Hello, I'm new low mcgovern on the BBC world service, and this is c o s conversations war anko some people have likened the pandemic to being at war. So, to bring together two people who served during the vietnam conflict to share their sperience. Is The similarities to today was the loss of the humanity that was laid their hands. They had no control over the pain of seeing these individuals who are losing their lives slipping away and their families were not with them. Ike scenes are bringing renewed hope across the world when it comes to covert nineteen At the same time, in some countries thousands of people are continuing to die from the disease on a daily basis. Each death-

as we know so well from conversations on this programme is more than a statistic: each at the leaves behind a loved one and an absence an absence that many people are finding difficult to come to terms with during these, extraordinary circumstances and trade. This past year, health professionals have often discuss their fears for society after the pandemic. Primarily warning about the toll is taking on our collective mental health, and shortly be hearing an insight into emotional trauma from a nurse and soldier. In the at nam war, but first we're going to hear from three people who are struggling to deal with the loss of their loved ones to covert- and I should say at this point that their stories are understandably, incredibly sad and poignant there, as far in dhaka bangladesh, whose father died early last year, lily. Instead,

I'm sweden who lost her father when he was in a care home and Julie who lives, you're cleveland, ohio in the united states and duly lost her husband, Louis just a few months ago, He was very, very careful. He were masks everywhere and santa ties and he's a soft law. Coach, so our team sports were shut down for quiet while and then, when summer head, they resumed and he went out any bought a sprayer with disinfectant swede sprayed on the dugouts and he bought all of his girls man. and made them where on. This is what so eggs thinking about this- and so trading is he was careful, then in november. He got sick, he woke up on a tuesday morning. We had a fever and he lost.

Sensors, taste and also we knew it was covered. He was still working from his that we had in quarantine than the bedroom and oh and I was taking care of him being cautious and they favour this wouldn't break in other fever. The headache he wasn't really but nothing worse than that on Saturday night took to an urgent care center affiliated with local hospital, because he was so annoyed with the fever, and they said The woman told him to take some synagogues, sunday a collapse in my arms and died through a blood, he was gone. I tried to resuscitate him and nothing worth and in all the emergency crews tried nothing worth

did. He was all these fifty one wanted and because I tried to resuscitate, do we have two daughters. We have a seventeen year old and a ten year old. They had not been exposed. So I said to my brothers so for two weeks we lost him and then we were by ourselves. We were separated a total. We were sure I didn't have it. We couldn't have a few, although he couldn't have any things, though I'm so sorry to kill, killed. So sad, it's also so shocking. So you went up bill came back and was the cloth then sums or to side effect of covert yeah. It's the blood clots.

I say I work for the newspaper here and I have talked at length to our local commoner ends. The blood clots are what are disbursed becoming the problem with covered the he can't get control of we hear of covert. We know it can strike in many strange ways. Purse is is very, very shocking to not even realised that he is getting critically ill. Oh, they sent him a home with me, sir. That's just for a global issue, It's a thing you get over the counter, basically for people that have coats and your girls. How are there? It seems, like a ridiculous question, to ask to be quite honest, but I really They were there with you when this happened we saw all about. You can't unseen that they have. Theirs in all lou was their dad too, are the state.

There are really really did dads and he was a really really good dad. He did everything with the girls. He was just a very involved. Paranoid I dont, know how to be both of us. I don't I'm so sorry for their loss as well. You know that is old if it is dramatic that he got sick, buddy, I'd in such a certain manner that your girls were there that it was covered, so you couldn't be with them afterwards in the way that you would be. You think that was the hardest hurt. They told me afterwards. They were fearful because they had the sauce their dad and that they thought they were gonna lose me too, because that's there is what they saw, because you tried to revive him and then you are putting quarantine. those poor, girls and poor. You were here I didn't get it. I don't know how

if someone breathed on him and gave it to her member, I give him mouth to mouth and I dont get it. I dont know how and that's the the random those of this virus. Thank you for sharing that- and I am you know from the bottom of my heart, so sorry for your loss, as I am with all our gas that here today, lily I turn to you, your hearing, what you re itself so war. I know you pay tribute to your father previously on our programme at the six month. Point of this pandemic tell us about your dad. My dad was the greatest that they can ever imagine the only thing that I remember when I think about my dad is just love and wonderfully was and how funny was and how caring? He was just just good memories. He lived the carrying home because he fell down from balcony ten years ago and he lost Elizabeth,

his memory and he couldn't walk and he got in here. So it was like the first. It is sad thing that happened to our family and in April two thousand and twenty I got the news that some corona has come to my debts care homes and they had to visiting ban would like a month before, but the visiting ban bars for just for us, they family and not for the eu,

