Nathan Davis Jr. from Marvel’s Runaways and Snowfall filed a lawsuit this week alleging he was kicked off an airplane last December after a flight attendant falsely accused him of possessing a gun, in what the actor believes was a racially motivated incident.
“I was extremely fearful,” Davis said in a recent interview with Variety. “I honestly felt like there was nobody there that had my back. I was the only Black man on the plane. I just honestly felt like my life didn’t matter — I literally felt like this lady was going to take away my life, just by saying that I had a gun.”
As a result, his attorney George Mallory has filed the racial discrimination lawsuit against United Airlines, ExpressJet Airlines, which operates as United Express, on behalf of United and ManaAir.
In addition to his work in Hollywood, the 26-year-old is also a TikTok star with more than 9 million followers on the app. After going public with his story he decided to explain his decision to file the suit in which he is seeking $10 million in damages.
“I feel like that I needed to talk about the situation to kind of show people that no matter how much money or fame you have, as a Black man, we’re still gonna have a target on our backs,” he said. “And I don’t want another person to go through this situation who doesn’t have the platform that I have.”
On the day of the incident he recalls that after taking his seat at the back of a flight from Houston to Nashville, he was approached by a female flight attendant asking him to turn down the music playing through his earbuds.
Davis says that he complied with her request to turn the music down but noticed that other passengers around him were also listening to music on their devices at the same volume without being reprimanded. He goes on to say that the attendant approached him a second and third time about the same issue even after he’d turned the music off entirely.
“The last time, the third time, I had my music paused, just to see, and she did it again and she was mocking me,” he said.
When other passengers sitting near him spoke up and said they couldn’t hear his music and felt the attendant was singling him out, the actor began recording what was happening on the plane.
In one clip obtained by Variety, Davis can be heard saying, “She’s literally calling the cops on me for listening to music. That’s crazy.”
“I just started recording because I felt like that was the only way the truth was gonna come out, with me recording on my phone,” he now explains.
According to the lawsuit, the flight attendant had the captain make an announcement that the plane would “return to the gate to remove a passenger.” When they reached the gate, one of the airline’s operations supervisors came on board to escort Davis off and the captain allegedly “attempted to forcefully take away [Davis’] cell phone while he recorded the interaction between the parties.”
When the stunned actor was allowed back onto the plane to retrieve his belongings, the flight attendant announced over the loudspeaker ‘He has a gun now”, an accusation that Davis claims was false and hadn’t even been brought up before. Fortunately, this part was also captured on video although at the time he was gripped with fear that police would be waiting for him in the terminal.
“The whole time I’m sitting there, thinking that there’s about to be all these cops that are about to point their guns at me, or they’re gonna see my phone and think it’s a gun and kill me,” he said. “I’m thinking there could have been an air marshal on the plane that could have attacked me.”
“I just felt so alone. I’m just thinking to myself, ‘I’m gonna die. Nobody’s gonna know my story; all they’re going to know is there’s a Black kid in the hoodie and some sweats that just got gunned down by these cops because a flight attendant said he had a gun.’” Davis continued. “I shouldn’t have to wear a suit and tie everywhere I have to go. I should be able to wear what I want to wear. I shouldn’t have to explain to people that my hoodie wasn’t on. Why do I have to say that? Why can’t I just be a human being that’s on a plane ride to go perform?”
Fortunately when he got off the staff was much more compassionate towards him than the attendant, which may have something to do with the fact that by then someone onboard recognized him from his Tik Tok and an agent recognized him as an actor.
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Creed star Micheal B. Jordan is doing his part to keep the entertainment industry afloat despite the coronavirus pandemic. The actor, through his Outlier Society production company, is partnering with Amazon Studios to create a socially distanced movie experience via a summer screening series at drive-in movie theaters.
As reported by Deadline, A Night at The Drive-In will focus on multicultural movies and will happen in several cities including outside Philadelphia, Savannah, Georgia, August-Aiken, South Carolina, Baltimore, Maryland, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, and more. The double-feature movie nights will be free of charge and the free refreshments provided are from Black-owned and/or brown-owned companies Path Water,Pipcorn Popcorn, and Partake Cookies.
“With this drive-in summer series, I hope that friends and families are able to not only enjoy, but to learn and grow,” Jordan said in a statement.
