that I was able to do that is by speaking
about my mom's story and trying to tell the world
and trying to get the world to know her. And
so I just encourage people to to find that community.
It's so helpful to know that that you're not alone. Piano.
That's such a beautiful message, and you are absolutely inspiring
(26:38):
and empowering a lot of people around the world. How
about your own hopes and wishes for the future. What
are your expectations from the new Biden administration in the
US and the context of the pandemic response. I think
even though we have a Biden win, which is so great,
even though we will have leadership in office who believes
(27:01):
in science and who believes in helping those who are suffering,
I know that there's still a lot of work to
be done. There are still a lot of people who
are dying. There are still a lot of people who
don't believe in the virus. And so my hope is
to continue on this crusade and to continue trying to save,
even if it's one more person, just continuing to share
(27:23):
my story so that I can reach more people. And
I also hope to it's all new to me advocacy,
but I also hope to implement policy that protects the community.
You know, we've got people who have recovered from COVID
and who are going to be struggling, likely for the
rest of their lives and what does that mean for
(27:45):
their health care? What does that mean for their hospital bills?
Are we thinking about that? And so I do want
to think about how to support them, you know, with
this new administration, and how to get policy written to
protect at all the families who have lost someone and
to protect those who are still suffering from it and
who will be for a long time. Fana, your story
(28:06):
is truly heartbreaking but inspiring at the same time. And
we understand that losing someone to COVID it's hard to
relate to mortional because it is and it was preventable.
But it's wonderful how you have regained balance and after
such an unfortunate experience, and you're turning grief into action.
(28:27):
So thank you, thank you for speaking to us. Oh,
thank you so much for the kind words and for
the support and encouragement. This is a very long and
hard road, but it helps to know that, you know,
maybe some people think that it's a it's a positive
thing and that it's doing good because it gives me
that little boost of energy I need to to make
it through until the next day. Absolutely, thank you, thank you.
(28:57):
So far we've heard from Peter Hotez, who reminded us
to be cognizant of misinformation around vaccines and that we
actually need to plan for the next pandemic even while
we manage this one. Daniel Dawes taught us that the
Affordable Care Act reflects a quantum leap for equity in America,
but that we're just scratching the surface and we can't
(29:17):
lose our momentum. But reflecting on the story of Fianna
Tulip reminds us that this great revealer COVID nineteen won't
break us. Even in her darkest hour, Fianna uses the
experience of losing her mother to help others. On that note,
I want to challenge you today, Rather than complain about lockdowns,
(29:38):
politicians who aren't practicing what they preach, or the inconveniences
or pain this virus has caused you, your family, or
your business, think about the people that are less fortunate
than you are. While we're anxious to get vaccinated, don't
forget there are people who may not see a vaccine
for years, if ever, because of their circumstance. It's hard
(30:00):
things have been. Don't let this pandemic rob you of
your humanity. I'm challenging you to do something for someone
else today, even if it's just offering a kind word
to someone struggling, or consider donating to your local food bank,
animal shelter, or favorite cause. Now it's just a was
about to spare and loss is about hope and change,
(30:23):
So make sure you join us for the next episode
of Contact World. I'm justin back and I'll see you
next time. Listen to Contact World the podcast on the
I Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
So when my family members were urging her to go
to the hospital, she would tell them, you don't understand.
It's worse there. And that's because she knew what it
was like at the hospital because she worked there. She
saw that they were overwhelmed. She saw that they didn't
have enough ppe. She herself had to reuse ppe for
two weeks, and she told me stories about how people
(00:24):
would hide their ppe so that they could get more
because they didn't want to reuse the surgical masks. It
wasn't even the n N, it was the basic surgical masks.
That's Fianna Tulip, a grieving daughter who lost her mother
to COVID nineteen. Isabel Papa to Metru died at age
sixty four alone in a hospital bed on July four,
after having spent a week battling this horrible disease. Turning
(00:48):
her grief into action, Fianna wants to make sure her mother,
a Latina frontline worker from Texas, is more than just
a number scrolling on the news feed. I want people
to know that this crisis the one where my family
must stay apart to do our part, even when we
most want to be together. It's more than just death
(01:10):
rates and a death count. It's a human life. It's
a person who has passions, it's a person who has
children or grandchildren, and it's a person who I didn't
want to die this way, and it's a person who
didn't want to die alone in a hospital. I want
people to know that and and to think about that.
(01:35):
I'm justin back, founder and CEO of Contact World and
host of this podcast, and I'm here to shine a
light of truth on our health care and public health systems.
I want to take a moment to talk about contact
World and why we're here. I'd like to remind our
listeners that I don't have a public health background. I
founded contact World the company because I was frustrated with
the lack of technology available to our public health system,
(01:58):
the disparities and our economic system, and the inadequacy of
resources allocated to public health. Most people don't realize how
we got here. Did you know that historic inequities in
our healthcare system actually date back more than a hundred
and fifty years, or that we spend more on healthcare
in the US than any developing nation with among the
lowest ratings of care. Did you realize our public health
(02:21):
system receives two or three percent of the funding that
providers do in our country, so it's no wonder we're
in the place we're in today with a pandemic proving
to be the great revealer of disparities in our health
care system. Contact World is here to help change that
by improving public health technologies, and this podcast is the
voice of and for the people. We learned from experts
(02:44):
task with fixing the pandemic and other disasters of humanity,
and we hear from people harmed by a system that
wasn't designed to support them in the first place. We're
here to do our part to improve that and to
inspire change, and we're really grateful to have you with us.
I want to welcome all of you back. Happy New Year.
It's great to put behind us. Catherine and deep t
(03:08):
thanks for being with us again to tackle these important issues. Now,
before we jump into the discussion, let's remember what Daniel
Dawes said our guests from episode two. I hope that
this is not just a moment right that we're in today,
but it's going to continue to manifest in a movement
to elevate health equity in a manner that will positively
(03:28):
impact all of our communities. So I think in order
to do so, we really need to increase our engagement
with communities and work in tandem with them so that
we can't affect the solutions that are necessary to move
that needle. You know. I think about it this way,
that the people who are closest to the pain or
(03:48):
closest to the problems are the ones who should be
leading the solutions. So one of the things that I
don't think that we put enough emphasis on is the
risk that health care workers take every day in their job.
On one hand, you think of people being exposed to
a virus, but on the other, health care worker or
(04:10):
the front lines actually expose themselves to this virus, often
with inadequate protection, highlighting the inequities in our health care
system every day. Healthcare safety healthcare worker safety is actually
patient safety, which means that if you're not taking care
of your healthcare workers, you're also not taking care of
(04:31):
yourself being a patient, because if they are not protected,
you are not protected. And there is need for capacity
building resident health systems, better training for healthcare workers protection.
I mean, all these are universal problems, and I think
the best thing we're doing through this podcast is actually
raising the voices that need to be heard so that
people world over are acting or talking more about that
(04:55):
access to health is a human right. One of the
things that Fianna said that really touched me. She was like,
you know what, my mom was not a number, she
was a human being. She was a person. Yeah, we're
somehow desensitized by this ticker on the screen that talks
about the number of people that are dead. It's just
(05:16):
unfathomable that this is reach such a havoc, especially on
communities of color. We have to just do more to
resource health agencies, and we have to appreciate the work
that these people are doing, not only the clinicians and
the frontline workers, but we have to we have to
be more respectful of the public health agencies and the
(05:38):
valuable work that they're doing too. Right, and I think
we're doing our part through this podcast to use that
platform and really help and educate the listeners on those
topics because conversations like that they need to be had.
They need to be conversations that we have at the
dinner table. I hate to say normalized, but to some
extent it needs to become such common conversation that it's
(06:00):
not something that's not being taken care of. Right, So Tept,
what did you learn from your conversation with Fianna Tulip. Yeah, Justin,
I have to say talking to Fianna was tough. Just
to set the context of Fiana Tulip is a daughter
of a healthcare worker from Texas. Her mother Isabel Papa Demitz,
who lost her life to COVID nineteen, who was living
(06:24):
and working in Texas at that point in time, and
she felt that people, you know, they were not using
appropriate protection masks or any of those things. And the
impact that has had the most is on the marginalized populations,
the Latina, the black, as well as the health care
workers who are there to protect us in these times. Hi, Fianna,
(06:55):
on a starting note, even before we dig deeper into
our can the stations, we want to say that you
are a hero who has the courage to turn your
grief into actions. And we know it's not easy talking
about your story, so we really appreciate you being here
and also for stepping up and talking about what really matters.
