Covid-19 disbelief poses another challenge for healthcare workers



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Dr Michaela Schulte works nights at hospitals in the St. Luke Health System near Boise, Idaho, treating some of the hundreds of critically ill Covid-19 patients filling hospital beds in her condition during the period most serious of the pandemic to date.

Like many other health workers, she faces another challenge keeping up with the recent surge in coronavirus cases: A number of people in her community say the virus is not as serious as public health reports. and press indicate it – and some say it is not real.

Outside the hospital – at the grocery store checkout after work or through family friends – Dr. Schulte says she hears people calling the virus a hoax and saying that professionals of health exaggerate its severity. Disbelief, in addition to the relentless physical and mental demands of their jobs during the pandemic, is exhausting many medical workers and making it even more difficult for them to provide care, they say.

“We see what’s going on – and then to reconcile that with some of the disbelief that you are having is very difficult,” said Dr Schulte. “It’s a parallel universe.”

Denial of Covid, as some healthcare workers call it, can take forms ranging from a belief that Covid-19 is no more serious than a routine cold, or a belief that face masks are not effective at slowing the spread, the idea. that the pandemic is an elaborate hoax.

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