“Now more than ever, amplifying Black and Brown stories means engaging culture to speak to hearts and minds about the world we live in. As we use this opportunity to reimagine community and proximity, I am excited that these films will be shared and celebrated all across the country.”
The series runs from July 1 – August 26 with various themed movie nights.
Movies to make you fall in love: Love & Basketball (Warner Bros. / New Line) Crazy Rich Asians (Warner Bros.)
Movies that make you proud: Black Panther (Disney) Creed (Warner Bros.)
Movies to inspire your inner child: Hook (Sony Pictures) Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Sony Pictures)
Movies to make you open your eyes: Do The Right Thing (Universal) Get Out (Universal)
Protesters opposed to changing the state flag gather outside the Mississippi Capitol during the state legislature’s historic vote to change the state’s flag in Jackson, Mississippi, on June 28. | Rory Doyle/AFP via Getty Images
Mississippi’s state flag is coming down, but the racism that created it remains.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signed a bill on Tuesday to remove the Confederate emblem from the state’s flag — a historic decision that will officially put the 126-year-old banner, if not the controversy surrounding it, to bed.
The flag’s standing has come into question in the past few weeks as Black Lives Matter protests swept the nation, renewing discussion about removing symbols of racism and white supremacy — among them Confederate flags and statues. Mississippi’s was the only remaining state flag that conspicuously featured the battle emblem.
Reeves, a Republican, signed the bill after the Mississippi legislature voted to remove the flag over the weekend. The vote came after a host of pressures: In mid-June, the Southeastern Conference condemned the flag and demanded that it be changed; a day later, the National Collegiate Athletic Association announced that it wouldn’t host games in states where the Confederate battle flag figured prominently, a clear warning to Mississippi. A top running back at Mississippi State, Kylin Hill, threatened on Twitter that he’d leave the school’s football program and stop representing the state if the state flag wasn’t removed. Walmart also announced it would stop displaying the flag in its stores, and the Mississippi Baptist Convention — the state’s largest Baptist group, with about a half-million churchgoers — said the flag was a “relic of racism and a symbol of hatred.”
This time, the response was swift — the flag has survived many other removal attempts — with lawmakers shelving a Republican-backed amendment that would have left the decision to a 2021 statewide special election. The bill cleared the House in a 91-23 vote and passed the Senate in a 37-14 vote. With Reeve’s signature, the flag must now be removed from all state buildings within 15 days.
The vote to remove the flag signals a change in public opinion in the Deep South — racism disguised as “heritage” is no longer worth display — and acknowledges how pride in the flag erases and oppresses a large part of Mississippi’s population; 38 percent of the state is Black. But the fight isn’t over. What the state replaces the Confederate emblem with will say a lot about where its interests are.
“We do not need symbols of white supremacy and the Lost Cause to communicate history, especially when such symbols willfully misrepresent the full accounting of that history. These symbols are not meant to teach but to advocate,” University of Mississippi historian Shennette Garrett-Scott told Vox. “If citizens are not able to submit the new flag design to rigorous debate, we run the risk of replacing one problematic symbol with another one.”
The flag’s 1894 founding was understated but lasting
The Confederacy was a group of 11 treasonous Southern states, including Mississippi, that seceded from the United States after Abraham Lincoln was elected president. The armies of the Confederacy fought in the Civil War from 1861 to 1865 to entrench slavery — they wanted to ensure that their economic engine of enslaved labor would not be abolished by Lincoln and the North. The Confederacy, which was never officially recognized as a sovereign nation, disbanded in 1865 when Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered in Virginia.
However, the symbolism of the Confederacy lives on. The flag has always been “a banner for a white supremacist regime that could not exist without constant violence,” according to Emory University historian Jason Morgan Ward. While some narratives identify Klansmen and neo-Nazis as the extremists who transformed the flag from a supposedly non-racist heritage into a symbol of white hate, the Confederacy — formed over a commitment to slavery — was always an “unabashedly white supremacist crusade,” said Ward. And its supporters, whether through laws or violence, acted in the oppression of Black people, he said. This expression continued through white people proudly displaying and waving the battle flag during Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the civil rights era.
Mississippi wouldn’t adopt its state flag until almost 30 years after the end of the Civil War, in 1894. But there’s no real historical record that explains why lawmakers adopted a flag that featured the St. Andrews cross, better known as the Confederate battle flag, according to historian Kevin M. Levy. “Confederate heritage organizations at the time, namely the Sons of Confederate Veterans, didn’t ask Mississippi to change the state flag. There’s no record of them requesting this, and even after the change was made, they don’t have much to say in response,” Levy told Vox.
