As hospitalizations and deaths mount, nurses are losing patience with COVID-19 conspiracy theories and distorted libertarian mores that depict masking mandates as an infringement of personal liberty.
For frontline nurses tending to Covid patients who shunned masks or insisted on attending crowded gatherings, the situation is fraught with tragedy. South Dakota ED nurse Jodi Doering recently told CNN, “I think the hardest thing to watch is that people are still looking for something else and a magic answer and they do not want to believe Covid is real. Their last dying words are, ‘This can’t be happening. It’s not real.’” In North Dakota, Governor Doug Burgum pleaded, “You don’t have to believe in Covid, you don’t have to believe in a certain political party or not, you don’t have to believe whether masks work or not. You can just do it because you know that one thing is very real. And that’s that 100 percent of our capacity is now being used.”
“I want you to listen to health care providers and [what] your officials are telling you. I don’t want praise and I certainly don’t want to be your martyr.”
Tiffany M. Montgomery, PA Frontline Nurse
Nebraska ICU nurse Laci Gooch spoke out in a Twitter video: “We’re tired. We’re understaffed. We’re taking care of very, very sick patients and our patient load just keeps going up. We’re exhausted and frustrated that people aren’t listening to us.” Driving home after one night shift, Gooch passed a car festival packed with attendees blithely ignoring masking and social distancing, and “I was just shocked and it was infuriating. It just kind of feels like a slap in the face to all the hard work that we’re doing.”
Kentucky nurses, too, are “tired and frustrated” by the neglect of social distancing rules. Delanor Manson, of the Kentucky Nurses Association, told WLKY, “Some of the things that make it especially hard for [frontline nurses] is that they can’t get the vision of people dying out of their heads when they’re sleeping at night and when they’re at home with their families.”
There is irony as well. Despite being acclaimed as “healthcare heroes” around the globe, nurses feel doubly vulnerable when they go home to communities that frown on masking. “Wearing a mask won’t hurt you, but there’s the potential if you don’t wear a mask you may hurt someone else,” said Dr. Ruth Carrico, an infectious disease nurse and researcher with University of Louisville Health in Kentucky. In Pennsylvania, Tiffany M. Montgomery, a Drexel University postdoctoral research fellow who also works as a labor and delivery nurse, told the Morning Call, “I had no idea we would be doing it for this long and I’m just tired. I don’t want to be your superhero. I want to be safe. I don’t want to have to deal with this anymore. I want you to listen to health care providers and [what] your officials are telling you. I don’t want praise and I certainly don’t want to be your martyr.”
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