Intimate portraits of a hospital Covid unit from a photojournalist-turned-nurse

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/12/26/1066395049/intimate-portraits-of-a-hospital-covid-unit-from-a-photojournalist-turned-nurse

by tzs • 5 years ago

135 119 5 years ago

npr.org

skeeter2020• 5 years ago

I love what this nurse is doing. I apologize in advance for this rant, but we're almost TWO YEARS into this thing and I have no more sympathy for the self-titled "dumb asses" who didn't get vaccinated, almost died, and now preach their story of redemption to everyone. I'm glad you made it through, but don't look to me for any thanks or recognition. How many cancer patients, transplant candidates, car accident victims, seniors and immune-compromised people died because you directly infected them, or took a hospital bed? How many health care workers will leave the field because you added largely preventable work? How many kids lost (and continue to be deprived of) the single safe place they could learn or get a decent meal when in-person schools shut down? A big part of this is YOUR FAULT and I'm not ready to forgive yet.

Thank you to health care workers who keep grinding away to help others, and individuals like this who fight the ignorance and misinformation. You are heros in a time when we really need them.

martythemaniak• 5 years ago

Yes, this needs to be said. What the unvaccinated are doing right now is conducing a DDOS attack on the whole medical system. This is going to cost them dearly, but everybody else will also pay a steep price. Is it really your freedom, if other people have to pay for it with their lives?

kdom13• 5 years ago

Should we be similarly condemning speeders, drunk drivers, obese people, etc., for hogging up hospital beds as a result of their reckless behavior?

api• 5 years ago

Simple solution: if you refuse vaccination for a non-medical reason and require treatment for COVID, you pay out of pocket. No insurance, no medicare, no medicaid.

Best of all isn't personal responsibility a classical conservative thing? Don't want to do something simple and free to keep yourself out of the hospital? Fine, but you get to pay for it.

Of course they will just go bankrupt and we'll end up paying for it anyway, but at least it will send a message.

Could be extended to other forms of adherence to flagrant health quackery. I have zero sympathy for this insanity anymore. If you get your health information from YouTube you are an idiot.

1123581321• 5 years ago

This nurse is taking quite a different approach from yours. These photos are empathic and respectful and takes humans as they are, while still getting the message across. I don’t think your mindset would lead to the same quality of journalism.

yosito• 5 years ago

Triple vaxxed, here to play the devil's advocate. Stories like these are not to please you, or to recognize the person. But telling them is important for unvaccinated people to see. I'm really hoping that my unvaccinated family members see this kind of story from someone they follow and trust before it's too late for them.

vondur• 5 years ago

I thought vaccinated or unvaccinated you can still infect others? Mainly it’s vaccinating yourself to have a less severe outcome if you do become infected is what I’ve been seeing be told.

adventured• 5 years ago

That's correct, you can infect other people if you're vaccinated, and you can still get infected even if you're triple vaccinated. Break-through cases are very common, as witnessed in highly vaccinated nations that are still struggling with huge outbreaks.

Your conclusion is essentially the right one, the leading vaccines (particularly the mRNA vaccines) can dramatically lower the risk of a bad outcome if you catch SARS2. They do not stop the spead of the virus and do not ensure you won't catch it.

simonh5• 5 years ago

The vaccines don’t stop you getting it, but:

1. They reduce the chances you will get it because they increase the chances your system will fight it off before it gets established.

2. They reduce the time during which you are infectious, and the amount of the virus in your system that you output during that time. As a result they decreases the chances of you infecting others.

The reduction for the original variants was very significant. Vaccinated people were very unlikely to infect anyone else prior to Delta. With Delta the benefits were significantly reduced. With Omicron the benefits in infectiousness are again much reduced.

So for most of the last year the vaccines were a vital tool in reducing the spread of the virus as well as protecting the vaccinated. Now Omicron is so infectious the effect is much lower. Of course the vaccines do still seem to be real life savers against Omicron, and avoiding getting sick yourself still protects others by reducing the load on the health care system.

VLM• 5 years ago

Its just a new religion, and the believers in it violently aggressively hate the non-members, which is scary to see.