According to Millsaps College historian Stephanie Rolph, the change was made with little fanfare. An 1894 section of the Pascagoula Democrat-Star listed news items and local announcements. News of the new state flag got one line: “The last Legislature provided for a state flag and coat-of-arms.” According to Rolph, “no description of the state flag or its symbolism followed,” and the flag that features “three bars of blue, white and red and a canton in the top left corner that contained the Confederate Battle Flag” was instituted under Mississippi Gov. John M. Stone.
While exact details surrounding the flag’s adoption are sparse, the Mississippi Constitution of 1890, which served to subvert the 15th Amendment and disenfranchise Black voters through literacy tests and poll taxes, among other restrictions, calls up the motives of the state’s white supremacist legislature.
At the time, Confederate veterans viewed the Confederate flag as the one under which they fought. “Certainly, many of them understood that their cause in the 1860s was somehow connected to the cause of defending slavery and white supremacy. That is undeniable,” Levy told Vox.
Mississippi’s 1890 conservative state constitution went further than all other Southern constitutions of the era, argues historian John W. Winkle in The Mississippi State Constitution: A Reference Guide, because it included “facially neutral” stipulations that effectively disenfranchised Black people for decades and “became a prototype of sorts for lawmakers in other states to follow.”
In addition to a cumulative poll tax that required voters to pay $2 and a literacy test that required voters to read parts of the constitution (which excluded many Black voters), the state also established a county-unit system, “a method of aggregating votes that in essence favored rural interests. No longer would the candidate who received the most popular votes overall automatically win the election,” Winkle wrote. The state’s legislative reapportionment scheme as outlined in the constitution also prevented “black counties” from “controlling public policy processes or outcomes,” according to Winkle.
Over time, beginning in the 1890s, and especially during the civil rights era, voters would repeal sections of the constitution, removing “references to overt and subtle racism [...] usually long after federal laws or court rulings had outlawed such behavior,” Winkle wrote. But the Confederate flag’s connection to slavery remained throughout the 20th century. Before a white mob lynched Will Echols, a Black man, in Mississippi in 1921, the mob forced him to kiss the Confederate battle flag, Levy noted.
Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
University of Mississippi students hoisted the Confederate flag in opposition to James Meredith integrating the campus on September 20, 1962.
Decades later, a white supremacist gunman would kill nine Black people at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. The shooter, who openly said he wanted to incite a race war, was fond of taking photographs with the Confederate battle flag. The mass shooting forced the country to reckon with Confederate symbolism in 2015.
In the three years following the murders, more than 100 Confederate symbols were removed across the United States, from the Confederate flag to Confederate monuments, according to a 2019 Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) report. Meanwhile, institutions across Mississippi, including the University of Mississippi in 2015, stopped flying the state flag emblazoned with the Confederate symbol. Thousands of Confederate symbols still stand across the US, however, protected by state laws.
The vote for a new flag symbolizes a slow culture shift
The fight to remove Mississippi’s state flag isn’t new. In 2001, Mississippi voters in a statewide election chose to keep the flag as is. In the recent 2020 debate, Republican lawmakers pointed to the nearly 20-year-old special election as evidence that change isn’t necessary today.
“At its heart, the [2001] vote was a referendum on who gets to define the past. With only a quarter of the state voting, groups like Our State Flag Foundation were able to mobilize what I believe is a minority of Mississippians,” Garrett-Scott told Vox.
Current pro-flag supporters, like the Mississippi division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, believe the banner’s symbolism honors the memory of the soldiers who fought for the Confederacy. “The preservation of liberty and freedom was the motivating factor in the South’s decision to fight the Second American Revolution,” the group’s website states. But this Lost Cause ideology, a reaction to Reconstruction efforts after the Civil War, memorializes the Confederacy and suggests that Southern slavery was just and benevolent. It diminishes the oppression of Black Americans.
“This minority clings to the Lost Cause view of history, a view that allows whites to believe in the nobility of their past without adequately reckoning with darker truths,” said Garrett-Scott. “It allows them to place slavery and, with it, the failures of American democracy in the past. They do not have to acknowledge the legacies of slavery and white supremacy that remain today.”
