Claudia Applegate, September 1st, 2024
Title
Claudia Applegate, September 1st, 2024
Description
In this interview, Claudia Applegate shares what it was like working in a hospital during the start of Covid-19 and what she witnessed as it began to change everyone's lives.
Publisher
Detroit Historical Society
Date
9/1/24
Rights
Detroit Historical Society
Language
en-US
Narrator/Interviewee's Name
Claudia Applegate
Brief Biography
Claudia Applegate is a longtime Detroit resident and healthcare worker, from Warren to Huntington Woods.
Interviewer's Name
Kevin Hawthorne
Interview Length
10:52
Transcription
Kevin Hawthorne: All right. This is Kevin Hawthorne with the Detroit Historical Society for the oral history on Covid-19. And today I am joined with please introduce yourself.
Claudia Applegate: Hi, I am Claudia Applegate
KH: Could you please spell your name for the record?
CA: Claudia C l a u d i a Applegate A p p l e g a t e
KH: All right. Thank you. Claudia and, which area do you live in?
CA: Southfield.
KH: And how long have you resided there?
CA: Ten years.
KH: Did you live in any other parts of the metro Detroit area?
CA: Huntington Woods before this and I grew up in Warren.
KH: And, what is you've been your experience living in that area?
CA: In the Detroit area? Yes. Just in general?
KH: Yes.
CA: It's a rich cultural area. It does have many social problems, and I've always been fortunate to have a good education and a good job, but I know that's not the case for everyone in this area.
KH: And what career are you in? What's your line of work?
CA: I'm a physician assistant.
KH: And how long have you had that position?
CA: 12 years.
KH: And so when Covid first started becoming an issue in 2020, what were your thoughts on it? Like, I know some people believe that it was only going to be a two week thing and then it was going to go away. Or since you worked in the medical field, were you a little bit more skeptical about what was going to happen?
CA: I definitely was more skeptical. And when it first came out, nobody knew how it was transmitted so that was really scary. People were wearing goggles at work and we were sanitizing groceries and all sorts of things before we knew it was respiratory transmission.
KH: And do you remember, your first, experience when the state fully shut down?
CA: Well, we closed our clinics at work. That was a big difference, biggest difference in my life. We, worked from home, and we were seeing patients over you know, on that platform. And that was kind of weird and difficult to actually lay eyes on them and see how they were actually doing. And then I spent my time eating outdoors in restaurants, and I was conscious about keeping the restaurants I love open. So giving them my business and also wanting to get out of the house so ate outdoors a lot in the winter with jackets and sleeping bags and—
KH: And how long were you doing online or like, meetings for your patients? How long did that last?
CA: I think it was almost a year.
KH: Almost a full year of just meeting online?
CA: Yeah
KH: And then when you restarted in person, how was difference of, like, meeting people with Covid? In the, you know, like the vaccine era. Like, how was that different from when before Covid?
CA: You mean just meeting regular patients? Well, many of my patients, have been traumatized since I last saw them. Lot of people had lost family members or had somebody die in the hospital that they didn't get to say goodbye to, or somebody died in the nursing home and or their kids were having mental health issues because they couldn't go to school and couldn't do work on the things that matter to them. So it was a mass trauma, I would say.
KH: Did you have anyone in particular, close to you that contracted Covid or did you? What was your experience with Covid like? Did you catch the disease within the past four years?
CA: I did. 2022 I believe. I caught it while I was traveling in Germany.
KH: And, what was your experience with the disease?
CA: The biggest symptom I had was that I completely lost my sense of taste, and that was very disturbing. I remember I could taste just the bare outlines of toothpaste or licorice or something with a really strong taste, but otherwise I would have very flavorful food and couldn't taste a thing.
KH: And then, you said you had a lot of patients who were traumatized. Do you have any patients that you lost during Covid?
CA: Yes, definitely from Covid. Yeah.
KH: And seeing this, disease on the scale, have you seen anything like this before?
CA: No.