We as a race haven't eliminated a coronavirus yet, and we probably are not anytime soon, and hatred is starting against anyone weak enough to get bullied, because someone has to be made to pay. Gonna be a rough winter.

timr3• 5 years ago

How many kids lost (and continue to be deprived of) the single safe place they could learn or get a decent meal when in-person schools shut down?

Given that we're the ~only country in the world who insisted on kicking kids out of school long after it was shown that schools pose miniscule risk, this strikes me as a profoundly disingenuous remark.

Kids weren't deprived of education because someone refused to get a vaccine; they were deprived of education because we overreacted.

woodpanel• 5 years ago

This!

m-ee2• 5 years ago

There’s a lot of nuance missing from this. Schools pose minimal risk when appropriate measures are taken. These measures are frequently not taken, a friend of mine just caught Covid from the school she works at last week. Masking and distancing are semi enforced, but the biggest issue is kids are being sent to school sick repeatedly. Parents have relied on and feel entitled to schools as free childcare, sometimes without much choice if their jobs are at risk. Framing the school closings as an overreaction to a minimal risk is incorrect and dangerous.

basisword• 5 years ago

> Given that we're the ~only country in the world

Well you're not the only country on the internet so...which country are you referring to? And how do you define "long after it was shown that schools pose miniscule risk"?

Seems to me many countries did this for a long time and at least in my country cases spike when schools open and infections spread to older family members. This is visible both in cases/deaths correlating with school reopenings + from what I've seen anecdotally.

ok_dad• 5 years ago

Honestly, I only hate the ones who don’t see the error of their ways. The ones who realize they’re dumb and make changes should be forgiven. Imagine if there were no room for forgiveness on anything, then you get a calcification of beliefs and that’s not great. Forgiveness is what allows people to change their minds.

nostromo• 5 years ago

Should we extend this attitude to everyone else that taxes the healthcare system?

If you got HIV from unprotected sex, should we shame you?

If you’re fat and get diabetes should we?

Etc etc. This is inhumane thinking and shouldn’t be encouraged.

vaxxz3• 5 years ago

It’s a wee bit different to aid and abet an ongoing global pandemic.

intorio• 5 years ago

Are any of those easily helped by a vaccine?

niklasbuschmann• 5 years ago

If there were a vaccine against HIV, and an ongoing pandemic overwhelming hospitals, then yes I guess?

darkerside• 5 years ago

...Maybe?

Not in a dehumanizing way, but cultural norms are sometimes there for a reason. As unfortunate as it is, being overweight is unhealthy, and while I don't think people should be looked at as less than human, they should know that their life choices are frowned upon.

xwolfi• 5 years ago

You shift from victim to guilty when there s an easy way out of your mistakes. Yes getting HIV can often be the result of a preventable mistake, but if there was a way out once you got it and you refused again and again to take it to relieve the group tax burden and instead relied on expensive insured medication, I d shame you...

Diabete is frankly unclear since you can get it during childhood and again no way to alleviate it that people arent already massively taking.

lkrubner• 5 years ago

"If you’re fat and get diabetes should we?"

Under crisis standards of care, the fact that you are fat can be used to allow you to die. Likewise, and especially, if you have diabetes, that will be cited as a reason why you were allowed to die. Likewise HIV or hepatitis, or any other health problem that you might have. Any health problem that makes you less than perfect can be cited as a reason why doctors might be allow you to die. Even a person with no known health conditions, but who is simply old, can have their age cited against them under crisis standards of care.

So it is understandable why some of us are angry with those who drove hospital after hospital to crisis standards of care during the later half of this pandemic, when there was a vaccine that could have completely changed the situation.

In a developed nation, we do not expect many situations to happen during out lifetimes that would drive a hospital to crisis standards of care. That some citizens recklessly put themselves into a situation where they could clog up the hospitals, to the point where the hospitals had to invoke crisis standards of care, demonstrates an amoral style of reasoning on their part.

sangnoir2• 5 years ago

If you got HIV from unprotected sex, should we shame you?

Tangentally related: in some jurisdictions[1], not informing your partner that you have HIV and exposing them to the risk of infection is a criminal offense.