The recent attempts by Republican lawmakers to conduct a referendum on the flag illustrates how they are still interested in avoiding accountability for the state’s racist past. “Referendums are a way for politicians to pass off a hot-potato issue without making their own stance part of the official record,” Garrett-Scott said. “Given voter suppression tactics in the state, a referendum is no guarantee that the voice of the people will be heard.”
Proportionately, Mississippi has the largest Black population of any US state — it has also been historically identified as the country’s most segregated state. The vote on the flag speaks to this divide but reveals a culture shift, according to Levy.
One example of this juxtaposition is the Emmett Till historical marker at the site near Glendora, Mississippi, where the 14-year-old’s body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River in 1955. In 2019, officials were forced to install a new bulletproof memorial to Till, since the three before it were repeatedly vandalized and riddled with bullet holes, which speak to the reluctance of coming to terms with how a white people brutalized and lynched Till. “But the fact that the markers are even there shows some progress,” Levy told Vox.
For Garrett-Scott, the threat of white supremacist domestic terrorism in Mississippi — and the drive to end it — is something she knows firsthand. Dominique Scott, her daughter, played a critical role in the movement to take down the flag on campus in the wake of the Charleston shooting when she was an undergraduate at the University of Mississippi. “The movement’s lasting impact for me is witnessing the violence and hate directed at my daughter,” Garrett-Scott told Vox, adding that her daughter, along with other student activists, turned down the FBI’s protection offers. “I stand for social justice but never fool myself that speaking up in many spaces in Mississippi is still dangerous.”
What comes next for the flag means more than the vote itself
Lawmakers plan to form a commission of nine experts to develop and design a new state flag by September 14, 2020. The new flag must include the words “In God We Trust” and “shall honor the past while embracing the promise of the future,” the bill states. In November, voters will decide whether to adopt the commission’s design.
Garrett-Scott told Vox that it’s important to make the distinction between taking down the flag and putting up a new one. If citizens don’t get the chance to weigh in on the process, the state risks repeating its mistakes and succumbing to the will of white supremacy, she said.
Rory Doyle/AFP via Getty Images
Black Lives Matter protesters gather outside the Mississippi Capitol building during the state legislature’s historic vote to change the Mississippi flag on June 28.
The downside of failing to allow a wider body of constituents to take part in the decision-making is already playing out at the University of Mississippi’s campus. The state governing board decided to relocate a Confederate statue there to the campus’s Confederate cemetery, but it also plans to enhance the cemetery and add more Confederate symbols. The decision “not only heightens the visibility of both the cemetery and the monument but also imbues them both with even more emotional power,” Garrett-Scott told Vox.
One recommendation gaining popularity is a flag that features the Mississippi seal, which already reads “In God We Trust.” The seal also features an eagle, with its wings spread wide and its head raised, at its center. On the eagle’s chest is a shield decorated with stars and stripes; its talons clench arrows and an olive branch, symbols that represent both war and peace.
Another option is the “hospitality flag,” created in 2014, which includes 19 small blue stars in a circle around a larger 20th star, which illustrates that Mississippi was the 20th state to join the United States in 1817. The flag also features a white field to symbolize spirituality and red bands on either side that represent “the blood spilled by Mississippians, whether civilian or military, who have honorably given their lives in pursuit of liberty and justice for all,” according to the flag’s campaign website.
The flag was previously called the Stennis flag, after its maker, artist Laurin Stennis. She is the granddaughter of the late US senator from Mississippi John C. Stennis — an avowed white supremacist, segregationist, and an author of the 1954 “Southern Manifesto,” which denounced the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education and bolstered the South’s resistance to integration. Though Stennis sought to establish a vision separate from her grandfather’s with the new flag, she decided to step away from the project in June.
“In a continued effort to be of service, I will be stepping away from this endeavor as I understand the hurt and potential harm my last name can cause. [...] Mississippi needs and deserves a new flag; help make it so,” she said in a statement.
The state has less than three months to figure out what its flag will represent.
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A billboard as part of a campaign to stop the spread of Covid-19 in Lagos, Nigeria, on April 20. | Pius Utomi Ekpe/AFP via Getty Images
People in Nigeria, Spain, Iran, England, Italy, and New Jersey describe hospitalization in the pandemic.
