Jodi Doering, a registered ER nurse expresses how sorrowful she feels to the patients that are still in denial of COVID-19, despite being on their death bed because of it.
The nurse is from Woonsocket, South Dakota, where both North and South Dakota reached its peak infection cases in the last weeks. On Nov. 9, the Dakotas had the newest daily cases per capita of the entire country.
In an interview, she said that she tweeted what she did is because it wasn’t just one person, but an accumulated number combined together.
“The dying words of those patients are; “this can’t be happening”, “this is not real”. When they should be calling their families, they’re just filed with anger and hatred.”
The patients would demand other diagnoses like influenza, pneumonia or even as far-fetched as lung cancer to avoid getting the coronavirus as their result.
Just over the summer, South Dakota made headlines as thousands of bikers storm to the town of Sturgis to hold a massive annual motorcycle rally. It’s not surprising that the people that attend the rally fell sick afterwards.
This mentality and stubbornness might be because of the state’s republican, Gov. Kristi Noem that stuck to not managing the situation hands-on, resisting the federal COVID-19 enforcement orders if any were issued.
The state has yet to be issued a statewide mask mandate since the COVID-19 outbreak in February.