- 98% Of people feel that
homeless people are
junkies and alcoholics.
And I'm none of those.
Tonight, I think it
was, what, yeah, 36 out.
And I mean, I was
fairly warm back there.
Were you warm, kiddo?
- Kinda.
- Kinda.
Trying to maintain my
family and get into housing,
Coronavirus, until it
directly affects me,
I really wanna stop
hearing about it.
(soft music)
- I'm Rose Arce,
and I'm the director of
"Pandemic in Seattle".
- I'm Soledad O'Brien, I'm
the executive producer.
- [Rose] "Pandemic in Seattle"
is really the story about
how public health reacted
to the biggest crisis
that we have had in
generations in this country.
It takes a look sort
of behind the scenes
at the decisions that are made
to try to shut down the
city and stop the pandemic.
But particularly with the most
vulnerable people in mind.
- We were doing a
project on homelessness
in the United States,
and focused on Seattle.
When all of a sudden there
was just another story.
And it was affecting
homeless communities,
so we were very
interested in looking at
what happens to people who
are constantly in crisis
when another crisis hits.
- [Man] We are at a critical
moment in this crisis.
People who are homeless can't
shelter in their own home.
They can't isolate,
they have nowhere to go.
- We checked in with
our photographers
and our producers on
the ground in Seattle,
that they wanted to stay on.
We created the rules around it
so that everybody
could stay safe.
- Every time they went out,
they always wore masks.
They traveled in their own cars.
They had hand
sanitizer with them.
They have a good six
to 10 feet of distance
from anybody they were shooting.
The last thing we wanted
was for them to get sick
or for them certainly to
get anybody else sick.
And we were successful.
Nobody got sick in the making of
this documentary, on any end.
- Stevie, who's kind of
the centerpiece of our doc,
and her daughter, and
her boyfriend Corey,
the daily survival issue
was so in front of her,
like here, every single day.
How am I gonna work?
What am I going to do?
Is that job coming back?
- She had some
almost insurmountable
challenges facing her.
And those challenges
were so heavy
that Coronavirus was almost
an afterthought, at times.
There was a decision for the
kids to go to remote learning.
Where do you go for remote
learning when you live in a car,
and you're a kid without
wifi and a computer?
- [Stevie] Being homeless,
I feel like I'm
failing my daughter.
I feel like I'm
failing as a mother.
That I'm not a good mom
because we've lost everything.
I'm scared.
(saw whirring)
- The other thing that we
thought was interesting was
the number of homeless
people who told us,
a little bit
bitterly I would say,
about now people wanna
give us bathrooms,
now they want sanitation.
When we've been asking
for these things,
pre-Coronavirus, there wasn't
such a sense of urgency.
But now that somebody
else's health is at stake
everybody's lining up to
give us these things that,
from a humanitarian perspective,
we've really needed
for quite a while.
And that was pretty
heartbreaking.
And I think for many
of the homeless people
that we interviewed, I
think they felt like,
as soon as this passes
those'll go away.
No one's gonna care.
- The moment, like
the absolute moment
the crisis is over, a
lot of homeless people
are gonna be back on the street.
(dynamic music)
- When I heard that this
outbreak was in the facility,
my first thought
was, oh (beeps).
Hey Pops.
- [Rose] Katherine Kempf
is somebody we found
by going repeatedly
to the nursing home
and talking to the families
that had gathered outside
demanding answers.
- [Katherine] When
the building's on
fire, what do you do?
You get out!
- There's been 29
people that are dead
from this place, 29,
as of last night.
- Her story was
just so compelling.
'Cause here she was caring for
her two young kids at home,
trying to get her degree.
- This is Pop-Pop
before his stroke.
- Her father is in there
and she can't help him.
- Hey Pops.
- Hey Pops.
- And she's trying
to advocate for him
while she's on the outside.
And of course her dad
is elderly, and frail,
and losing his facilities.
- And he's waiting, and waiting,
and he's perfectly healthy.
And she said at one point,
he's just sitting there
waiting to get sick.
- They weren't testing
everybody at first
because they didn't
have enough tests.
They called me back the next day
and told me that he
had tested positive.
- [Child] Pop-Pop, are you okay?
- [Katherine] Can you breathe?
- Pop-Pop, I love you.
- Pop-Pop, we love you.
- I'm having a hard time
trusting the system right now.
So much of this
could've been avoided.
- Very rarely do we
report on public health.
We have a great scene
where Patty Hayes,
who runs public
health in Seattle,
is at a meeting about how to
stay safe, and wear masks,
and everybody needs
to use hand sanitizer.
And then as she's
heading to the elevator,
she hits the Purell.
- It's empty.
- I love that scene
because it's a real symbol
of kinda how this
works all the time.
There's some ideas, but
if you don't have Purell
in your Purell hand sanitizer,
then what was the point?
People talk about
doctors and nurses,
and doctors and nurses
aren't really public health.
That's the healthcare system.
And by the time you've
made it into the hospital,
public health has
kind of failed you.
So the goal is to not
get into the hospital
when we're talking
about public health.
How do you think about the
health of communities at large?
- The lesson to
take away from this
is move swiftly and decisively,
and listen to public health,
listen to the doctors.
Listen to the people in health
that are learning
as they go along,
but delivering very
important information.
- If we would have
been paying attention
to public health over
the last 20 years,
we would've been in a lot
better space to respond to this.
(dynamic music)
