Appalachian nurses fight Covid-19 and community mistrust

Abingdon, Va. (Wikipedia map)

During the pandemic, some Central Appalachian hospital employees have endured "the traumas known to ICU workers across the world: days filled with death, nights ruined by dreams in which they found themselves at infected patients’ bedsides without masks. But they were also enduring a trauma that many doctors and nurses elsewhere were not: the suspicion and derision of those they risked their lives to protect," Peter Jamison reports for The Washington Post. "Conspiracy theories about the pandemic and lies recited on social media — or at White House news conferences — had penetrated deep into their community. When refrigerated trailers were brought in to relieve local hospitals’ overflowing morgues, people said they were stage props. Agitated and unmasked relatives stood outside the ICU insisting that their intubated relatives only had the flu. Many believed the doctors and nurses hailed elsewhere for their sacrifices were conspiring to make money by falsifying covid-19 diagnoses."

The Post interviewed registered nurse Emily Boucher and some of her co-workers in the Johnston Memorial Hospital ICU in Abingdon, Va. Boucher told Jamison that she and her colleagues were fighting not just for their patients' lives, but "against misinformation and reckless practices that have led to this virus getting so out of control. . . . It is like having fought in a war that many believe never took place."

Jamison does note: "Not everyone dismissed the suffering and death caused by the coronavirus. Churches and community groups had sent food and homemade masks to Johnston Memorial, and families had tearfully thanked Boucher and her co-workers for saving lives."