A Louisiana nurse’s video pleading with people to take COVID seriously and get vaccinated has gone viral, as Americans search for ways to convince their unvaccinated friends and family to come around.
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Felicia Croft works as a COVID ICU nurse at Willis-Knighton Medical Center in Shreveport, Louisiana, which she says she’s done for basically the entire pandemic. We haven’t been short on viral videos and photos over the past year and a half showing how horrific these units can become when they start to get overrun by COVID patients, or run short on staff or protective gear. There’s no question that health care workers have been through some harrowing experiences during this time.
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But the day Croft recorded her video, she says, “was probably one of the most emotionally hard days since the pandemic started.
“The Delta wave that we’re seeing now…people are younger and sicker and we are intubating and losing people that are my age and younger.”
Croft tearfully recounted her 14-year-old daughter approaching her in recent days asking to pray for her friends’ parents, who are both in Croft’s ICU, very sick.
“And as a nurse, to know that if you can’t get these two people home, that their kids will be orphans. Their 14-year-old could be an orphan,” she said. “I cannot even explain how that feels, as a nurse and as a mom.”
The rate of new COVID cases is going sharply up across the country after seeing a decline and stagnation for several months following the availability of the vaccine.
Louisiana saw 4779 new reported cases in a single day this week, compared to clocking 7-day averages in the 300-500 range throughout June. Unsurprisingly, the state is lagging behind in vaccinations for the virus, with only 37.1% of residents vaccinated as of the last report, placing them 47th in vaccination rates among the states.
Sure enough, Croft acknowledged that “so many” of the people coming into her ICU haven’t been vaccinated and is frustrated “just to know that there’s something that could help, and people aren’t taking advantage of it.”
“This pandemic, and masks, and vaccines, this is not about you. And this is not about what always makes you feel good,” she said in a later video for CNN. “And I think that stepping out of that ‘what’s most important to me and what makes me comfortable and keeps me happy’ — I think if we change that mindset, it will change a lot of what’s happening outside and inside the hospital.”
*First Published: August 5, 2021, 7:03 am
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