A chaplain who helped a dying mother say goodbye to her incarcerated son over FaceTime. A woman who coughed on the floor until she gasped for breath, certain she was going to die there alone. A doctor who was forced to reuse her mask for weeks, terrified that she might infect her family.
Since March, I’ve interviewed people around the world about the new disease sweeping across the world. As Covid-19 spread, I’ve spoken to epidemiologists, politicians, and sent many unanswered queries to health departments.
Horrors at such a scale can be difficult to put in perspective. Psychologists call this effect psychic numbing. People feel compassion when they see one person suffer, but when over 125,000 die (the latest US milestone), we can become numb. So much pain is hard to comprehend.
Paul Slovic, a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, studies human judgment, decision making, and psychic numbing after mass human tragedies. He says psychic numbing is enabling leaders to “give up the fight against this still raging pandemic, in order to open up the economy.”
To help combat the numbing, here are a few people’s stories of surviving Covid-19, in their own words. These patients live in Nigeria, Spain, Iran, England, Italy, and New Jersey, and they each had different experiences with their medical systems. Some health institutions have clearly responded better than others.
These stories, edited and condensed for clarity, are not meant to be representative. Rather, they’re a reminder that behind every Covid-19 statistic there’s a person with loved ones — someone who wants the world to do better in the fight against the virus.
Oluwaseun Ayodeji Osowobi, 29, Lagos, Nigeria
I started feeling sick in early March. I had just arrived back in Nigeria from the UK. I self-isolated — I wasn’t sure it was Covid-19, but I wanted to protect other people — and called the Nigeria Center for Disease Control. It took 24 hours before I was tested, and my test result confirmed I had contracted Covid-19.
I was the third case in Nigeria. It was really scary. They came with an ambulance and took me to the female isolation unit. It was quiet; I was literally the first person there. I was like, ‘Oh my god. They haven’t had any other female cases, what is the guarantee they will be able to handle my case?’ It was just a ward with a lot of empty beds. Being alone in that space could drive you crazy.
I was coughing, nauseous, vomiting, and had diarrhea. I lost my sense of taste, and couldn’t drink water. Being sick away from my family was really tough. I had my cellphone, but also I didn’t want to get in touch with people, to make them worried. I felt alone.
I was there for over two weeks, so other people joined me later. It was nice to have company, to see other people and have someone to talk to, but that was also scary. I started thinking about how this is spreading — how many more people are contracting the virus. There were times I was anxious I wasn’t getting better. Even when I was released, the media was calling my phone, nonstop texting me, and I started panicking. That’s why my phone is on silent. I panic when it rings.
I was sick for a week, and then felt better for another week. They tested me over and over until I tested negative.
When I left, I just signed a document. The government took care of everything: the test, my care in the isolation center. It was all free. I didn’t have to do any paperwork. But some states in Nigeria are doing great in response, while others are struggling to set up test centers. It just goes to show the capacity of every state to respond to crisis. We have gaps, and it showed.
What I saw, it makes you realize life is so fickle. You could be here today, and gone tomorrow. I want to make the best use of my time. I’m going to spend my money. [Laughs] I guess I’ll be fine.
Eugenio Valero, 53, Madrid, Spain
A few days after the Spanish government declared lockdown, on March 15, I started to have a fever. Of course, I thought maybe it was Covid-19, but I didn’t give it much import at the beginning. I work in a very large company, in a multinational finance department, and later I learned one of my colleagues who sits in front of me got Covid-19. He was in the ICU for five weeks with a ventilator. I was also in contact with several other colleagues who had symptoms.
After 10 days I hadn’t improved. I called the number the government gave the public and they said, “We’ll see how you do.” Then at Day 14, I started to feel worse. I told them I was starting to feel some difficulty breathing, not too much but a little. They said to go to the hospital. Because my wife also had Covid-19 at the same time, I had to call my brother and say, “You may need to take care of my children, because we are both sick.”
I know our health care system is really good, but I’m even more impressed after Covid. It was so easy. I arrived at the hospital, and in five minutes they called me in. In 25 minutes, I was getting a lung scan, and then in an hour, I was assigned a room. The next morning they tested me for Covid-19.
Eduardo Parra/Europa Press via Getty Images
A hospital in Madrid on March 12.
I shared a room with a man in his 70s. He needed an oxygen mask. The nurses and doctors had PPE, double masks and plastic covers and a face shield. We also had to wear a mask when a doctor or nurse came to the room. My wife received a daily call from the doctor. I felt like I was in very good hands.
The first two or three days I was getting worse, but my oxygen levels were more or less stable. Every day they gave me an antiviral and also Heparin [for blood clotting]. My roommate was worse — when I left, he was still there.
I was in the hospital for seven days and seven nights. I didn’t have to pay anything — I just gave them my social security number and card. We have universal insurance in Spain. I also have private insurance, but it’s just for if you want to get something done quickly. A lot of people have both. I pay 48 euros a month for my insurance. But we always start with the public system, because the best doctors are in the government system.
I was sicker, but my wife took longer to recover. She never went to the hospital, but they followed up with her at home. She felt ill for almost six weeks. My 14-year-old son had a headache and stomach pain, but just for one day. The little girl — she’s 5, she was a surprise! — said she also had a headache.
I guess one good thing to come out of this is we both realized we can work from home. We’ll probably fight to have more working days from home, and have a better life.
My criticism is not of the medical staff, but the political staff. They should have reacted faster. They thought it wouldn’t be that bad in Spain, because we have a solid medical system. But we didn’t react in time. And I was surprised that stable democracies, like the US and the UK, didn’t do lockdowns. This is quite strange for me. We are talking about the most powerful countries in the world. We need more scientists in politics — because this will happen again.
AFP/Getty Images
People inside Tehran’s grand bazaar in March.
Yahya Kiani, 49, Tehran, Iran
In mid-February, I had the symptoms of a bad cold for about a week, including a severe fever and shivering. I visited a doctor, and she prescribed me cough syrup and a pain reliever. You trust your doctor, but it seems that this doctor was not informed about this disease.
Before this I didn’t have any health conditions; I don’t even smoke. I didn’t find out exactly how or who infected me, but I’m a bank clerk and interact with people all day. My coworkers told me that I was very pale. And I constantly collapsed on the ground. After a week, because I didn’t get better, I started trying to get further help.
On February 28, I went to Melli Bank Hospital in Tehran, but they referred me to Sina Hospital, where they said the chance of it being the coronavirus was low. Then I went to Imam Khomeini Hospital, where they did a CT scan of my chest. They said that there was a high probability it was Covid-19, but they didn’t have a quarantine ward. The next day, I went to Baqiyatallah Hospital, and they confirmed the result, but didn’t have room for me either. Finally, an ambulance transferred me to Shohadaye Tajrish hospital, where I was ultimately admitted.
Because this virus spread so quickly, the hospital wasn’t prepared for this kind of a pandemic. For example, I was in my clothes from home for the first three days! I and several other patients — who were severely ill — were put in a big room, which I think was originally the stockroom. Of course, I don’t mean to say that the hospital staff were not doing their job. But the incoming patients were way more than the hospital capacity.
At first, because of the severity of my situation, I was not aware of things around me. But after the fourth day, things started to get much better as the medical team managed the situation.
I was in the hospital for six days. When I was discharged, I was much better but I wasn’t fully healed. The doctors took the oxygen mask away, tested the oxygen level of my blood and took my temperature, then told me I could go home. I expected a bill, but they told me that there was no need to pay. I think it cost about a million rials (about $11), but the hospital took care of it.
The doctors prescribed me a couple of medications, but unfortunately, the hospital drugstore didn’t have those in stock. They referred me to another drugstore, but they only had one of them. I never found the other medications anywhere.
I was very weak, and it took eight to 10 days until I was capable of returning to my normal life. My lungs were weakened, so for a long time, if I did something like going up the stairs, my lungs started to ache, and I’d cough. But I heard a lot of my friends are in a worse situation than me.
Mental health was something that was neglected in the treatment process. Although the medical team was very kind and caring, I wasn’t able to talk to anybody for days, and my wife told me later that I was in a really bad situation mentally. At a low point, I had a near-death experience. I could see the doctors working on me, but I couldn’t feel them. Now looking back, it was a beautiful experience.
We are facing these pandemics maybe every few years. I think there should be psychological care for these patients too. When a patient is discharged, I think there should be some kind of support.
Amy, 43, Birmingham, England
Amy requested her last name not be used for privacy reasons.
