Nurses Who Battled Virus in New York Confront Friends Back Home Who Say It's a Hoax
Nurses who traveled from across the country to work in New York City hospitals saw the horrors of the coronavirus up close. They rushed patients to overcrowded intensive care units, monitored oxygen levels and held the hands of the sickest ones as they slipped away.
But now that many of the nurses have returned home to states in the South and the West, they’re facing a new challenge: persuading friends and family to take the virus seriously.
“A few times I’ve lost my temper,” said Olumide Peter Kolade, a 31-year-old nurse from California who grew up in Texas and spent more than three months treating patients in New York. “When someone tells me that they don’t believe the virus is real, it’s an insult. I take it personally.”
On the way to his 12-hour shifts in Brooklyn, Kolade would scroll through Instagram and Snapchat and see photos taken the previous night of his friends partying in Texas. A few, adamant that the coronavirus was a hoax or that deaths in New York were overstated, texted him videos promoting the false internet conspiracy theory that links the spread of the virus to the ultrafast wireless technology known as 5G.
“I don’t know, if I wasn’t a nurse, I would’ve totally believed the videos,” he said. “They made it seem like it was true.”
For nurses, the widespread skepticism about something they have witnessed is jarring. The United States has hit daily case records three times in the first six days of July, as the politicization of public health measures and the spread of misinformation hinder the country’s ability to curb the coronavirus’s spread.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/nurses-battled-virus-york-confront-184638658.html
Guess you can't fix stupid.
= new reply since forum marked as read
