November 17, 2020, 6:47 am
We’ve been living through a pandemic for over eight months. Almost 250,000 Americans have died, with deaths totaling over 1.3 million around the world. Schools, businesses, movie theaters, and seasonal events have all been shut down at some point or another. 2020 does not look like other years in our lifetime; not at all. And yet there are still people who deny COVID-19 is more than a variation on the flu, that it’s something to be concerned about.
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It’s unfathomable to those who are taking the virus seriously, or who have watched loved ones suffer through it. But it’s possibly even tougher on healthcare workers, who are now watching ICU beds fill up again after almost a month of treating COVID-19 patients nonstop already.
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One nurse in South Dakota is speaking up about her experience with COVID patients — in particular, that so many of them still don’t take this seriously.
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Jodi Doering tweeted last week that she still has patients on their deathbeds refusing to believe COVID is real at all, railing against the liberal hoax up until the end.
“The ones that stick out are those who still don’t believe the virus is real,” she wrote. “The ones who scream at you for a magic medicine and that Joe Biden is going to ruin the USA. All while gasping for breath on 100% Vapotherm. They tell you there must be another reason they are sick. They call you names and ask why you have to wear all that ‘stuff’ because they don’t have COVID because it’s not real.”
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Driving her point home, Doering added: “And then they stop yelling at you when they get intubated. It’s like a f—king horror movie that never ends. There’s no credits that roll. You just go back and do it all over again.”
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After her tweet thread exploded, Doering also went on CNN to talk about her experiences.
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“It’s just a culmination of so many people. And their last dying words are ‘This can’t be happening. It’s not real.’ And when they should be spending time FaceTiming their families, they’re filled with anger and hatred,” she said. “And I just can’t believe those are gonna be their last thoughts and words.”
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These are the kinds of comments that were commonplace at the start of the pandemic, when we didn’t have a good grasp on what we were dealing with and it was easier to shrug off the virus as maybe not quite as big a deal, before the wave of deaths began sweeping across the United States.
But to hear that it’s still normal for patients to be so in denial about the reality of what we’ve all been living through this year so deep into the pandemic is sobering. And a reminder that as long as this remains a shockingly partisan issue, we may be stuck in this cycle for a long time.
*First Published: November 17, 2020, 6:47 am
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