I came back from Washington, DC, on the 10th of March and went straight to work. I was really fatigued, but I thought it was just jet lag. Then I started getting the shakes and the chills. And the headache was like someone hit me over the head with a sledgehammer. I just couldn’t get warm. I self-isolated, and I can’t tell you what happened. It just passed in a blur of sweats, chills, and headaches.
After about seven days, my chest just felt like there was a vise around it. I could not get enough oxygen into my lungs, no matter what I tried, lying on my back, sitting up — I couldn’t do it. I’ve never felt the need to call 999 ever in my entire life. But the National Health Service came and got me straight away. They didn’t have full PPE, but they had a face mask and gloves. I was probably in the first wave.
I remember sitting in the ER, with about 12 other people waiting to be tested, which is quite a lot, considering. I can remember it, but it was like it was happening to someone else, like it was in a drunken haze. When you have kids, you know, it’s painful, but we can’t remember the pain. And it was like that. Part of me was thinking, am I hallucinating all this? Because it was slow motion, it was just so surreal.
When the test came back positive, I was segregated and put into a separate ward. There were six beds, with curtains between them.
We are lucky that everyone is entitled to a standard level of care, but the nurses, bless them, watching them go up and down and not being able to touch people — it broke my heart. I was in the hospital for 48 hours, on oxygen therapy. I’m one of the lucky ones. That worked. We pay our national insurance straight out of our wages, so it was all free.
I didn’t have any contact with my parents because they’re both elderly, and one’s got diabetes, and I knew they would just panic. And my daughter was at university. I told them when I got out. They were angry, relieved, and let’s just say the language was blue.
In the weeks I was recovering, it felt like I hadn’t used my muscles in years. Since then, I’ve done two plasma donations. The first one they said was fabulous, but two weeks later, my second one just got turned down — they said the antibodies and antigens aren’t high enough in it. I asked, what does that mean? Does that mean my immunity is going down very quickly? [Editor’s note: Initial reports suggest it is unlikely that you can contract Covid-19 more than once, but we still don’t have enough research to definitively say whether you can be reinfected or how efficient or persistent antibodies will be.]
But my outlook is what will be, will be. I could get run over by a bus tomorrow. I don’t want to spend any more time self-isolating than I have to. Staring at my walls is doing my mental health no good. But when I walk my dog, I see people out all together, not social distancing, and part of me wants to go, ‘What are you doing?’
My daughter came home the first weekend in April, with a persistent cough. But I thought it doesn’t matter now, you’re self-isolating. You’re at home, you’re with me. So she wasn’t tested, but I have my suspicions.
None of the people that I socialized with in America got sick. They were doctors, nurses, medics. We’re in a Facebook group chat, so I just said, “Look guys, came back and tested positive last week, sorry.” I think I picked it up in my last couple of days, where it was just me sightseeing around Washington, DC — where you get into the back of a Lyft, and then you use the Metro.
I may have thought I was invincible. Now, if my government is telling me I have to buckle down and stay at home for eight weeks, I’ll do it.
I’m very lucky. I’m paid by the government. I can load a laptop up from my house. I feel sorry for the people that can’t, and for the families and the children stuck at home. I think being sick did change me: I liked to be optimistic before, but I’m probably more of a pragmatist now.
Stefania D’Alessandro/Getty Images
An Italian soldier wearing a mask in Duomo Square, Milan, in February.
Sergio, 60, Milan, Italy
As told by his sister, who requested his last name not be used for privacy reasons.
Unfortunately, my brother passed away a month ago. He lived in Milan. He got Covid-19 at the end of March from his wife, who is a general practitioner. She had a high fever and a strong cough. He didn’t have the usual Covid symptoms — no fever at all, just low oxygen saturation, but all of his organs suffered. He already had major health issues.
They did what they could. In Italy, there is free health care, so everything was covered. After a couple weeks, he seemed like he was getting better. We saw him in video calls with WhatsApp, never in person. But his poor heart couldn’t handle it anymore. He eventually died from cardiac arrest, at the age of 60.
Only a few people were allowed at the funeral in May, but that’s only because we were entering the second phase of the Italian lockdown. Now we’re grieving, and trying to live with Covid-19, wearing masks and social distancing.
He was a good man, he loved his family and his mom, like every good Italian man.
Kathleen Ronan, 51, Lehigh Valley, New Jersey
My symptoms started on March 27 with a mild cough and a low temperature. My family doctor sent me to the ER on April 1. I was running fevers of 103, while using ice packs on my underarms, groin, and neck. I went by ambulance to a nearby university hospital, but I was sent home by the ER doctor. I begged him not to send me home, and told him he had no idea how sick I was. He said he did, because “that’s what he gets paid for.”