1. The United Kingdom, and New Zealand, if memory serves.

threatofrain• 5 years ago

If you got HIV from unprotected sex, should we shame you?

This is already a matter of medical, policy, religious, and national history, and that story has not yet concluded with the many lives already ended. And if you knowingly expose people to HIV, that is generally both a criminal and civil matter. Meanwhile defiance of masks and avoidance of free vaccines is political patriotism — a brave defense of liberty itself.

feoren• 5 years ago

If you got HIV from unprotected sex, should we shame you?

If you vehemently oppose the use of condoms, physically and verbally assault people who try to distribute condoms in areas at high risk for HIV, retweet conspiracy theories about how HIV is not real and condoms were made by evil people for evil purposes, attack the doctors who are trying to treat HIV, etc., then yes: shame on you.

Barrin92• 5 years ago

the lack of empathy, and I'm talking about true empathy that results in action when it comes to healthcare workers is still incredible.

The amount of stress physically and mentally that nurses and doctors have been put through, by being exposed to covid themselves from the beginning, being separated from family, seeing people die every day is nuts.

And the amount of people still who basically talk about this like "oh the hospitals aren't even full yet, it's not that bad", and have done so repeatedly really is just plain sad. Also goes for the food workers and delivery people and anyone else who keeps things running.

beebmam• 5 years ago

Frankly, people who buy into anti-vaxx ideology are victims of mass propaganda campaigns. And all of us suffer because of those mass propaganda campaigns.

worker767424• 5 years ago

Do you think it's a propaganda campaign, or maybe it's just a logical extension of longstanding talking points. What happened with Trump and the vaccine (he got booed for saying he got boosted) shows that the movement has outgrown even him, so it's basically self perpetuating.

tasogare• 5 years ago

Must be nice to live in your fictional alternative universe. First the massive propaganda, enforced by governments, media and tech companies is in favor of the vaccination. There is literally no mainstream media or government on earth I can think of that are pushing an anti-vaccine agenda. Secondly if the vaccine worked, it would have stopped the epidemic already. It didn't made a dent even in countries with 90% vaccinated. This single fact should one think. And think again. The "anti-vaxxers" are the scapegoats of political and health policies that don't work.

shrubble• 5 years ago

As of the middle of November 2021, about 30% of nurses had not gotten the vaccine, despite its widespread availability.

Does your condemnation extend to them?

clon• 5 years ago

How many of those do you recon had already been exposed before vaccine availability?

These people were putting their neck out almost a full year before the first shot was administeres. Chances are, many of them already acquired immunity via this route.

sangnoir2• 5 years ago

My condemnation extends to nurses; no one is beyond criticism. Infact, a surprising number of nurses have insane ideas - more than you'd think. To wit, at my local hospital, a doctor found an abrasion on a patient's back which was later attributed to a "healing crystal" supplied - and installed - a few days before, by an attending nurse.

johnisgood7• 5 years ago

How do you know that the Government would not have done those things either way? The unvaccinated do make a good scapegoat though. Plus, I think you are greatly overestimating the vaccine's efficacy of reducing transmission, especially when it comes to newer variants. There are also many people who pose little to no risk AND are not vaccinated.

As far as the unvaccinated getting hospitalized goes, well... do you have this amount of hatred towards the obese, too?

Regardless, your comment came across as pretty hostile, you seem to have a lot of hatred.

jjeaff7• 5 years ago

I would be very, very angry at obese people if the cure for obesity was a tiny needle prick with almost no side effects. But the reality is, obesity is a difficult problem to overcome and requires education, effort, and time.

dijonman22• 5 years ago

I can’t support this mentality at all.

