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Los Angeles emergency nurse Sandra Younan has spent the last year juggling long hours as she watched many patients battle the coronavirus and some die.
Then there were the patients who claimed the virus was fake or coughed in the face, ignoring the rules of masks. A man stormed out of hospital after testing positive for COVID-19, refusing to believe he was accurate.
“There are patients who literally die and then patients who deny the disease,” she said. “You are trying to educate and you are trying to educate, but you just hit a wall.”
False claims about the virus, masks and vaccines have exploded since COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic a year ago. Journalists, public health officials, and tech companies have tried to fight the lies, but much of the work of correcting the disinformation has gone to the world’s frontline medical workers.
In Germany, a video clip showing a nurse using an empty syringe while giving vaccinations has been circulated widely online as alleged evidence that COVID-19 is fake. Doctors in Afghanistan have reported patients telling them that COVID-19 was created by the United States and China to reduce the world’s population. In bolivia, medical staff had to deal with five people who had ingested a toxic bleach falsely touted as a cure for COVID-19.
Younan, 27, says her friends described her as the “coldest person ever,” but now she is faced with overwhelming anxiety.
“My life is being a nurse so I don’t care if you’re really sick you throw up on me whatever,” Younan said. “But when you know what you’re doing is wrong, and I repeatedly ask you to wear your mask to protect me, and you still don’t, it’s like you have no respect for it.” no one other than yourself. And that is why this virus is spreading. It just makes you lose hope.
Emily Scott, 36, based at a Seattle hospital, has worked around the world on medical missions and helped treat America’s first COVID-19 patient last year. She was selected because of her experience working in Sierra Leone during the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak.
While many Americans were terrified of Ebola – a disease that is not as contagious as the coronavirus and poses little threat to the United States – they are not afraid enough of COVID-19, she said. declared.
Scott blames a few factors: the frightening symptoms of Ebola, racism against Africans and the politicization of COVID-19 by elected officials in the United States.
“I felt so much safer in Sierra Leone during Ebola than at the start of this outbreak in the United States,” Scott said, due to the number of people who disregarded social distancing guidelines and mask. “Things that are facts and science have become politicized.”
Emergency nurse Erin Ogle overheard a litany of false claims about the virus while working at a hospital in suburban Kansas City, Kansas. They understand: The virus is not worse than the flu. It’s caused by 5G wireless towers. Masks will not help and may hurt. Or, the most painful for her: the virus is not real, and doctors and nurses are engaged in a vast global conspiracy to hide the truth.
“It sounds so overpowering, and it makes you wonder: why am I doing this?” says Ogle, 40.
Nurses are often the healthcare providers with the most contact with patients, and patients often view nurses as more accessible, according to Professor Maria Brann, a health communication expert at Indiana-Purdue University. Indianapolis. This means that nurses are more likely to encounter patients who spread misinformation, which gives them a special opportunity to intervene.
“Nurses have always been patient advocates, but this pandemic has thrown a lot more at them,” Brann said. “It can certainly have negative consequences. This is not necessarily what they signed up for. “
In some cases, nurses and other health care workers themselves disseminate misinformation. And many nurses say they come across lies about the coronavirus vaccine in their own families.
For Brenda Olmos, 31, a nurse practitioner in Austin, Texas, who focuses on a geriatric and Hispanic patient population, getting the vaccine was easy. But first, she had to debate her parents, who had heard unfounded claims that the gunshot would cause infertility. and Bell’s palsy on Spanish TV shows.
Olmos eventually convinced her parents to get the vaccine as well, but she is worried about the reluctance to vaccinate in her community.
When she recently met an elderly patient with cancerous tumors, Olmos knew the growths had taken years to develop. But the adult children of the man who recently had him vaccinated insisted the two were linked.
“To them, it seemed too fortuitous,” Olmos said. “I just didn’t want them to have that guilt.”
Olmos said the real problem with disinformation isn’t just bad actors spreading lies – it’s the people who believe false claims because they aren’t as comfortable navigating discoveries. often complex medical conditions.
“Low health literacy is the real pandemic,” she said. “As healthcare providers, we have a duty to provide information in an acceptable and easy-to-understand way, so that people don’t consume misinformation because they can’t digest the real data. “
When Texas Governor Greg Abbott lifted the state mask mandate This month, against the advice of many scientists, nurse practitioner Guillermo Carnegie called the decision “spit in the face.”
“I was disgusted,” said Carnegie, 34, of Temple, Texas. “This governor and different people are acting like, ‘Oh, we’re proud of our frontline workers, we stand behind them.’ But then they do something like that, and it costs the medical world a lot.
Brian Southwell, who started a program at Duke University School of Medicine to train healthcare professionals to talk to uninformed patients, said providers should view the patient confiding in them as an opportunity.
“This patient trusts you enough to bring this information with you,” Southwell said. “And so that’s a good thing, even if you don’t agree with it.”
He said medical workers should refrain from going into “academic argument mode” and instead find out why patients have certain beliefs – and whether they might be open to other ideas.
This act of listening is imperative to building trust, according to Dr Seema Yasmin, a doctor, journalist and professor at Stanford University who studies medical disinformation.
“Put down your pen, put down your notebook and listen,” Yasmin says.
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Associate Press Editor John Leicester du Pecq, France contributed to this report.
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No more AP coverage of the first year of the pandemic: Pandemic: one year
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