Denial Doesn’t End With Intubation — ER Nurse Says Dying Patients Still Deny COVID-19 Exists

The politicization of COVID-19 left a significant portion of the country in intense denial of just how deadly the virus is. An emergency room nurse is speaking out now to let the public know that even at the worst extreme, politics color patients’ response to their own illness.

Jodi Doering’s tweets about her experiences caring for COVID-19 patients went viral and she was invited to share her revelations on CNN‘s New Day. In the clip below, she describes the heartbreak of trying to convince a patient to take the opportunity to have a last video call with a loved one, only to meet further denial as the patient insists it isn’t necessary, because they don’t believe they can possibly truly be dying of a virus whose existence and/or seriousness they continue to deny.

A South Dakota ER nurse @JodiDoering says her Covid-19 patients often “don’t want to believe that Covid is real.”

“Their last dying words are, ‘This can’t be happening. It’s not real.’ And when they should be… Facetiming their families, they’re filled with anger and hatred.” pic.twitter.com/tgUgP6znAT

— New Day (@NewDay) November 16, 2020

In fact, she says, upon diagnosis, many patients continue to insist that they must be sick with something else rather than COVID-19 — lung cancer or pneumonia, perhaps.

I have a night off from the hospital. As I’m on my couch with my dog I can’t help but think of the Covid patients the last few days. The ones that stick out are those who still don’t believe the virus is real. The ones who scream at you for a magic medicine and that Joe Biden is

— Jodi Doering (@JodiDoering) November 15, 2020

I can’t stop thinking about it. These people really think this isn’t going to happen to them. And then they stop yelling at you when they get intubated. It’s like a fucking horror movie that never ends. There’s no credits that roll. You just go back and do it all over again.

— Jodi Doering (@JodiDoering) November 15, 2020

In tweets over the weekend, she described the way that some patients lash out and attack nurses for wearing protective gear, even calling them names, because they feel so certain that their diagnosis can’t be real, and that the virus doesn’t warrant such a level of caution.

Donald Trump has consistently downplayed the effect of the virus, and complicit Republican officials have joined him, choosing to focus on the economic cost of shutdowns rather than the cost, in human life, of continuing to ignore the risks. The nation is now approaching a quarter of a million deaths from this pandemic.