Stop saying COVID isn’t real. Tri-City hospital staff can’t take it anymore | Editorial

COVID deniers in the Tri-Cities and elsewhere are adding to the emotional strain of our healthcare workers and they need to knock it off.

This week an emergency room physician from one of our local hospitals couldn’t take it anymore, and fired off an emotional email to the Tri-City Herald to vent.

“I’m honestly just at the end of my rope after the past four shifts I’ve had to work. And quite sick of people thinking that this (is) all a hoax or some conspiracy so the hospitals can make more money or whatever misconception they have.”

The physician later told us that as the email was written, two patients on ventilators needed to be moved from the emergency room and admitted to a hospital, but there were no intensive care beds available anywhere in Washington state.

Every hospital in the Tri-Cities and in the state is at maximum capacity.

This is what we feared since the pandemic began last spring — that if COVID surged, our hospitals would become overwhelmed and there wouldn’t be enough beds, equipment and staff to take care of all the sick people flooding the healthcare system.

According to the Benton Franklin Health District, 90.2% of hospital beds in the two counties are being occupied by patients seeking an array of medical care. The state Department of Health wants to see fewer than 80% of beds in use to ensure hospital readiness.

Hospital admissions as of Thursday show 73 people being treated for the virus — or 17.5 percent of the total 416 patients — at facilities in Kennewick, Pasco, Richland and Prosser.

But it is not only the number of COVID patients and available hospital beds we must be concerned about.

Our healthcare workers are at the breaking point.

When the pandemic started in the spring, people showed an amazing amount of support for our frontline workers. But as the months have dragged on and people have become tired of wearing masks and social distancing, that outward show of concern for hospital workers has waned.

Anyone who is frustrated by COVID restrictions needs to take a moment and think what it must be like for the doctors and nurses who are witnessing first-hand the sorrow and pain that this disease inflicts.

And then they should try to imagine what it must be like for them to hear people — even elected Tri-City officials — dismiss the disease and the suffering it brings.

Snarky comments on social media that disregard the seriousness of the coronavirus fuel conspiracy theories, and add to disinformation seeping through the community. Too many people are willing to believe something they have read online because it fits with a narrative that makes them feel safer.

COVID deniers find information that counters advice from our local health officials, and will readily dismiss the people who have the community’s best interests at heart so they don’t have to face the truth about how deadly COVID can be.

This belief that COVID isn’t real is a weird phenomenon that is demoralizing our doctors and nurses who are at an emotional breaking point.

For those still in COVID denial, consider that in Orange County, Calif., the “rising flood of coronavirus patients” this week caused hospital emergency rooms to fill up to the point that some ambulances had to wait for hours to unload patients, according to the Orange County Register.

Idaho Gov. Brad Little blamed COVID-19 for an increasing death toll during a news conference Thursday, and said that in multiple counties “the morgues are full and they’re starting to ask for refrigerated trailers to hold the bodies,” reported The Idaho Statesman.

Our predicament in Washington state is not yet so grim, but that is why restrictions have been put in place and why health officials are pleading with everyone to do their part to slow the spread of the disease.

Health care workers can’t deny the truth. They live with the reality of the pandemic during every shift.

That’s why we reached out to the physician who emailed us. We thought the message was so worthwhile that we asked if we could publish it in our Opinion section.

We agreed not to use his name — making an unusual exception to our policy — because we want the community to read a first-hand account from inside our own hospitals.

The physician’s column can be found online as a Guest Opinion, and our print readers can find it on the front page of the Sunday Forum section.

Please read it — and most of all, believe it.

This story was originally published December 11, 2020 at 12:14 PM.