workers or anybody else. So they went out. They live their life, they did everything that they usually do, and then they came to the care home without being tested or without having any equipments like masks or anything like that, and they just took care of their elders. So somebody from out there took the coroner to my dad and on April sixteen, the doctor called me and told me that my dad's, a test for coroner, has been positive and we begged and we begged as we could just lead us to come and visit my dad and they didn't let us in April, seventeenth, like half a day after the nurse called me and told me that she gave me that an injection of morphine and made that is gone. So it was

the door step up. I've made life I can. I can tell you said it was that day I can even in your voice, can hear the sadness that is there in the swedish people First, they were following heard immunity, so they were gonna, let the corona virus spread through the society and and get to that immunity. They taught perhaps before vaccines they ve, since various policies, I believe, with some locked out, but I didn't know the case within the care home. So I understand you're telling me that they stopped the visits, and that was the bit. That's heartbreaking that you couldn't get to him. Yes, he might that's how there can people died in the matter of a couple of weeks, I think, but the last seconds, less menace of his life hop ter fight, for he was

how the horrible it was that he couldn't breathe and he was alone. Nobody was with him. That's haunted me for the rest of my life very traumatic going through thought, and I can hear this agnes, but anger is well. That is there, because I think you ill. Thus those people that were entrusted to the care of your father didn't do what you wanted to do as far You also lost your dad, I'm just a little overwhelmed hearing all of this and it's kind of greeting me a lot better, and I can sympathise with you really about your dad I'm so sorry you had to go through that, also you'll julian saucer you're too loose lou like that today was that my dad's birthday. He would have it sixty seven, and this is the first time more than they were spending his where do without him, and there was just so strange sorry, my

I haven't been well over the last few years. He was sick for a while. He was a diabetic patient and my dad started getting stick around February. dialogue is regularly. So for that you need to go to a hospital. When you got it, the hospital he was given the dinosaurs treatment for like a couple of days and then it'll call the dust by then the private hospitals were allowed to do. The tests and tests came back positive, but the private one close when keeping covered patient, so he had to be transferred to government hospital, and this is what getting really bad me and my mom, so my woman by we had we took him from that hospital to the government certified hospital and once had brought him admitted, this thing we're notices that the nurses or the doctors there. They wouldn't even come close to you. They will come any closer patients, they weren't even checking them if they were already there and checking the their posts,

options or anything like so my mom who didn't even have covered she. She decided to stay back at the hospital with him to stay isolated on the eighth day, when I was supposed to go see him, I got a phone call at eight, a m from my cousin. call him said that, might I wasn't there and I can never forget that there are still there. It will always be there. Wanting that julie said earlier that they couldn't have funerals ritalin have one either most muslim family. So we have our traditions and everything and when we have a loved ones pass away, we have our whole family. There we take them. very them we have or holding Dad was like the centre of our family. He was the eldest brother amongst us brothers and sisters- and he would be there for everyone, but that, there was no one there. It was so hard reading- the person was always done,

Everything for everyone was so alone. In the end, the only thing that brought me before that, my mom was with him throughout the time. Was there. I am grateful but to bring her back home, but it wasn't these it was. It hasn't been easy, and it's just just say, sat there and I think it feels like with each of you That's it fills how it shouldn't have happened. This way it shouldn't. Have is there anything that helps with grief nothing really helps the grief. It's just that my dad sort of persons would treat everyone with love. I can never be have the man that he was. I think I'd be two important new life. That's the town this daily what about you? Not really I'm just set, as I was the first, a it, nothing helps nothing.

Because it was so incomplete, It was so, I believe, a plea, an human, the way that he was treated and the other elder day here in Sweden, I so now. thank you to lily in sweden, Far and bangladesh unduly in the united states for sharing their feelings and their experiences with us. As you heard, dealing with death during a pandemic is especially difficult, Julie spoke about her children having nightmares and its leaving many people with a lot of emotion, pain and unresolved issues, in the united states. More than half a million people have now died from cove at nineteen. Some there including president Joe Biden have chose, to compare the disease to fighting a war.

This is how we presented the number of deaths in a recent address, that's more articles, who died in one year. This pandemic then a world war, one or two the vietnam war combined. It's a shocking pole. but are their lessons that we can learn from the traumas of war. That can help people recover from losing loved ones to covert nineteen I've been talking to two people who both served in the conflict in vietnam, which in Don't you s troops for over a decade until nineteen seventy five and we talked about the impact of this lockdown period, they are marcia for in philadelphia and tom hole is in kansas city Missouri. I began by king Tom, if he felt its fair to compare a pandemic with a war for march variance. There is always the enemy in the jungle, and you may not seem that they make shoot you similar the virus