(07:19):
So on that note, Vienna, would you like to talk
a bit about your mom, your fondest memories of her.
I loved her and and thank you so much for
having me. And I haven't heard myself be described as
a hero because I've been spending all this time describing
my mom as a hero. So if I can be
as any bit of a hero like she was, then
you know I'm doing something right. So thank you. Just
(07:42):
to talk about my mom. She was so special. She
was very loving. She gave to others. She was a compassionate,
passionate person. She spent a lot of her life just
being there for other people, and that translated into her
career as a respiratory therapist. If there was a patient
(08:04):
who didn't have family or friends, she made sure she
was that family or friend and she sat by that
patient and got to know them. Even some of her
colleagues told me, you know, she was like a second
mom to me, And when I hear that, I always
wonder how my mom found the time. She was so
busy with her career, with her two dogs, with her
(08:27):
only grandchild. She was everywhere at once, and it was
a pretty amazing thing she was able to accomplish, and
all the while she was working on the front line
with her patients and she was showing up to work
with a smile, So she was a hero for sure.
I was reading a bit about her Isabelian Mom, and
(08:50):
I remember reading that she was a bank teller and
she studied again to become a respiratory therapist, and that
was because she wanted to help people and communities. Right.
Would you like to talk a bit about the transition,
of course? Yeah, you know growing up when I when
I was little, I remember her being a bank teller,
and I remember driving by with my dad and seeing
(09:13):
her work in the window at the bank. And then
I remember she started going to school and I would
see her come home with all of these books and
she was coloring in the anatomy and I would watch
her and I would color it with her, you know,
to learn about the heart and the lungs. And this
(09:34):
was at a time when I was taking dance classes,
I was in gymnastics, and it was so hard for
her to be going back to school to study something
new while I was having my dance recitals and my
piano recitals. But she was so passionate about helping others
that she pushed through and she tried to to be
(09:57):
everything at the same time, and she got her respiratory
therapy degree, and then she had to start working nights
that that was the the available shift for a newbie,
and working nights and sleeping through the day while I'm
going to elementary school and junior high. I can't imagine
that was easy for her. But this was a passion
(10:18):
that she had and she really wanted to help people.
So yeah, her transition was pretty special. And and looking back,
I can realize how hard it must have been for her.
And I think, to this day, I never realized how
it's important she was to her patients and to even
(10:39):
the pandemic because she was always my mom, right, I mean,
you used exactly the right words that how important she
was to the pandemic in general, as all the other
health workers are, right, or the frontline workers are. And
it is so unfortunate that she lost her life to
COVID while serving the people. And it's absolutely heartbreaking, And
(11:01):
we know it's tough. It's really really tough to talk
about lots of someone so close to you in your family,
let alone talk about it in public. Tell me about
the moment when you decided that you want to turn
your mother's grief into action. It happened pretty quickly. I
spent July four, the day that she died, crying and
(11:24):
feeling upset and confused. And I also tried to figure out,
how do I get my mom back. She's not supposed
to be gone, she's supposed to be here. What kind
of vortex can I crawl through to just pull her
back with us? Or how can I go visit her?
And I know it doesn't make sense, but you know,
when you lose someone that close, it's hard to understand,
(11:46):
and when you lose someone to COVID, it's even harder.
And my way of getting her back was to keep
her spirit alive, and that involved talking about her constantly,
and and I turned to social media and I just
started telling stories about my mom and talking about how
special she was. And then it turned into talking about
(12:10):
face masks and how we needed to wear them to
protect other health care workers. And the more I talked
about that, the more I realized, Oh, my goodness, there
is a huge challenge here that we have. People don't
believe in the efficacy of face mask and they don't
believe that COVID is real and it's coming from our leadership.