In any case these people are still humans. They have the same right to life as we all do.

yencabulator2• 5 years ago

"Crisis Standards of Care" are what literally allows the hospital to make a triage decision to give better care for the people who are more likely to survive.

guilhas• 5 years ago

Luckily most vaccinated are not this empathy lacking self righteous... No on cares about your forgiveness

In 10 years we will still be analyzing the health implications of the vaccine. And the effects on the health system

Also the unvaccinated tax not only is pay for the public health system, they are also pay for the vaccines, that give billions in profit to the pharmaceuticals, and has little to no benefit for all under 50

neither_color• 5 years ago

I don't feel this way. It's clearly nobody's fault and I have yet to see a convincing chain of reasoning that faults any particular person or group of people for an ongoing natural disaster. Any attempts at doing so assume a nearly infallible vaccine. Stop watching so much news if it upsets you this much and fills you with hate for healthy people.

lemming• 5 years ago

Even after she has helped save a loved one's life, she says, some family members have told her that they're still not sure they'll get vaccinated – and that the coronavirus is a hoax.

"I've been told by patients' families [who can't come to visit] that we are making this up to drum up business at the hospital," says Bucko.

God, that must be so infuriating. When you’re as tired and stressed as these medical staff are, I don’t know how they can summon up the energy to deal with that. I’ve had a few conversations with friends about this, they’re mostly hesitant rather than fully down the rabbit hole, but every one of those conversations is totally draining.

Fomite• 5 years ago

Every clinician I know (I work with a lot of infectious disease doctors) have been cut to the bone with stuff like this.

jacquesm2• 5 years ago

A few days ago a link was posted that made it to the homepage of a doctor that quit on account of being assaulted. People were falling over each other to claim that it was a hoax and that the account was created for the purpose of deceiving people and that such a thing would never happen.

The article then got flagged. There is some serious denial going on about the impact of COVID and I really don't understand what is driving that.

spaetzleesser• 5 years ago

“that we are making this up to drum up business at the hospital”

At least in the US this kind of thinking makes some sense if you ever had the pleasure of dealing with insane hospital bills. They are greedy bastards.

It’s sad a lot of health workers are doing great work and sacrificing their health while working for morally corrupt institutions like hospitals.

mleonhard• 5 years ago

State medical licensing boards are also corrupt institutions. They use quotas to limit the number of practicing doctors. The result is the ongoing doctor shortage and overwork, resulting in lower-quality care for everyone.

zip1• 5 years ago

I love what this nurse is doing. Something that doesn’t come through is how loud the air purifiers are in make-shift negative pressure rooms. The smell of incontinence. Foggy face shields and sweaty isolation gowns.

ianhawes• 5 years ago

My wife and I are fully vaccinated and boosted. Our kids are too young to be vaccinated. We're all currently Covid positive. Fortunately, my wife and I have mild symptoms and our young children have manageable symptoms.

I was thrilled to be vaccinated and in awe at the power of mRNA technology. I got everyone I knew that was un-techsavvy a vaccination appointment as early as possible.

With that being said...

I think we are coming to terms with our collective hubris. Omicron has caused many "breakthrough cases". The science would indicate that it either evolved in an immunocompromised human or through an animal. Those are particularly inconvenient paths to blame on "anti-vaxxers".

We were all always going to get Covid whether we liked to or not.

bigmattystyles• 5 years ago

There can be multiple vectors sustaining COVID - the unvaccinated and anti-maskers certainly don't deserve all the blame, but they're certainly not helping either and are likely accelerating the speed of the spread and increasing the opportunities for more evolution of the virus.

vaxxz3• 5 years ago

Those are particularly inconvenient paths to blame on "anti-vaxxers".

Why would one feel the need to blame anti-vaxxers for new strains?

We were all always going to get Covid whether we liked to or not.

That’s not the point of vaccinations. The point of vaccination is to delay and spread out infection peaks as well as make infections as manageable as possible.

dehrmann4• 5 years ago

We were all always going to get Covid whether we liked to or not.

One of the main examples of hubris was that we thought we could stop it. The "success story" countries quickly dwindled to Australia and New Zealand--situations not exactly replicatable. Australia's hubris led to a bad vaccine rollout, and a few cases quickly escalated to lockdowns. I think NZ eventually settled on an endemic policy.

somewhereoutth3• 5 years ago

NZ was having trouble containing their last outbreak - it had got into the 'gangs', a part of their society that was particularly hard for the government to reach with containment action. So, controversially, they gave up. I suspect they were under a great deal of pressure from 'those who would see Covid win'.

