Los Angeles ER nurse Sandra Younan has spent the past year juggling for long hours while watching many patients battling the coronavirus and some dying.
Then there were the patients who claimed that the virus was fake or coughed in her face, ignoring the rules of the mask. A man furiously left the hospital after a positive COVID-19 test, refusing to believe it was necessary.
“You have patients who are literally dying and then there are patients who deny the disease,” she said. “You try to educate and you try to educate, but then you hit the 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 technology companies have tried to resist falsehoods, but much of the work on correcting misinformation has been left to the world’s frontline health professionals.
In Germany, a video clip showing a nurse using an empty syringe while practicing vaccination traveled a lot online as alleged evidence that COVID-19 is fake. Doctors in Afghanistan reported patients who told them that COVID-19 was created by the USA and China to reduce the world population. In bolivia, medical workers had to look after five people who ingested a toxic whitening agent falsely advertised as a cure for COVID-19.
Younan, 27, says her friends used to describe her as the “coldest person in the world”, but now she is dealing with overwhelming anxiety.
“My life is to be a nurse, so I don’t care if you’re really sick, throw up on me, whatever,” said Younan. “But when you know that what you are doing is wrong, and I am asking you repeatedly to please use your mask to protect me, and you are not yet doing it, it is as if you have no regard for anyone but yourself. And that is why this virus is spreading. It just makes you lose hope. “
Emily Scott, 36, who lives in a Seattle hospital, worked worldwide on medical assignments and helped care for the first US COVID-19 patient last year. She was selected because of her work experience in Sierra Leone during the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak.
While many Americans are afraid of Ebola – a disease that is not as contagious as the coronavirus and poses little threat in the United States – they are not afraid enough of COVID-19, she said.
Scott blames some factors: the scary symptoms of Ebola, racism against Africans and the politicization of COVID-19 by elected US officials.
“I felt much safer in Sierra Leone during Ebola than at the beginning of this outbreak in the United States,” said Scott, because of how many people have failed to obey social detachment and mask directives. “Things that are facts and science have become politicized.”
Emergency room nurse L’Erin Ogle heard a litany of false claims about the virus while working at a hospital in the suburbs of Kansas City, Kansas. They include: The virus is no worse than the flu. It is caused by 5G wireless towers. Masks won’t help and can hurt. Or, most painful for her: the virus is not real, and doctors and nurses are involved in a vast global conspiracy to hide the truth.
“It looks so defeating and makes you wonder: why am I doing this?” said Ogle, 40.
Nurses are often the health care providers with the most patient contact, and patients often see nurses as more accessible, according to Professor Maria Brann, a specialist in health communication at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. This means that nurses are more likely to find patients by spreading incorrect information, which gives them a special opportunity to intervene.
“Nurses have always been advocates for patients, but this pandemic has hit them a lot more,” said Brann. “It can definitely take its toll. This is not necessarily what they signed up for. “
In some cases, it is nurses themselves and other health professionals who spread incorrect information. And many nurses say they find lies about the coronavirus vaccine in their own families.
For Brenda Olmos, 31, a nurse in Austin, Texas, who focuses on a population of geriatric and Hispanic patients, it was a no-brainer to get the vaccine. But first she had to debate with her parents, who heard baseless claims that the injection would cause infertility and Bell’s palsy in Spanish TV shows.
Olmos finally convinced her parents to get the vaccine too, but she worries about the vaccine’s hesitation in her community.
When she recently met an elderly patient with cancerous tumors, Olmos knew that the tumors had taken years to develop. But the man’s adult children, who recently gave him the vaccine, insisted that the two were connected.
“It seemed like a lot of coincidence to them,” said Olmos. “I just wish they weren’t to blame.”
Olmos said that the real problem with misinformation is not just evildoers spreading lies – it is people who believe false claims because they are not so comfortable navigating often complex medical discoveries.
“The low level of health literacy is the real pandemic,” she said. “As health care providers, we have a duty to provide information in a palatable and easy to understand manner, so that people do not consume misinformation because they are unable to digest the actual data.”
When Texas Governor Greg Abbott withdrew the mandate from the state mask this month, against the guidance of many scientists, nurse Guillermo Carnegie called the decision “spit in the face”.
“I was disgusted,” said Carnegie, 34, from Temple, Texas. “This governor and others act like, ‘Oh, we are proud of our frontline workers, we support them.’ But then they do something like that, and it overwhelms the medical field tremendously. ”
Brian Southwell, who started a program at Duke University School of Medicine to train medical professionals on how to speak to ill-informed patients, said providers should see patient confidence in them as an opportunity.
“That patient trusts you enough to get that information out with you,” said Southwell. “And that’s a good thing, even if you disagree.”
He said that medical workers should resist going into “academic argumentation mode” and instead find out why patients have certain beliefs – and whether they can be open to other ideas.
This act of listening is critical to building trust, according to Dr. Seema Yasmin, a doctor, journalist and professor at Stanford University who studies medical misinformation.
“Drop the pen, lower the notebook and listen,” said Yasmin.
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Associated Press writer John Leicester in Le Pecq, France contributed to this report.
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More AP coverage of the first year of the pandemic: Pandemic: One year