(12:32):
And so I at that point. I couldn't just sit
back and cry over my mom. I needed to tell
her story so that I could help other people not
lose their mom like I did. And you said it
didn't make sense, but I think it definitely made sense
for all the good reasons that you talked about right now,
and indeed, many families have publicly expressed the degrief in
(12:55):
the last few months over the death of their loved
ones due to go with and they're blasting elected officials
for what they see as in actions leading to these
deadly consequences. Do you think, of all things ignored, just
by having a mask mandate in Texas at least a
(13:16):
month earlier, I would have saved your mom's life. I
do think that the mask mandate was loosely put into
effect a day or two before my mom died, and
that was before a big holiday July four, which is
a little too late. Here in New York, we had
(13:36):
a mask mandate a few months before that, And in
Texas they had a governor who was downplaying the virus,
who was opening up way too early, and who wasn't
mandating a mask. So he had a whole state who
were trusting him and following him, and also looking at
(13:58):
the President who wasn't wearing a mask. So by the
time he said alright, it's time to mandate mass, I
think he already had a bunch of people who just
didn't believe in it anyway and probably didn't follow. So
I think my mom could have been in a better
place had more Texans believed in mask wearing or agreed
(14:19):
to mask wearing, and had they had a governor who
really took this virus seriously and communicated in a way
that let people know this is no joke. Absolutely I been.
I mean, it's spot on what you're saying. Indeed, your
story was also featured in Biden had his campaign right
or what It mentioned that COVID nineteen represents um an
(14:41):
unthinkable level of tragedy, and almost by any metric, the
US has had one of the worst coronavirus responses of
any advanced country that I know of in the world.
So taking the conversation for you mentioned your mother had
the challenge of being a Texan and in particular Latina.
(15:08):
We know that Latinos account for of all COVID dits
and Texas, and even though they are only forty of
the state's population. What would he say to this disproportionate
impact of COVID on Latinos or other marginalized populations. It's
so hard to watch. To me, it feels like it
(15:30):
feels like the leadership is letting my people die. Hispanics,
the Latin X community, people of color. It feels like
they're just throwing them to the wayside and saying good luck.
And it's speaking to deeper divisions that we have and
to structural inequalities in this country. Unfortunately, you know, the
(15:52):
Hispanic community, they are on the front line. They work
in jobs that increase their risk of contracting the virus.
They are the ones who are caring for their elderly
and living with them. They're fulfilling online orders, they're working
in the hospital. They live in institutions such as prisons
and homeless shelters, and these are all places where it's
(16:12):
easy to spread this virus. And there's no support. There's
no support. If my mom didn't go to work, um,
she wouldn't get paid for that day. So what message
is that sending. If you're sick and you need to
pay for you know, your next meal or your rent
(16:34):
or your mortgage, you have to go to work and
there's just no protection. So this is a huge threat.
If we want to get real on the response, we
need not only to reduce their risks, but to support them,
ensure that they have paid time off and that they'll
be able to stay home when they're sick or at
(16:56):
least earn hazard pay. But no one's no one's talking
about that. I mean, exactly what you're saying is basically
that pandemic has brought out inequalities in the system. But
they have been existing always, and we just don't need
to cure this for right now, but for the longer future.
(17:17):
It has brought out these issues in the open for
people to act on. So let's see hope in that.
I also remember one of your comments that the least
you were hoping for during the elections is the hope
for a moral victory. Now we do see that change
(17:39):
with the election of the new Biden administration in the US.
But what would you say to the results in Texas
where Republicans have gained majority again. I was heartbroken. I
had high hopes. We had worked so hard and so
many different campaigns and so many different organizations, and by
saying we am I'm speaking about Mark Covid and the
(18:01):
b Abbot team. We worked so hard to spread the
message and to tell people that what we have going
on right now is not okay. And to see that
the state stayed read it was heartbreaking because people are
dying in droves. It is the most mishandled state in
(18:27):
the country, and they still voted for Trump and I
just don't understand. And so my heart was broken because
I really wanted for Texans to see the light, and
I truly thought that they would with the way things
are going right now, I I don't know. We've got
some work to do, and that's what the election told
(18:50):
me and told many people. There's work to do. Our
story is not over, our fight isn't over. I do
hope that with Biden being our our new president and
the next year, that they will start to see what
could happen when we elect somebody who is competent and
who crosses both lines, and who addresses the socioeconomic and
(19:16):
racial inequities that we have, and who addresses the pandemic
in a way that it should be addressed. Definitely, let's
hope for the best. So, going back to your mom
a bit, your family members and you really try to
get your mom to go to the hospital when she
was sick, but she refused why. I wish I could
say that I was part of that urging, but I
(19:38):
didn't know how sick she was because she didn't tell
me for five days after she started getting symptoms, and
even when she got her positive tests, she didn't tell
me because she didn't want me to worry. And that
just beaks to how strong she is. It speaks to
how she's thinking about me before her, But it also
tells me that she didn't think it was that serious,
and then looking at texts and things that she wrote,
(20:00):
she did think it was a mild case, but I
think towards the end she probably knew it wasn't. So
when my family members were urging her to go to
the hospital, she would tell them, you don't understand. It's
worse there. And that's because she knew what it was
like at the hospital because she worked there. She saw
that they were overwhelmed. She saw that they didn't have
(20:22):
enough Ppe. She herself had to reuse Ppe for two weeks,
and she couldn't even keep it with her. Her manager
gave it to her at the start of her shift.
