Nicole Atherton couldn’t take it anymore.
The intensive care nurse looked helplessly last year Coronavirus disease The patient died slowly, painfully, and alone in her Mississippi hospital. Then in July, she faced a wave of critically ill patients again, although almost everyone could save themselves by being vaccinated against the coronavirus.
“People think about masks and vaccine And freedom. I just don’t want to watch other people die,” the 39-year-old mother of two children wrote on Facebook a few days ago. “I saw their faces in a nightmare. It feels like it never ends. “
As the U.S. struggles to cope With the surge in the “Delta” variant of the virus, the number of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths continues to increase, Exhausted and desperate medical staff are turning to social media to describe the grim reality they face.
For some people, writing is a catharsis, a way of dealing with their sadness and anxiety. Others see it as a responsibility, using their devastating encounter with death to try to persuade skeptical Americans to take the epidemic seriously.
“I just want people to know that it’s real, and it’s scary, and it’s difficult for us,” Atherton said in a telephone interview. “The first wave is heartbreaking because people have no choice but to stay away from the one they love. This time, there are choices.”
The daily number of new coronavirus cases in the United States hit a six-month high, with a seven-day average reaching nearly 95,000. Reuters data shows that this rate is five times that of less than a month ago.
Health officials say the surge is almost entirely caused by people who have not been vaccinated. Vaccines are not widely used in many other countries, but only 49% of the US population of 330 million are vaccinated.
Reuters interviewed doctors, nurses, and hospital leaders in six states. They described the workforce was exhausted and morale was low because the wards were crowded with most unvaccinated patients.
Medical service providers who have stepped into public forums to combat false information say they are sometimes attacked by anti-vaccine skeptics online.
“There is too much misinformation there,” said Tia Curtis-Morris, an emergency and intensive care nurse in southeastern Louisiana. “Maybe if I tell people that they understand what we deal with every day… but they don’t want to listen.”
The governor of Louisiana this week restarted the requirement to wear masks because the state has new hospital records every day, and Curtis Morris has been urging Facebook friends to wear masks.
She is more cautious when discussing vaccines, saying that she understands why some people are hesitant. The 46-year-old single mother with four daughters was vaccinated, but only recently did she vaccinate her young child in consultation with a pediatrician. So far, her mother has refused, citing concerns about side effects.
‘It doesn’t have to be like this’
Earlier this week, 28-year-old ICU nurse Kathryn Ivey spent her break time in a hospital in Tennessee to produce an emotionally original Twitter thread.
“This time it’s worse,” she wrote. “All of us can give much less. We are still suffering from the fresh and heavy grief of last year and trying to find a place to vent all this anger. But the patient will not stop. And the anger will not stop.
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” she concluded.
The thread went viral.
In an interview, Ivy said that for her mental health, she wrote down her feelings. She said that more and more patients are pouring into her hospital, and almost all of them are not vaccinated.
She expressed that she did not hope her words would make a difference. She said that those who are most resolutely opposed to vaccines will only be persuaded when they see that their loved ones are sick.
“It breaks my heart: people need to experience this kind of injury to understand,” said Ivey, who started his career during the pandemic. “I know without a doubt that if these people know what COVID is, they won’t risk it. But ignorance is a powerful thing.”
Despair drove Atherton, a nurse in Mississippi, to scream.
On Facebook this week, she described in detail an unvaccinated woman who had difficulty breathing and was afraid of leaving her child without a mother.
Once, the lady wanted a sip of water very much, and Atherton—despite her doubts—agreed to give her oxygen for a few seconds and give her a drink. Soon after, the woman underwent intubation. This was the last time she had met with her family through a video call.
“I wonder if I didn’t let her drink that sip of water if she was still alive,” Atherton wrote. “My rational side knows that she is too ill. She can’t do it anyway. My emotional side will never stop thinking.”
Atherton said that three people sent her a message saying that they would be vaccinated.
But for Atherton, the pressure accumulated from seeing so many deaths has become too great, and she told her hospital last week that she would resign.
She said she plans to work as a nurse elsewhere. She just can no longer witness the daily loss of COVID-19 to members of her own community.