Note that China is still keeping Covid at bay.

hvis• 5 years ago

Immunosuppressed humans are a minority. And each of them would be less likely to get infected (at all) if the regular people around them took vaccination seriously.

Regarding Omicron, there is some cause for hope: so far it does seem to produce less severe illnesses.

unbanned• 5 years ago

Standing there taking photos instead of helping. All those crevices in his camera body and lens harbouring bacteria and viruses... Brilliant.

medntech• 5 years ago

There are plastic covers you can place on cameras. The nurse is helping by sharing someone's story which is in line with their goals of care. Your comment isn't helpful and based upon your other comments, your contributions don't really fit on hackernews.

throwaway4good• 5 years ago

Maybe if we had more photojournalism like this earlier in the pandemic, we would have reacted stronger and contained it better.

squarefoot• 5 years ago

Been there, saw those things myself. This should be shown to those fine minds turned from "it doesn't exist" to "it's just a flu", then "it's curable with <insert any sorcery-style remedy>" then finally becoming full time anti-vaxers. See the pattern? The goal there is being against common sense, no matter if it kills you. Then insert politics to make positions even more firm.

Just had an argument with a friend over the phone the other day: he lost an unvaccinated relative of Covid months ago, still refuses to get vaccinated although they soon will force him in order to keep his job, which makes him angry. His last words before I politely ended my probably last call to him were "you support vaccinations because you're a communist!". Nuff said.

The issue has become so divisive that should one day we discover it was orchestrated by someone, I'd be undecided between hanging that royal bastard to the highest pole with live TV coverage, or giving him a prize for managing to literally cut our society in two with minimum effort.

throwaway55421• 5 years ago

This is interesting.

I find myself somewhere on this spectrum. I'd appreciate if you could read my comment and pick me apart on this because I hate the division too.

I never thought that coronavirus didn't exist, but I've always thought that it's "just a flu" (not literally, but figuratively, in the sense that Spanish Flu was just the flu, and now we're no longer immunologically naive).

In terms of the anti-vax stuff - well, I'm fully vaccinated, but I'd probably be considered "anti-vax" by a significant number of people because that I do not believe that it reduces transmission sufficiently to eliminate the virus if 100% took it - e.g. I think herd immunity is impossible, so to me it's 100% a personal risk.

Based on this, it makes me viciously angry when people back restrictions, lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccine mandates, etcetera.

I see these people as being scientifically illiterate because they're willing to apply force in order to attempt to solve an unsolvable problem.

And as time passes I start to just stop paying attention and discount them as, well, being human. I just can't, for years at a time, listen to people spout arguments based on (what I consider to be) false premises and continually try to explain why they're wrong.

Either I get angry and lash out, or just meme it. Neither are particularly conducive to bridging a divide.

What is the solution to get out of this mess?

How do I make peace with someone who seems to be maniacally obsessed with something I consider to be a non-issue?

I don't expect here that either of us will convince each other, but yeah, WTF do we do? I fundamentally can't see the solution, like you say it's literally cut society in two, as if we now have completely different utility functions.

amanaplanacanal• 5 years ago

My take is: do whatever it takes to keep the health care systems from being overwhelmed, and no more. Allow people to make their own personal health choices outside of that.

But even that is a hard sell to some people.

sekura• 5 years ago

All these comments encouraging empathy for unvaxxed in the name of humanity fail to acknowledge humanity of the medical workers who are treating the unvaxxed. Being married to an ICU physician I have witnessed the mental health toll this pandemic has had on medical workers. Especially, the nurses and doctors who work in the ICU. The majority of the unvaxxed ending up in the ICU have had a lot of misinformation fed to them though social media. Their families often want to co-manage the treatment with physicians and ask to be given ivermectin and other unproven medication. Many of these situations leads to unnecessary emotional exchanges and threats of physical violence from the families. I don't know about the rest but in my wife's ICU group the umvaxxed covid patients only elicit anger from staff.

Intimate portraits of a hospital Covid unit from a photojournalist-turned-nurse

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