And took it from her at the end of the shift,
and she told me stories about how people would hide
their ppe so that they could get more because they
didn't want to reuse the surgical masks. It wasn't even
the nd It was the basic surgical masks that she had,
(20:44):
and she knew. She knew that her colleagues and her
co workers were struggling, and she thought that she could
take care of herself and treat herself at home. In fact,
she wrote about how she would sleep differently. She slept
on her stomach, and she never sleeps on her stomach,
but she would turn her body from side to side,
front to back so that she could empty her lungs
(21:07):
and breathe better. And the interesting thing about that is
that I wouldn't know what to do. I would feel sick,
and I would call the hospital because my lungs were
completely full. But because she could make space in her
lungs to breathe, I think that was a detriment because
when she had to go to the hospital it was
far too late. But she tried to treat herself at home,
(21:29):
and that was I think that was why she died
so quickly, right, I mean definitely being in the health
care system herself and being on the frontline herself. She
understood the challenges healthcare workers are facing and during the pandemic,
and she didn't want to become burden as well as
she knew that that place was perhaps not safe for
(21:51):
exact more than her home right right. So the coronavirus
pandemic is transforming our political reality, our lives, and we
need to reinforce the fact that people's lives matter. How
would you relay this message to the word in the
context of your own situation. There's so many messages I have.
(22:14):
You know, when I really started out on this crusade,
I guess you can call it. I started realizing that
people would say, no, look at the death rate, it's
not that bad, or but I need to see my family.
It's more important that I see my family than stay home.
Um masks don't work. In fact, I can't breathe with
the mask, And it was so frustrating to me because
(22:36):
I just come back with but I lost my mom.
But but I didn't have to lose my mom if
we had just followed these simple public health measures. So
I want people to know that this crisis the one
where my family must stay apart to do our part
even when we most want to be together. It's more
(22:57):
than just death rates and a death count. It's a
human life. It's a person who has passions. It's a
person who has children or grandchildren, and it's a person
who I didn't want to die this way, and it's
a person who didn't want to die alone in a hospital.
I want people to know that and and to think
(23:19):
about that. I also want people to think about the
health care workers. You know, we can say I'll take
the risk, I'll get on a plane and go see
my family for Thanksgiving because that's important to me. I'll
take the risk if I get sick, it'll be fine.
The problem with that is that you don't have a
choice if you're going to get sick or not. And
(23:40):
maybe you won't get sick, but you don't have a
choice as to who you'll infect. And we don't have
a choice if they'll die or they'll live. And we
also don't have a choice whether they will go to
the hospital or not. And so the end result is
health care workers who are tired and they're scared, and
they're working on the person that we may have infected
(24:00):
because we wanted to go home and see our family.
I read about this health care worker. She's a respiratory therapist,
and she said, I see these restaurants being full of
people without masks. I see people at bars, I see
people getting on flights. Why am I staying apart from
my family. I've been apart from my family for eight months.
Why am I doing that if no one cares. I
(24:22):
haven't seen my daughter, I haven't seen my husband for
eight months, and we're forgetting that. So there's so many
things in that message, but I think the end result
is we've got to think about the people who are
working and and risking their lives to save our lives
at the end of the day, and we have to
remember that we don't have a choice into how this
(24:43):
virus acts. We can't choose whether it infects us or
infects someone else. And we can't choose if we stay
alive or if we die. Absolutely, I mean, I believe
it just boils onto one message that protect yourself and
protect your family by not treatly, going out and meeting
lot of people and real thinking about the healthcare workers
who are working around the clock to make your life easy.