KH: And with your experience, are you afraid of something like Covid happening again within our lifetimes?
CA: Definitely. I don't know what or where, but as we've had a pandemic before and 1917 and came around again. So I know it can happen and it's—
KH: And in the medical field. You guys are at the forefront of all of this. How did you, feel being kind of on the front lines of, dealing with the pandemic?
CA: Well, being in the medical field, my position was not as— I wasn't, nearly as much, at as much risk as my colleagues in the medical field, so I felt like I was at no risk compared to some of them. I've had friends who've worked in the ICU or worked in labor delivery and had to work up close with patients with Covid for many hours, and— If I saw a patient in the hospital with Covid, it was just to interact with it in a brief consultation and I could wear protective gear. And leave, but I wasn't actually caring for them to keep them alive, which is a high risk position.
KH: And with, Covid lockdowns, and the responses from both the state and national, how did you feel the response was both on a national level and on the state level?
CA: You mean the government response?
KH: Yes.
CA: I think they were felt they were in a very difficult position to not let the economy get trashed. So they were under a lot of pressure from certain directions to keep things open and sometimes they come succumb to it against better science. And then yeah so it was an under response in a lot of ways, but also a lot of people refused to adhere to the regulations and the sequestering so was just kind of very divisive. And people who aren't at high risk were adversaries to people who were at high risk. And some people felt like everyone should just take care of themselves, and other people felt like we should all take care of each other.
KH: With your experience with some of your patients, were some of them less willing to, like, follow some of the protocols or were most of them willing to do that?
CA: Most of them were willing, but there were there were a handful that absolutely did not believe in Covid and refused to wear a mask and then they turned away they were not allowed in the clinic, and that became contentious at times.
KH: Were there any other contentions during this time besides just trying to follow protocols? With, the medical field?
CA: I had— before it was easy to test for Covid. I had a few patients present to the E.R. because they knew something was wrong, and then they got turned away. I had one patient that rode the bus to the E.R. and full long Covid, it turns out, after the fact and he was turned away and he came back again on the bus. So he was in full blown Covid, exposing the bus load of people with Covid twice before they finally admitted him and tested him for everything under the sun. And then they finally, after a few days in hospital, tested for Covid. So I'm just concerned how much spread, how much this disease was spread during that time.
KH: And it's often easy to say that we live in a post-Covid world, even though Covid is still much very going on, in 2024. What do you think are people's biggest misconceptions over the past four years?
CA: People's perceptions?
KH: Yeah. Like the general public's misconceptions. Is there any misconceptions you believe about what's happening?
CA: Well, a lot of people assert that they had long Covid, and, it's difficult to be sure whether what they're experiencing is long Covid. A lot of people believed that, that the vaccine itself caused them to be sick or get long Covid. And so I think a lot of those are misconceptions, because I'm pretty sure it's been shown that people who are vaccinated do not get long Covid. So that's one of the big ones, are still uncertainty about how it was handled and a lot of blame going up and that a lot of privileged people, politicians and such would violate the the quarantine advisories and just do what they thought they needed to do, while the general public was expected to adhere to the policies. And that led to a lot of bad feelings, of course.
KH: And do you think those, bad feelings have subsided? Do you think they've kind of festered?
CA: I think they've calmed down, but I, judging from the patients I see, there are still a few who are really angry and feel like they lost— lost a lot during that time. Lost family members that didn't need to be lost and lost businesses.
KH: All right. Well, thank you so much for your time today. Is there anything that we haven't discussed on the topic that you would like to speak on?
CA: No I'm just in favor as a society that I would hope that we would get moved to the direction of taking more care of each other instead of just having the attitude that I'm safe so everyone else is on their own.
KH: All right. Well, thank you so much for your time today.
CA: Thank you. Interesting questions.
Collection
Citation
“Claudia Applegate, September 1st, 2024,” Detroit Historical Society Oral History Archive, accessed February 8, 2025, https://oralhistory.detroithistorical.org/items/show/1060.