isabel enemy, it's killing people at random and if we don't marshall, all our resources and get focused on that then it will over us. That's not unfair comparison at all. and I think you know whether young or old, veteran poor night. You understand that without it being spoken, that it makes sense that this is war is a word. We do want to kill the virus, so we are or will it and the idea Let me anything order that that would up against a lethal, enemy and it is an enemy to us. Not maybe, as we understand it is another person or another culture, fighting cultures or whatever, but it is. It is very much a challenge and needs that kind of focus. I don't have any problem with a dane call that the frontline workers- their dying nurses and doctors or die fighting this just

a war and they're putting their lives on the line. I get a war that I think the parallels for innumerable. I don't think, there's I can stretch at all marcia. What about you? You hear some of the aspects that Tom mentions there. When it comes, two, comparing something like covered and a war. How do you said? I agree with Tom completely I mean when this all started the pandemic in there and Quite frankly, I was committed to watching this every day on television it was, it was, compelling compelling- and I think we the reasons that it was so compelling it was because there was set. You know, a correlation between what the frontline workers, the nurses and any one in the hospitals support step what they were doing and what we had to do. You know necessarily have to have like the same injuries were being set place to be in a war we,

new that from the beginning, but when you look at what the individuals had to endure during this time. It every day was ok chaos. Every j you know they had to live under that stress, an anxiety but only of the work that was demanded of them and the good. I will say that over time they had to put in on this, there was the loss, the loss of the humanity that was was laid their hands. They had no control over the pain of seeing these individuals who work, who are losing their lives, slipping away and their families were not with them and and that's another thing as a comparison, with the delight that we lost face, died without anyone with them. They were too the league alone, and we in the

that's kettles. I would say this as a nurse and I'd like to go back to the fact that very few women were in vietnam and the military is chose change totally. Since then there was another issue I had, but we were their family. They looked at us as their mothers, their wives. We were the ones that help them across to the other side. We gave them, the strength and- and we gave them the courage let go and to know all would be well. It was a long journey. They had walks in such a short time in their lives, but we as nurses. When we came home, we reassured their families at every chance. We had that they should know they. They didn't die alone with us, some one was with them and just gave a actually great comfort to families when they would talk

thus thought when you look at what the staff in the hospitals are going through today. There is a an overwhelming comparison with some of the things that we had to experience by going through that kind of trauma of the nurses and the medical people that I've worked with came back from vietnam. Vietnam, vets that I worked with and treatment. It's almost chapter first the way you pull elated out there- that the similarities had the same than in my family. I've had members who were separated from their families because they were afraid to go home. They didn't want to work in a hospital all day and come home and bring something there and threatening their families. That leaves us with avoidance they that you learn to avoid things you never in your wildest dreams, where the thought you would need to avoid- or you think twice about it, and then you have turn it off when you are in the midst of your emotions, you normally would have when somebody passes, dies dramatically, it near you or any that or you're gonna die, because you're not focused, but

being able to switch that off. When you come home and again it's isolation, nobody understands exactly what you ve been through and never will errors. Several million people who went to vietnam and everybody had a different or the idea everybody in the same that experience the battling the covert on the front lines and health professions, each of them be dealing with different issues that will color. The arc of their life that they will not be the same after this, In that mean they are going to be disable. That doesn't mean they're, not gonna, be able to have the life that they started out with it's just a recognition that this does change a person. This kind of chaos, this kind of challenge, this kind of justice fleet submersion in an overwhelming, fallen and trying to learn how to both take care of things without being over reactive. And our irritable, or had an angry and getting angry and

Thirdly, everybody got angry at some point. Have had something in that angry about supplies, angry about the situation on talking about both play it's vietnam and there and the virus. Those things to me just go hand in hand and just like in combat there will people who will develop really some post, traumatic stress disorder, not everybody, but some oil, and it's important that that be addressed taken seriously, so people can and quickly we waited forty or fifty years before it really got addressed that that's not really a good idea. I think we have now in place the kinds of things that can really help mitigate the. Worst parts of this for most people. I think one of the legacy of the vietnamese that society in general, you know now We accept ptsd is as a reaction to these events that happened to us, because it took wait too long for us to deal with the denial of our own feelings, but I think that, though two are working

Today's circumstances and had having these personal feeling of lonely nos ten, an empty, no sin pay and sadness and awe you a. I don't even think you can describe the deep emotions that they all feel that they they too are going to have to look inside themselves to find a journey into the place. They can heal marsh, before and Tom hole in the united states, adding an incredibly relevant perspective and an understanding to dealing with loss during a pandemic. The effects of this We had both physical and mental will undoubtedly linger and we are coming up to a year since this pandemic was declared next week with a special edition which pays tribute to the hope and resilience of human nature during these times I'm not.

government and you ve, been listening to BBC o s conversations war. covert, thank you for listening There will be more from the documentary podcast soon. If you haven't already, please do subscribe and don't forget did They are other bbc world service podcast tee.