(25:07):
At this point in time, Fianna, you clearly understand that
when faced with such unfortunate circumstances like yours, you have
two choices, transform or collapse, and you have clearly taken
the transform route. What would be your message to people
who are grappling with the loss of hope in this
(25:29):
current crisis. My message would be, and I know it's
hard to say, but stay strong. You know, everyone processes
grief differently. What I want people to know who have
lost hope is that it's okay how they're feeling right now,
and it's okay to be angry and it's okay to cry,
(25:51):
but to know there are so many people who are
going through the same thing. More than two million families
are suffering the loss of a loved one from of it.
So I want them to know that they're not alone
and that we're all struggling together, and to keep talking,
to keep sharing, and to keep expressing you know how
you feel. I feel like that's important. And the way
(26:14):
that I was able to do that is by speaking
about my mom's story and trying to tell the world
and trying to get the world to know her. And
so I just encourage people to to find that community.
It's so helpful to know that that you're not alone. Piano.
That's such a beautiful message, and you are absolutely inspiring
(26:38):
and empowering a lot of people around the world. How
about your own hopes and wishes for the future. What
are your expectations from the new Biden administration in the
US and the context of the pandemic response. I think
even though we have a Biden win, which is so great,
even though we will have leadership in office who believes
(27:01):
in science and who believes in helping those who are suffering,
I know that there's still a lot of work to
be done. There are still a lot of people who
are dying. There are still a lot of people who
don't believe in the virus. And so my hope is
to continue on this crusade and to continue trying to save,
even if it's one more person, just continuing to share
(27:23):
my story so that I can reach more people. And
I also hope to it's all new to me advocacy,
but I also hope to implement policy that protects the community.
You know, we've got people who have recovered from COVID
and who are going to be struggling, likely for the
rest of their lives and what does that mean for
(27:45):
their health care? What does that mean for their hospital bills?
Are we thinking about that? And so I do want
to think about how to support them, you know, with
this new administration, and how to get policy written to
protect at all the families who have lost someone and
to protect those who are still suffering from it and
who will be for a long time. Fana, your story
(28:06):
is truly heartbreaking but inspiring at the same time. And
we understand that losing someone to COVID it's hard to
relate to mortional because it is and it was preventable.
But it's wonderful how you have regained balance and after
such an unfortunate experience, and you're turning grief into action.
(28:27):
So thank you, thank you for speaking to us. Oh,
thank you so much for the kind words and for
the support and encouragement. This is a very long and
hard road, but it helps to know that, you know,
maybe some people think that it's a it's a positive
thing and that it's doing good because it gives me
that little boost of energy I need to to make
it through until the next day. Absolutely, thank you, thank you.
(28:57):
So far we've heard from Peter Hotez, who reminded us
to be cognizant of misinformation around vaccines and that we
actually need to plan for the next pandemic even while
we manage this one. Daniel Dawes taught us that the
Affordable Care Act reflects a quantum leap for equity in America,
but that we're just scratching the surface and we can't
(29:17):
lose our momentum. But reflecting on the story of Fianna
Tulip reminds us that this great revealer COVID nineteen won't
break us. Even in her darkest hour, Fianna uses the
experience of losing her mother to help others. On that note,
I want to challenge you today, Rather than complain about lockdowns,
(29:38):
politicians who aren't practicing what they preach, or the inconveniences
or pain this virus has caused you, your family, or
your business, think about the people that are less fortunate
than you are. While we're anxious to get vaccinated, don't
forget there are people who may not see a vaccine
for years, if ever, because of their circumstance. It's hard
(30:00):
things have been. Don't let this pandemic rob you of
your humanity. I'm challenging you to do something for someone
else today, even if it's just offering a kind word
to someone struggling, or consider donating to your local food bank,
animal shelter, or favorite cause. Now it's just a was
about to spare and loss is about hope and change,
(30:23):
So make sure you join us for the next episode
of Contact World. I'm justin back and I'll see you
next time. Listen to Contact World the podcast on the
I Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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