On April 3, my fever went up to 104.5. My 16-year-old daughter was caring for me, and at one point, she took the Tylenol away from me because I tried to take 2,000 mg in one dose. (Smart kid!) She called the doctor because I was so delirious — and did the talking, because I was making no sense.
I remember the tent outside the hospital, but not much more. I had to ask for a lot of what I wanted. I’m a nurse, so once I was a bit more coherent, I could do that. After I was transferred out of the ICU, I discovered by accident that I had an inhaler. It was ordered “as needed,” but I was told doses were never given because I never asked for it. I didn’t know because it was never offered. For a respiratory patient with low oxygen levels receiving supplemental oxygen, it should have been given every four hours. I filed an incident report for that. A layperson would never have uncovered the mistake at all.
When I was finally home, it took about two weeks to get around without a walker. It took another two weeks to try the stairs. At first, it was a good day when I could sit up all day.
I still tire easily. I have intermittent headaches. I get short of breath with more than one flight of stairs. And I have panic attacks when in a face mask. I’ve worked in isolation rooms as a nurse. I worked in the OR for a time where we were masked and in sterile gear all day long — masks never bothered me. Now, it’s a PTSD reaction to being masked, on oxygen, and not able to breathe for a week in hospital.
The hospital bill was over $30,000, but fortunately covered by insurance after my $5,000 family deductible. America’s health care system is broken. Even more broken than I’d ever imagined. I would not want to be alone and unable to advocate for myself at all while in hospital. Hospitals carry on marketing campaigns about their “five star” ratings, and staff are pressured to “strive for five,” as if nurses are merely glorified cocktail waitresses. They’re expensive behemoths, and they compete with other hospitals for “business.” Caring for sick people is not, nor should it ever in my professional opinion be a business.
But it’s not just the hospital. It’s the whole pandemic situation coupled with the political climate in the US. It’s made me very angry and frustrated. My job is to prevent or ease suffering and to teach people to be well. Now, I just feel rage at the lack of consideration and common sense. I have a lot less patience. I was never one to suffer fools, but this has made it worse.
Lois Parshley is a freelance investigative journalist and the 2019-2020 Snedden Chair of Journalism at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Follow her Covid-19 reporting on Twitter@loisparshley.
Ali Mollasalehi and Dayo Aiyetan contributed reporting.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened to veto Congress’ annual defense authorization bill over objections to renaming U.S. military bases honoring Confederate commanders — hardening his rhetoric regarding the preservation of controversial American sites and statues.
“I will Veto the Defense Authorization Bill if the Elizabeth 'Pocahontas' Warren (of all people!) Amendment, which will lead to the renaming (plus other bad things!) of Fort Bragg, Fort Robert E. Lee, and many other Military Bases from which we won Two World Wars, is in the Bill!” Trump wrote on Twitter, reprising his previous criticism of the modified measure.
Trump's press secretary had previously said the president would not sign any legislation that includes provisions to rename U.S. military installations that honor Confederate military men, calling the issue "an absolute nonstarter."
Nonetheless, the Republican-led Senate Armed Services Committee approved an amendment last month to its version of the National Defense Authorization Act proposed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) that would force the Pentagon to remove names, monuments and paraphernalia honoring the Confederacy from military bases over the next three years.
Senior military leaders including Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy also expressed openness to renaming the 10 Army bases and facilities named after Confederate leaders, but encountered opposition from the president, who tweeted that his administration “will not even consider the renaming of these Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations.”
Trump’s veto threat, if realized, would represent his latest display of presidential power aimed at protecting tributes to the Confederacy and other memorials complicated by the country’s racist past. He issued an executive order last Friday directing the Justice Department to prioritize the prosecution of protesters who damage federal monuments and to limit federal funding for local governments perceived to not be adequately protecting them.
The president has elicited fierce condemnation in recent weeks from critics who have accused him of seeking to exacerbate America’s racial divides ahead of November’s general election. On Sunday morning, he retweeted a video in which an elderly supporter could be heard shouting “white power,” and he cast his reelection bid Tuesday as a “battle to save the Heritage, History, and Greatness of our Country! #MAGA2020.”
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