Video recreates perspective of dying patient as ICU doctor urges people to take Covid seriously

A doctor at the St. Louis ICU shared a video showing what Covid-19 patients see when they are intubated in an attempt to get people to take the virus seriously.

In the video, Kenneth Remy, an intensive care physician at Washington University Medical Center, looks at a camera as he holds a laryngoscope and endotracheal tube – tools used in the intubation process.

“I hope the last moments of your life don’t look like this because that’s what you’ll see at the end of your life if we don’t start wearing masks when we’re in public. When we don’t practice social distancing. When we don’t wash our hands frequently, ”he says.

“Because I promise you, it’ll be what you see.” I promise this is what your mom or dad or kids will see at the end of their life when they have Covid disease. It’s serious.

Remy said he had had more than 1,000 patients with Covid-19 and had seen “too many of them die” from the disease. He said he wanted to post the video after Saint Louis saw a spike in coronavirus cases.

“In the last week that I was in the intensive care unit we had a number of deaths,” he said in a telephone interview with NBC News. “I was forced to call 11 strangers in the middle of the night to let them know that their loved one has just died. And so in that vein, if you will, unfortunately it just weighed on my shoulders a kind of feeling. of defeat. “

His video has been viewed more than 71,000 times since it was posted to Twitter on Saturday.

The doctor said he hoped he could help “change a certain sense of the disease”, especially as the holidays approach.

“I understand that wearing a mask everywhere when you are in public can be uncomfortable, but what would also be the most uncomfortable would be to be in the hospital, to be in the intensive care unit, to have a hard time. to breathe, ”he said.

“At the end of the day, I want my loved ones to be alive, just like I want your loved ones to be alive.”

On Saturday, the United States surpassed 12 million Covid-19 cases as more than 40 states plus Washington DC reported a percentage increase in cases over the past 14 days.