How COVID Denial Affects Healthcare Workers

bad as some make it seem. Some healthcare workers call it COVID denial, and on top of the physical and mental demands of the job, they say this makes it harder for them to provide care. Sarah Krause, health reporter at The Wall Street Journal, joins us for more on this extra challenge healthcare workers are facing. Thanks for joining us, Sarah, Thanks for having me. We're unfortunately seeing cases of coronavirus rise, hospitalizations rise, debts rise. We're really hitting a bad part

of this pandemic all over again. And one of the things that we always like to check in on is our doctors, our nurses, our healthcare workers. It's been a tough go for them. You know, they're the ones on the front lines dealing the patients all the time and helping people get better. And we've done stories in the past before already on the podcast about the burnout that the doctors and nurses are facing, some of them are

retiring early, all that jazz. But right now you wrote an article, Sarah, about how some of this coronavirus disbelief is really affecting them. You know, it's hard for them to go there every day, but still constantly hear people say that it's not as bad as it seems, or it's a hoax, etcetera, etcetera. So, Sarry, tell us a little bit about some of the conversations you were having

with doctors and nurses about this. So I spoke with several doctors and nurses across the country and basically what they described or treating patients who are seriously ill in the hospital as part of their day job, and then going home and either in the line at the grocery store or through family or friends and family hearing from people who think the virus as a hoax or just not as serious as public health officials have said it is.

And they say that that sort of disbelief on top of months of the physical and mental demands of caring for very sick patients during the pandemic is frustrating and draining, and the overarching is that if the broader public is not taking the pandemic and the associated risks seriously, does it risk furthering the virus has spread. I mean, it's a weird situation. We see it a lot playing out

in the media, obviously how bad it is. We see our local elected officials talking about it constantly, imposing new restrictions and lockdowns, and that's probably fuel some of the frustration on the part of people not wanting to go through that. You know. Obviously huge economic effects that are going on because of it is hard for a lot

of people. And despite these huge numbers, there's a lot of people that have not gotten this, and maybe some people don't know somebody that might have gotten it, so it might fuel some of that skepticism they said, you know, some of this in their sort of groups of family and friends is rooted in the fact that there were parts of the country that shut down before the virus was widely circulating there. So there's this frustration from economic losses, whether it be a job or just instability in a

person's household. Financial situations that contribute to this frustration as shutdowns continue, as the numbers continue to swell. You had a story about a nurse in El Paso, Texas who had a patient in early November, wheeling him out of the intensive care unit, and he was still saying that it wasn't that bad, that the media was exaggerating it.

She said that she took that time to say that he was the only person that she had treated that day that was able to converse with her, you know, and that also the distance that she was treating are the most severe that she had seen in ten years as a nurse. So she said that in that situation, the patient changed their minds. Other healthcare professionals that I talked to said at times they faced more of an uphill climb in convincing those around them that this is real.

And one of the things that came up repeatedly in the conversations I had with healthcare workers and what they hear from the communities around them are patients, is there have been conflicting messages around the merits of mask wearing early on, and because the virus continues to spread, now there's not only a pandemic fatigue, but there's a little bit of whiplash in terms of what measures should I or should I not be taking? Is it actually making

a difference? Yeah, that might have been one of the biggest drawbacks. I think that the CDC was involved early

on when the recommendations were bouncing back and forth. And you know, they talk a lot about in your conversations with them, you know, misinformation, and they hope that, you know, the quality of care doesn't go down, and a lot of them are nervous we're getting to the point where vaccines are going to be improved, and public polling out there says that a lot of Americans don't want to take the vaccines for a variety of reasons, right, And that's one of the many sort of knock on effects

that they described as fearing in this one is you know, if people don't think there is merit to mass wearing other mitigation measures, that they won't do it, the virus will continue to spread. But also when a vaccine is available, these feelings will contribute to some Americans not getting vaccinated because they didn't think it was serious in the first place, or they have distrust of the vaccine. Yet another knock on effects from it was the concern about overcrowding having

so much of a burden. If this continues to spread on the health care system, that you run out of beds with the ability to care not only for COVID patients but also sort of routine, elective but still important procedures, or in remote parts of the country where there's maybe you know, a main trauma center and then that serves as a hub that if that's still COVID patients that can't accept the normal car accident injuries or other injuries that might come through that then must be treated in

smaller facilities that have less experience doing so. So they sort of described this ripple of fact that has a lot of different components to it. On the vaccine front, one of the latest Gallipole said about Americans say that they wouldn't get vaccinated. I don't like to hear that type of stuff, especially considering how hard people have been pushing for the vaccines to get through the process and everything. I think this kind of encapsulates a lot of this.

One of the nurses you spoke to said, Hey, I check your cholesterol and show you a number, and you believe us. But when it comes to this, you're not believing us now, and that's got to be frustrating for these healthcare workers that are in the trenches working on this. And you also mentioned that there's a lot of local public health meetings that some of these nurses are taking their time to go to as well, so they're not just treating patients in the hospitals, they're also going to

these public meetings to help get the word out. And even then still there's back and forth on it. I described a meeting in Idaho where a local public health board invited both doctors from a local hospital system as well as to other individuals who advocated for unproven treatments and made assertions that there's no evidence that masks prevent

the spread of COVID nineteen, which is incorrect. And so the doctors that I spoke with who were at that meeting, you know, sort of spoke about frustration, feeling like they are up against conflicting and incorrect messages on top of their day job of caring for patients. And you know, one of them sort of described it feels like a parallel universe when you see people dying of a virus, or you see a virus having longer term complications for

some patients. At your day job, and then you go home or in your surrounding community, it's not taken seriously, right, Yeah, I mean it's very hard. I know there's been a lot of politicization throughout this whole process of the pandemic, and even in my own circles. You know, I heard a lot of people saying, oh, you know, this is all going to go away after the election. It's quite

the contrary. It's actually gotten worse very recently. And you see today we're we have record hospitalizations as of yesterday, a record new case count, more than two hundred thousand. Deaths are continuing to climb, and so I think one of the challenges here is you have this continued spread, and in some parts of the country, the worse it's been yet, on top of many months of lockdowns and

fits and starts. So you have this sort of frustration and desire among a lot of people to get back to normal and find a way to live with it. You know, I think from the doctor's perspective and nurses perspective, you're also coming off many months of pretty intense shift caring for sick people, and so um I think We're at a moment where some of those frustrations are bubbling up. Sarah Krause, health reporter at the Wall Street Journal. Thank you very much for joining us, Thank you for having me.

I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been reopening America. Don't forget the effort today's big news stories. You can check me out in the Daily Dive podcast every Monday to Fridays. So follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast.