Emma

Age at interview: 69

Brief Outline:

Gender: Female
Ethnicity: African Caribbean
Background: Emma is 69 years old and is African Caribbean. She is a retired librarian and lives with her daughter and niece. Emma felt like the pandemic was racialised and informed by racism. She spoke about the different Covid variants and how they were called the ‘Chinese virus’ and the ‘Indian variant.’

 

More about me...

Emma tested positive for Covid in December 2020. She says that she had terrible headaches, muscle pains, and generally felt awful. Emma says she felt terrified because she did not want to end up in hospital. Emma’s mother was also in hospital for Covid during this time.
 
Emma phoned the hospital every day to check on her mother. Her mother was invited to participate in a randomised controlled trial. Emma tried to find out more information about the research but eventually said no. As she explains, “there’s the historical record of black people being experimented on.”
 
Emma suffered some longer-term symptoms of Covid, which were eventually diagnosed as long Covid. She hopes that she doesn’t catch Covid again, because she suffered so much the first time she had it. 
 
Emma feels like the pandemic was racialised/ informed by racism. She thought that public health images associated the virus with black people, and she noticed an increase racist abuse in general. She reflects on how different variants of Covid were called the ‘Chinese virus’ and the ‘Indian variant.’ As Emma explains, “they’ve stopped that now. They are no longer calling it the Indian. They are called it the Delta because they must have realised how racist and sick that was.”
 

Emma noticed that people visited her less after she had Covid. She thinks it is because they were frightened.

Well, it’s funny, you know, because it really depends on people’s view and position on this stuff because some people think that, you know, it’s just a bad flu and people are making a bit of a fuss about it, but other people, I really think the vast majority, are really scared and so folks that used to come by, just don’t come, they hardly ring, and you can’t get it through the phone, I assure you. Folks are really frightened. And it bothers me that people are so frightened, yeah it bothers me, but what can you do? You can’t make people become rational, not when they’ve been pumped full of fear.

Emma got ill with Covid in December 2020. She put on a brave face for her kids while she had an unbearable splitting headache.

I had splitting headaches. I’ve never had such headaches in my life. I thought my head was going to explode. The pain was unbearable and I was sitting there lying in bed. I couldn’t get up, you know, but I thought I’d better put on a brave face because I didn’t want the kids to see me looking a bit off, you know. It was bad enough that my mum was in the hospital. I kept, you know, pushing and trying to appear normal.

Emma was confused by advice to take a taxi to hospital when her mother had Covid symptoms.

When we called the ambulance the second time, the lady, who we spoke to, forgotten what she said she was, some title, she said that, we should call, get a cab and take her to the hospital. So my daughter said to her, “Well, there’ve been public service announcements saying that, if somebody had certain symptoms which indicated it might be covid, they shouldn’t take public transport.” But she said she should do it anyway because the ambulances were busy and might be some time before they came, came by us.

Emma couldn’t deal with the idea of getting Covid again because she had been so ill the first time.

I don’t think I could deal with it again. You can’t imagine how debilitating it is, you know, you just feel so tired just lifting your head off the pillow is a major adventure, oh no, I hope not but they said that, there was a thing on the, somebody sent it round on Whatsapp, Bill Gates was saying that there’s definitely going to be a third wave or fourth wave or something and it’ll be much worse. So you know, he was saying that he invested, the biggest investment he’d ever made was in vaccine. He invested twenty million I think and he got two hundred million I think return on his investments so I guess we will be seeing a lot more variants and more vaccines. I hope I’m dead then though by that time. I just don’t want to live through it.

Emma’s cousin lost his job because he wouldn’t take the vaccine, which she thinks is unfair.

My cousin has lost his job because they said you have to have the vaccine. So now I’m trying to get somebody to put up a petition to ban mandatory vaccines for employment, but I haven’t been able to get anybody else to go along with it. I think that there is, it’s discrimination to say that you haven’t had the vaccine, you can’t keep your job, or you can’t work because the point is if the vaccine is supposed to be protecting the people who’ve got the vaccine, then they don’t have to worry about you who haven’t got the vaccine. So, with people losing their jobs, that isn’t fair.

Emma felt the media showed black people as spreading disease.

I think part of the problem the way this pandemic so-called had been handled in terms of public service notices, and in terms of information given to the public and the adverts on the TV always showed black people. It was a black nurse who was spreading Covid and hadn’t washed his hands or something. And then were young black males on bicycles walking down the street who were going to give Covid to their grandmother who was dying. You know, that kind of thing was very, and nobody said anything. Nobody made any mention of the fact that, you know, there were black people in the front line in the hospitals dying of Covid, who hadn’t been, you know, behaving badly or doing what they shouldn’t be doing, decent workers. But the narrative was black nurses were spreading Covid and at the bus stop and so forth people would abuse us and say things like, you know, that it’s these blacks who are spreading the Covid, you know. And you could see where they got that idea from. You know, you could tell that they had been watching the TV and they’ve seen these adverts and the NHS didn’t stay, you know, we should stop this.